College freshmen give Web a Jewish 'tune'-up with zemirot database
By Michele Alperin
Jan. 18, 2008

As an enterprising sixth grader, Mendy Fisch created his first Web site: a lemonade stand that delivered the real thing. His profit was $14 between sixth and eighth grades -- that was after paying for the Internet site and the juicer.

But after a summer on a USY trip, kids from Colorado and Chicago ordered lemonades, and Fisch went into the red when he had to send off two packages with lemonade in a thermos, with ice packs for good measure.

"I had to make good on my promise to sell them lemonade," he said, "but I realized that it wouldn't work out as a business."

Since then his Internet projects have been oriented more toward community service; for example, a senior project at Princeton Day School, where Fisch was student body president in his senior year, that enabled online voting and polling. In December, he and his friend, Gabe Seed, launched a database of zemirot, or songs, many of them specifically to be sung on Shabbat. Fisch, now a freshman at Princeton University, was the "techie" on the project and Seed, a freshman in the joint program between the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University, recorded initial versions of the songs, with every variation he was aware of.

Fisch and Seed met initially at Camp Ramah then renewed their friendship at Nativ, a post-high school study and volunteer program offered in Israel run by United Synagogue Youth. During that program, particularly the time they spent at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, the two young men steeped the yeshiva in traditional Jewish music. As Seed wrote in an email: "We had accumulated a whole new repertoire of Hebrew songs, mostly for Shabbat or to be sung at a tish (an event, usually held on Shabbat, where friends gather around a table -- tish in Yiddish -- to eat and drink, tell stories and sing songs).

This past summer Fisch visited Seed for a weekend at Ramah in Nyack, where Seed was working. Someone had tried to compile a sheet of zemirot before Shabbat, photocopying from different sources. The result of the rush job, though, was less than perfect, with many pieces missing, and Fisch wondered aloud to Seed, "What if you could go to the Internet before Shabbos and print zemirot from a Web site?"

Seed told him that USY has a place on its Web site where people had been invited to submit their favorite zemirot, but given security concerns, any submissions had to be approved. The result was that once the person who granted approvals graduated, the site stopped being interactive.

As they framed the idea for a site where people could submit their favorite zemirot, they had in mind Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia where anybody can edit content. Fisch worked on the technical side of the zemirot site over the summer, but had to slow down once the school year started. He finished it up at the beginning of winter break, and it is now available at http://www.zemirotdatabase.org. Seed created the core collection of melodies and lyrics available at the launch.

Fisch has made it easy to add a song to the site. Using the instructions he has included on how to download free software to make a recording, plus a microphone, anyone can sing a song, save it as a file, then upload it to the zemirot site. Contributors are also expected to include the lyrics of the song in Hebrew (using the Hebrew keyboard available on the site), with both an English translation and a transliteration. Fisch estimates it should take just a couple of minutes to record a song and upload it to the site.

Although Seed's recordings have gotten the site started, Fisch encourages people to add favorite zemirot that may not be included and to add different versions of the same song. In fact, a stranger has already uploaded a couple of Hasidic melodies to the song "Azamer B'shvachin".

Fisch also sees the site as a place where musicians can showcase their own recordings of a song. For people who want to develop an audience for their music, or others looking to become cantors, people can listen to a piece and then find contact information in a profile on the site.

Fisch has advertised on Facebook, targeting ads to people who have listed "Judaism" in their interests -- knowing that the site won't really come into its own until it develops a user community.

Seed invites interested Jews to listen in: "We hope that the general public will both take advantage of the content already on the Web site, and more importantly, add their own favorite songs and melodies."