Velvel Pasternak, a leading publisher of Jewish music, who recorded, transcribed and preserved the singular melodies that have typically been passed along by tradition within Hasidic sects, died June 18 in Oceanside, NY. He was 85.

Working from his Long Island home, tape recorder in hand, he drove to the Borough Park and Crown Heights neighborhoods of Brooklyn, which have large Hasidic populations, and recorded the mostly un-notated music of the Modzitz, Lubavitch, Bobov and Ger dynastic groups. The works were incorporated in his first book, Songs of the Chassidim, published in 1968.

The next year, Mr. Pasternak took a sabbatical from teaching at local day schools and flew with his family to Israel, where he visited Hasidic enclaves like Bnei Brak, and recorded another batch of songs that had never been published.

In addition to the obscure Hasidic melodies, he published some 200 collections of better-known Yiddish and Israeli folk songs, spirited klezmer tunes, Sephardic melodies, cantorial classics, sorrowful songs of the Holocaust, and other music.