Napoleon March

As our performace approaches its end, we evoke the historical dimension of the Lubavitch movement with this short narrative. The Napoleon March, which sung by the Hassidim before the shofar is blown to mark the end of the Day of Atonement, represent the great spiritual battle batween the leading rabbis of the early nineteenth century who either supported Napoleon, the "emancipator of the Jews," or the Russian Tsar Alexander I, the dictator and oppressor. Based on this political conflict, Baruch Brenner and Matti Kovler have written a sort of musical monodrama with French marches and Cossack songs. 

We have used two marches from the Lubavitch repertoire: the famous "Napoleon March" and another lesser known one. To represent the camp of the rabbis who sided with Napoleon, like the Maggid of Kuznits, we used a tune of the Vizhnitz Hassidic court. Tsar Alexander's  Russia is represented by the favorite Cossack tune of Chabad: "Niet, niet, niekavo," sung in Russian by Matti Kovler. In the background, one can even hear a motif from the Marseillaise.