Shalom Aleichem is a traditional song sung by Jews every Friday night upon returning home from synagogue prayer. It signals the arrival of the Jewish Sabbath, welcoming the angels who accompany a person home on the eve of the Sabbath.
Words
The lyrics, in Hebrew, are as follows: The song in Hebrew is transliterated as follows: The words to the song translate as follows: Mizrahi tradition includes a penultimate verse, beginning, " your rest for peace..." and the final verse has a inserted in front of the צ which Koren claims does not change the meaning of the last verse. This is also present in Tikunei Shabbos, the earliest known printing of the poem; as is one before the of the second verse. Yaakov Chaim Sofer, in his work Kaf Hachayim, notes: Rabbi Jacob Emden, in his prayerbook, Bet El, criticized both the use of the hymn and its grammar—arguing that the inclusion of the prefix מִ at the beginning of every second line was bad form, as it rendered the passage, "angels of the Most High, away fromthe King who rules over kings". He therefore deleted that מִ, thereby reducing mi-melech to melech, and that deletion has been emulated in some other prayerbooks such as Seligman Baer's Siddur Avodat Yisroel, the Orot Sephardic, and Koren's Mizrahi prayerbook, although it makes the musical metera bit awkward.
Melodies
Many different melodies have been written for Shalom Aleichem. The slow, well-known melody for the song was composed by the American composer and conductor Rabbi Israel Goldfarb on May 10, 1918 while sitting near the Alma Mater statue in front of Low Memorial Library at Columbia University, and first published later that year as "Sholom Alechem—שָׁלוֹם עֲלֵיכֶם" in Friday Evening Melodies by Israel and his brother Samuel. The famous Goldfarb song is often presumed to be a traditional Hasidic melody. I. Goldfarb wrote in 1963, "The popularity of the melody traveled not only throughout this country but throughout the world, so that many people came to believe that the song was handed down from Mt. Sinai by Moses." In the Preface to "Friday Evening Melodies" the composers articulated the goal of avoiding the extremes of both the free-form emotive Eastern European musical liturgical style and the classical Western Europeanmusical structure of "Israel Emancipated." A modern, exuberantly joyful version of this melody has been popularized by Idan Yaniv and Kinderlach; it was released in September 2009. As one of her last acts, Debbie Friedman shared her version of "Shalom Aleichem" with Rabbi Joy Levitt. Friedman believed it was this song that would become her legacy. Another common melody, with a faster, more upbeat tempo was composed by Rabbi Shmuel Brazil.
