NEW YORK, United States – Millions of Jews have heard his music. Many have sung it. Far fewer knew his name.
This Shabbat, Tanchum Gershon Portnoy’s family hopes to change that.
Synagogues and Jewish communities worldwide are being encouraged to sing Portnoy’s familiar “Eitz Chaim” melody on Shabbat Shuvah, September 19, in memory of the Jewish composer who died on Rosh Hashanah at age 75.
Portnoy’s family is organizing the coordinated tribute and invites congregations to sing the melody as the Torah is returned to the ark, which generations of Jews have come to know.
“My father gave the world a melody. This Shabbat, the world sings it back to him,” his son Eli Portnoy said in announcing the initiative.
The tribute provides a fitting conclusion to the story of a composition that became so deeply embedded in Jewish religious life that its composer largely disappeared behind his music.
Portnoy wrote the melody when he was just 22.
It appeared on his 1975 album Tanchumim, where Avraham Yanon, the musical name of Rabbi Alvin Wainhaus, performed the composition and Yisroel Lamm arranged it. The National Library of Israel’s catalog confirms Portnoy as composer and Lamm as arranger and conductor of the album.
The words are taken from Proverbs 3:18, beginning “Eitz chaim hi lamachazikim bah,” meaning, “It is a tree of life to those who hold fast to it.”
Over the decades, Portnoy’s melody spread far beyond the original recording.
Cantors, choirs, and Jewish musicians embraced it, and it became one of the melodies commonly sung as the Sefer Torah is returned to the ark.
Shlomo Carlebach, a friend of Portnoy, helped popularize his music. Carlebach also performed two other Portnoy compositions on the original Tanchumim album.
A Melody That Became Tradition
The extraordinary reach of “Eitz Chaim” produced an unusual consequence.
As congregations passed the melody from generation to generation, knowledge of its composer faded.
Many Jews came to regard it simply as a traditional synagogue melody.
Tablet Magazine reported that Jewish music publisher Velvel Pasternak once encountered liner notes identifying Portnoy’s composition as “traditional” and corrected the attribution.
Portnoy’s family describes a similar phenomenon.
He could travel, enter a synagogue, and hear a congregation singing the music he had written decades earlier without anyone necessarily knowing that its composer was standing among them.
On at least one such occasion, according to accounts published following his death, Portnoy quietly listened and then joined the congregation rather than announcing that he had written the melody.
What began as the work of a young American Jewish composer had effectively become part of the collective soundtrack of Jewish religious life.
The original album remains documented in the National Library of Israel.
Tanchumim contains 10 tracks, including “Eitz Chaim,” with Portnoy credited as composer. Carlebach appears as a guest soloist, while Lamm arranged and conducted the recording.
Portnoy later released Tanchumim II in 2001.
More Than A Composer
Portnoy was born in Brooklyn in 1951 and grew up in a rabbinic family.
He studied at Chofetz Chaim and the Mir, received semichah from Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz and later earned a master’s degree in psychology from Queens College, according to a family tribute established following his death.
He was the son of Rabbi Eliezer Portnoy, who studied at the Mir Yeshiva in Europe and was involved in efforts that helped its students escape Lithuania during the Holocaust.
Tanchum Portnoy spent his later years helping preserve his father’s story.
An unusual symmetry links the two legacies.
The son worked to ensure his father’s name would not disappear from a remarkable story of Jewish survival. At the same time, his own name was gradually disappearing from a melody that continued to flourish.
Portnoy was a longtime resident of Lawrence, New York, and a member of the Five Towns Jewish community.
He is survived by his wife, Sara, his children Eli, Amichai, Ilan and Gali, and their families. He was buried at Eretz HaChaim Cemetery in Beit Shemesh, Israel.
‘The World Sings It Back To Him’
Portnoy died on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, according to his family’s memorial site.
His family is now asking congregations to remember him on Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
The date is September 19, 8 Tishrei 5787.
Congregations participating in the tribute are also being encouraged to tell worshippers about the composer before singing his melody. The family has made the original 1975 recording, photographs, and material about Portnoy available through a memorial website dedicated to his life and music.
Tanchum Portnoy memorial and Eitz Chaim tribute
For more than half a century, Portnoy’s composition traveled from synagogue to synagogue, from parents to children and from one generation to another.
On Shabbat Shuvah, his family hopes that Jews around the world will sing the familiar melody once more.
This time, they want them to know the name of the man who wrote it.
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