Blessed are You, Lord God, King of the Universe, who creates the fruit of the vine. Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the Universe, who sanctified us with His commandments and desired us, and who granted us with love and desire His holy Sabbath. For this is the foremost day among all of those we call holy, in memory of the exodus from Egypt. For You chose us and sanctified us above all the other nations, and granted us through love and desire Your holy Sabbath. Blessed are You , Lord God, King of the Universe, who sanctifies the Sabbath. Amen.

Weill was one of several leading Jewish composers (others included Milhaud, Castelnuovo-Tedesco and Leonard Bernstein) who were commissioned in the late 1940s to contribute compositions to an anthology entitled Synagogue Music by Contemporary Composers, edited by Cantor David Putterman of New York’s Park Avenue Synagogue and published in 1951. This piece was Weill’s contribution. The treatment here is very bluesy, and makes effective use of the interplay between synagogue cantor and accompanying choir. Weill’s 1946 version of the piece is dedicated to his father Albert, who was a cantor in Dessau, Germany.