6. "Niggun of the Maggid of Mezhirech"

^{Menahem, Moshe and Shim'on Anshin, Elyokum Gelbach, Moshe Villenstock and David Raphael Ben Ami, Jerusalem, 19 July, 1979. Recorded by Andre Hajdu and Yaakov Mazor.}

This dance niggun is the seventh and last in a series of niggunim sung by Bratslav Hasidim as they dance after the Sabbath Evening Service on Friday night (see Azamer bishvohin, p. 30, no. 19). This custom was instituted by the Hasid and kabbalist R. Shlomo Wechsler in the early 1940s. The melody is also frequently sung while dancing after prayers on weekdays. Some have attributed the niggun to R. Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezhirech (1704-1772), the leader of the Hasidic movement after the Besht's death. It was first recorded in 1913 in Berditchev, Ukraine, as part of a recording project by the composer and scholar Joel Engel; it was transcribed by the Russian musicologist Moshe Beregovski (see Beregovski 1982, p. 183, no. 130; idem in print, no. 63). The performance in this recording differs only slightly from Beregovski's transcription. The only significant difference is that the second section, sung here as a period (a phrase with a half-close followed by a phrase with full close), consists there of a phrase with full close, repeated twice. In view of the unusual modality, the melody may have been borrowed from or influenced by the East-Mediterranean repertoire that reached the Ukraine under Ottoman rule.