Fried, Marcus to Release Musical Tribute to Miracle Torah

A highly anticipated musical collaboration is set to arrive this week. Superstar Chassidic singer Avraham Fried has teamed up with his young phenom nephew, Eli Marcus and legendary composer Yossi Green, to perform a brand new song composed by Green. But it’s the meaning and origin of the song that makes it truly special.

Just over two months ago, amidst the chaos of the Coronavirus, United for Protection sounded a note of positivity and action. The three Brooklyn based businessmen, Shloimy Greenwald, Berel Junik, and Zalmy Cohen, ran a campaign uniting over 340,000 individual Jews in the writing of the “Miracle Sefer Torah.”

The impetus for the campaign was the now famous story of the Baal Shem Tov, where he urged the community of Mezhibush to write a Torah as a response to a deadly plague.

But there was another, equally explicit source for the initiative.

On Shabbos Chanukah 5742 (December 1981), a few months after the Children’s Sefer Torah was launched, the Lubavitcher Rebbe applied a verse from Sefer Daniel to the ongoing campaign.

The last chapter of Sefer Daniel opens with a foreboding prophecy: “…It will be a time of trouble, the likes of which have never been since the nation came into being.”

Yet, Daniel continues, there is no reason for fear: “At that time, your people will be rescued, all who are found inscribed in the book.”

The “book”, the Rebbe said, is the Sefer Torah.

With this interpretation of the Rebbe in hand, alongside the precedent of the Baal Shem Tov, United for Protection sprung into action, with over 300,000 letters of the Miracle Sefer Torah acquired in under three weeks.

As the campaign went viral, Shloimy Greenwald was thinking of a way to memorialize the unity of the moment for posterity. So he turned to Eli Marcus with an idea: A song with the pivotal verse from Daniel as the lyrics, a song dedicated to those whose “names are inscribed in the book.” A song that will celebrate a momentous display of unity in the midst of a long, dark night.

It is two months later, and after recruiting Yossi Green and Avraham Fried to the project, the song “ובעת ההיא” is completed and scheduled for release, produced by Avrumi Berko.

Though the song commemorates a past triumph, the opportunity to join the outpouring of unity still remains. A second Sefer Torah dedicated to the heroic Hatzalah volunteers has available letters. Go to Unitedforprotection.com to join the Torah today.

As the virus slowly loosens its grip on the wider Jewish world, and as the ill return from the ICU and begin rehabilitation, it is a moment to reflect and to sing, “At that time, your people will be rescued, all who are found inscribed in the book.”

VIDEO: Avrumi Berko hard at work