גודל הטקסט
Few melodies carry the weight of the slow tune for the twelfth of Maimonides' Principles of Faith, the belief in the coming of the Messiah. It is heard to this day at Holocaust memorial ceremonies, and its name is linked to the Modzitz Hasidic dynasty and to one of its Hasidim, Reb Azriel David Fastag, a cantor and composer of melodies from Warsaw, whose tunes were sung in the court of the Rebbe, Rabbi Shaul Yedidya Elazar Taub.
The story, as it appears for example on Chabad.org and other sites, goes like this: in 1942 Fastag was put on a train from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka. Inside the car he began to hum a melody to the words of the Principle, and the passengers joined him. He promised half of his share in the World to Come to whoever would bring the melody to his Rebbe, who had escaped Poland and arrived in New York in 1940. Two young men jumped from the train; one was killed, and the other survived. According to the common version, the survivor reached the Land of Israel, to the Rebbe's son, and the notation was sent from there to America. It is also told that the Rebbe said emotional things about the melody, which linked the road to the gas chambers with welcoming the Messiah.
Differences are already evident on reading the different versions. An article on the Aish website tells instead of an escape to Switzerland, of the melody being written down in musical notation, and of relatives who passed it on in a letter that arrived in 1945. An article in The Jerusalem Post brings the story from the mouth of a speaker at a memorial ceremony, and other records do not mention the names of witnesses at all. The name of the young man who survived does not appear in any of the sources we checked.
Beyond this, there is a more fundamental challenge. The English Wikipedia entry "Ani Ma'amin," relying on a doctoral dissertation by Bret Werb of UCLA from 2014, notes evidence that Fastag was not sent to Treblinka at all, but escaped from Warsaw to Vilna and found refuge in Shanghai. The same source stresses that the melody's origin in the war years and its connection to Warsaw are not in dispute. We were not able to read the dissertation itself, and so we present these claims in the name of the one who cited it.
What remains, then? A strong and living Hasidic tradition, a melody that survived and was passed on, and early recorded documentation: the Jewish Musical Notes website mentions a recording from 1947 by Seymour Silbermintz and his choir. The Rebbe himself passed away that same year, after his fourth trip to the Land of Israel. Anyone who listens to the melody today can hold two things together: the power of the tradition, and the caution that history requires. It is worth noting that there is also another well-known joyful melody for the same words, sung mainly at weddings, and the two should not be confused.
Sources: English Wikipedia (Ani Ma'amin); Chabad.org; Aish; The Jerusalem Post; Jewish Musical Notes; Rabbi Pinny Dunner's blog on Times of Israel
Image: Unknown author, Public domain (PD-Art, PD-old-100), via Wikimedia Commons.