About L'chaim Nigunim
L'chaim Nigunim grew from a simple belief that music brings people together. We build intimate musical spaces where warmth, joy, spirituality, and belonging can be felt together.
How it began
My name is Raphael.
In 2014, a friend sent me a ten minute video of a musical prayer led by hazan Yitzchak Meir in Pardes Hanna, Israel. That video opened an endless musical journey. From one video to the next, I discovered artists and melodies that touched my soul, from Motty Steinmetz to Haim Israel through Zusha, and I fell in love with musical prayer and Jewish song.
I moved to Montreal in 2016. Every Friday night, our Shabbat meal turned into a chain of songs, deep, joyful, and full of energy. Those moments carried us through the COVID and became a kind of a tradition we wanted to hold onto.
We were limited by the few songs we could find in the prayer books and birkat hamazon booklets around us. I could not find a songbook that gathered Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and contemporary Israeli songs together, so I decided to make the one I was looking for. The first version of L'chaim Nigunim was born in 2021, a gift for the Chabad of the University of Montreal. What started as 90 songs grew over the years into a collection of 290 songs with lyrics, birkat hamazon, and everything needed for a Shabbat table and jewish celebrations.
At the end of 2022, I moved to Israel to prepare my alyah, which became official in 2024. There I discovered a musical world I had never been exposed to before, running from event to event, from musical prayers to music circles. Friends started asking me about the best musical hallels around. At ulpan Etzion in Jerusalem and in synagogues in Tel Aviv, and I began leading hallels with my guitar, alongside musical havdallahs on the Tel Aviv Tayelet and in music circles.
Jewish music became my blood, in the Holy Land.
L'chaim Nigunim grew into weddings, sheva berachot, bar and bat mitzvahs, and birthdays, gathering musicians and instruments to bring something special to every celebration. Today, L'chaim Nigunim lives through musical prayers, musical havdallahs, music circles, and songbooks, and keeps growing from there. In every event, we share a moment of connection, gentleness, accessible spirituality, human communion, a living and warm Judaism, and a space where people can feel without social performance.
L'chaim.
