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Variations of the original three lines culminating with “…walk beside me…” first appear in high school yearbooks beginning in 1970. The earliest recorded mention we could find was in The Northern Light, the 1970 yearbook of North Attleboro High School, Massachusetts. In the Jewish world of the early to mid-1970s, a young Moshe Tanenbaum began transmitting the lines at Jewish summer camps. In 1979, as Uncle Moishy, Tanenbaum published a recording of the song under the title “v’Ohavta” (track A4 on The Adventures of Uncle Moishy and the Mitzvah Men, volume 2). . . .
These are a series of kavvanot prepared by Rabbi Emanuel S. Goldsmith (1935-2024), z”l, for a Shaḥarit service containing the call to prayer (Barkhu), the blessings preceding the Shema, tthe conclusion of the Amidah, before and after the Torah reading service, and Aleinu. Rabbi Ben Newman, who shared these kavvanot in eulogy for Rabbi Goldsmith in a Facebook post, writes, “My dear teacher, friend, and mentor Rabbi Dr. Emanuel Goldsmith died on Friday. He was an amazing man who taught me a lot about how to be a rabbi, a Reconstructionist, a liturgist, philosopher of religion, and Yiddishist. He also was the “head rabbi” who officiated at my wedding to Rabbi Shoshana Leis….I had him write out for me [these kavvanot] when I substituted for him leading at Congregation Mvakshe Derekh in Scarsdale, NY, 20 years ago as a student rabbi.” . . .