Saleinu

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About Saleinu - Lyrics by Levin Kipnis; Music by Yedidyah Admon (Gorochov)

Saleinu takes its cue from the lively hora that was so popular in Israel, and especially on the kibbutzim. The song, which describes the joy of the harvesters as they celebrate their first fruits, has become closely tied with the agricultural side of the holiday of Shavuot, and is a favorite among Jewish children – and their families – throughout Israel and around the world.

Levin Kipnis (1894-1990) was born in Ukraine. At the age of thirteen, he saw his first children’s magazine. Three years later, his first story was published in that same magazine; three years after that, he made aliyah, and discovered, to his dismay, that there were no similar publications for Israeli children. Following his studies at the Betzalel Institute of Arts, the Levinsky Teachers Seminary in Tel Aviv and a brief stay in Berlin, Kipnis devoted his career to filling this void. Kipnis won the coveted Israel Prize in 1978 for his lifetime of devotion to children’s literature.

Yedidyah Admon (Gorochov )(1894-1985) was born in Russia and made his aliyah with his family at the age of 12. In 1913, he was a member of the first graduating class of the Teacher’s Seminary in Jerusalem, where he studied with renowned Jewish ethnomusicologist, Abraham Z. Idelsohn. However, Admon, (he took on the more Israeli-sounding surname after arriving in Palestine, but never completely divorced himself from his birth name), is best known for the many songs he has written under the influence of the local Arabic and Bedouin sounds.