page_title: Yankel Talmud
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Yankel Talmud / Early life
caption_attribution_description: Avraham Mordechai Alter, (1866-1948).
context_page_description: Yaakov Dov Talmud was a Hasidic composer of Jewish liturgical music and choirmaster in the main synagogue of the Gerrer Rebbes both in Ger, Poland, and in Jerusalem, Israel. Known as "the Beethoven of the Gerrer Rebbes", he composed dozens of new melodies every year for the prayer services, including marches, waltzes, and dance tunes. Though he had no musical training and could not read music, Talmud composed over 1,500 melodies.
context_section_description: Yaakov Dov (Yankel) Talmud was born on 18 December 1885 (10 Tevet 5646) in Warsaw, Poland, to a family of Gerrer Hasidim. His father, an accomplished Talmid Chacham, worked in the lumber trade. Yankel was orphaned at a young age and was raised by Kotzk Hasidim in that city.
  As a young child, Yankel often sneaked into the main Ger synagogue to listen to the choir rehearse for the High Holy Days. When he was 12, choirmaster Yisrael Eckstein spotted him and demanded to know why he was there. Yankel begged Eckstein to test his voice. He became a member of the choir the very next Shabbat.
  Talmud broadened his understanding of music and prayer by visiting well-known baalei tefillah (prayer leaders) such as Reb Zeidel Rovner and Reb Nissan Belzer. As a young man, he was given the responsibility of importing the niggunim of Reb Yonah Erlich, Reb Nissan Koshinover, and others to Ger. Often he altered the tunes with his own additions and revisions.
  He became the choirmaster in the main Ger synagogue during the leadership of the third Gerrer Rebbe, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter, the Imrei Emes. Singing and leading his choir of 20 boys under the age of bar mitzvah, he also began composing his own melodies. In the Ger tradition, the prayer leader is the only one who sings the words of the prayers with their melody; the choir and congregants sing only the melody. Talmud wrote hundreds of melodies for every part of the prayer service, investing each tune with rich emotional expression. The Gerrer Hasidim would return home after a visit to their Rebbe humming Talmud's new melodies, popularizing them in their hometowns.
  Talmud received many requests from other choirs and musicians to compose music for them, but he demurred, reserving his talent solely for the Gerrer Rebbes and their Hasidim. His inspiring melodies became so popular and widely known that it is said that thousands of Gerrer Hasidim sang them in the Nazi death camps. Yehuda Meir Abramowicz, a Gerrer Hasid who later served in the Israeli Knesset, wrote in an article after Talmud's death:
  Countless people were slaughtered during the Holocaust years. Among them were many thousands of Gerrer Hasidim who went to their deaths with the tunes of Reb Yaakov Talmud on their lips. When I told this to Reb Yaakov when he was in chutz la'aretz (outside the Land of Israel), he became very emotional. "This is my portion from all my toil", he said. "This is my comfort in my sorrow".
caption: Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter, third Gerrer Rebbe (center), walking with his Hasidim in Europe, circa 1920s/1930s.
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