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Mostly Cloudy Less is more for concert ‘Event’ minus the ‘big’
Lipa, Pirchei choir tribute planned for March concert
By Michael Orbachy
Issue of Jan. 30, 2009 / 5 Shevat 5769
The Big Event is back, albeit without its leading adjective.
“I’ll let people decide if it’s bigger or small,” said Sheya Mendlowitz, the producer of The Event, a concert planned for March 1 at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden.
As it stands, The Event is gearing up to be one of the bigger shows put on in the Jewish music world. The very popular Lipa Schmeltzer will headline, with a reconstituted Pirchei Boys Choir. Half of the available 5,600 hundred seats are sold, Mendlowitz said.
“This show is the most talked about event since last year’s event that didn’t happen,” quipped Eli Gerstner, the producer and composer behind the Yeshiva Boys Choir and the Chevra, and a solo performer as well.
Last year’s concert dubbed The Big Event was canceled before Schmeltzer ever took the stage, victim to a controversial rabbinic ban enacted at the behest of a single individual who, it is widely believed, misled prominent rabbis concerning the nature of the planned performance.
The Event in March will feature a tribute by the composer Abie Rotenberg to Rabbi Eli Teitelbaum z”l, Mendlowitz’s mentor who passed away suddenly last year.
Rabbi Teitelbaum enjoyed a varied career. He was an elementary school educator, a camp director, a pioneer in furthering Torah study through technology, and is considered one of the founding fathers of modern-day Orthodox Jewish music.
He produced the first Pirchei Boys Choir recording in the late 60s — it was one of the first popular religious Jewish acts, and was one of a number of other Jewish music projects he was involved with, including the Camp Sdei Chemed choir, part of his travel camp for boys in Israel. Before Torah study online was even a glimmer of an idea he developed Dial-a-Daf and related services, which allowed thousands to study Torah over the telephone. The service was housed in his home in Borough Park, in racks of equipment lining his basement.
After last year’s concert was canceled at a heavy financial loss for both Mendlowitz and Schmeltzer, Rabbi Teitelbaum reassured Mendlowitz that the next concert would be bigger. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see if his prediction would be fulfilled; in Mendlowitz’s words, The Event is his own way of “giving back” to Rabbi Teitelbaum.
A revamped Pirchei Choir –– really a unit of Gerstner’s Yeshiva Boys’ Choir –– will offer its own tribute to Rabbi Teitelbaum’s legacy; Mendlowitz hopes it will signal a return to an older Jewish music sound.
“We’re hoping it’ll go more retro,” he explained by phone on a Friday morning, referring to the direction of Jewish music. In a conversation during a break in a recording session he said, “It’s my belief that we should keep and preserve the flavor of Jewish music that was influenced by European taste from hundreds of years ago.”
The concert will also have separate seating, possibly a risky move since the target audience is mainly families, but Mendlowitz professes to be confident.
“They’re not there to sit and talk to their families, they’re there to watch the show,” he said. Mendlowitz also stressed that he intends for the concert to be “meaningful” and “inspirational.”
Mendlowitz is arguably the biggest producer in Orthodox Jewish music. He introduced Avrohom Fried to the world, producing his first LP, featuring “Keil Hahodaos” and “No Jew Will Be Left Behind.” He was also the creator of the big-budget HASC concert series; he’s produced 17 of those shows in the last 23 years. The concert is also setting the stage for a bigger model in Jewish music, with the cheapest seats going close to $50. Part of the proceeds of the event will go to Jerusalem Open House, a charity that operates soup kitchens in Israel.
The current economic gloom has opened the extravagant show to criticism that it is inappropriate at this particular time, which Lipa Schmeltzer, who answered his phone in song, readily refuted.
“Now is really the time to make a concert,” Schmeltzer explained. “This is the song I’m singing. In difficult times you need to make people happy.”
Schmeltzer, who took care to note that his new album, “Non-stop Lipa,” will be out by the time this article appears, also railed against “extremists” and said that in a more open society concerts have become a necessity.
“We’re living in a goyish world where everything is reachable and doable,” Schmeltzer told The Jewish Star. “To make Judaism beautiful is only by giving kids an outlet. If not, they’ll wear the same thing but by 19 and 20 they’ll do what they want. They can live in Williamsburg but their hearts can be of Five Towns.”
In September, a Bnei Brak man, Efraim Luft, appointed himself to head what he called the Committee on Jewish Music, and promptly blacklisted Lipa and a number of Jewish music artists for what he called leading the “public astray and causing a great negative influence on the young generation.” He also announced bans on the use of electric guitars, bass, and saxophones in Jewish music.
Schmeltzer, who has faced harsh censure in the charedi world, did not hold back.
“Music is a matter of taste and not everybody has the same taste,” he asserted. “We try to bring people closer and that’s it. So somebody doesn’t like our music –– if you don’t like it, don’t buy it. But to make a statement that Beth Din Shamaim” the heavenly court, doesn’t approve?
“Then tomorrow you bring up a child and he doesn’t understand the differences between listening to modern music and missing z’man Kriyas Shema and keeping Shabbos. Because you’re putting everything in the same bag. You have to know all the priorities.”
In light of last year’s difficulties, Mendlowitz and company aren’t taking any chances. They have secured rabbinic approval for the concert from four well-regarded New York rabbis.
Meanwhile, there are bigger plans on the horizon.
“We hope for Moshiach,” Mendlowitz concluded. “That will be the biggest event and I believe the time is very, very near. Even if I don’t get to produce that event, I’d like to be a part of it.”
