Sunday, November 3, 2013





2 comments:

  1. Dov,
    You need to tell us more about this! That was really moving.
    I gather this was taken from your kayak inside a sea cave? Please tell me about the tradition/significance of the prayer. Can you provide a translation?

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  2. Since all my songs up until now have been comic, I had no idea how this would be received. Thanks for commenting.

    This was taken from my sea kayak in the Blue Grotto, a sea cave, on the island of Capri. I wrote a little bit about the cave in the next post.

    The prayer is for the welfare of the traveler. Not being a tremendous scholar. I can't write here much about its history except to say that the text of the prayer goes hundreds of years back. I invite readers who knows more to comment below.

    The tune I used I picked up from a nice Jewish boy and his friend who were popular musicians back in the sixties. Though I now understand that they were working with a much older British ballad.

    The prayer is written in the plural form, i.e. "guide us," "save us," because it is for the benefit of all travelers and not just the supplicant.

    The subtleties of the translation are best left to experts, but this looks like a job well done though in places it seems to stick to the spirit and not the literal translation.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tefilat_HaDerech

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