As modern-day musical shluchim from sunny California, Shmuli and Bentzi Marcus of 8th Day didn’t originally aim to to carve out a contemporary niche within the heimish music world. True to their Chabad upbringing, their English-language rock style with its soul-speak lyrics was meant to target secular Jewish teenagers. The fact that their music has made such inroads and captured a mainstream following might tell us something about ourselves – how we all want to connect with their message, their depth, and their indomitable spirit it was backstage at a HASC concert a few years back, and Shmuli Marcus and his brother Bentzi — the duo known as 8th Day — had just come off stage. They were sipping from water bottles as we chatted, and I mentioned that as an admirer of their music, I hoped they would appear in the magazine some day.

“Yeah, I know you do,” Shmuli said. “You’re going to put us in a Purim issue, right?”

There was an edge to his voice, even as the large trademark smile never wavered. I got it. We’re not clowns, a couple of cute chassidim who jump around on stage and make you laugh, he was saying. There’s something serious here too. You need to see what we’re really selling.

That was years ago. As it turns out, conflicting travel schedules have delayed our meeting throughout the long winter, and it’s just before Purim that we finally do meet on a cold Crown Heights morning.

Alas, a Purim article it will be. But not the Purim of levity and jokes: to me, their music reflects the hidden Purim, the concealed holiness, the potency beneath the cheery surface.

“We understand that the music is fun,” Shmuli says. “It’s great if it makes you clap or dance (or hooleh, or bounce, or jump, for that matter), but we’re hoping you’ll think and feel as well.”

A Place You Never Knew Car pool was a big part of the day.

Rabbi Yitzchak Marcus, Chabad shaliach to sleepy Los Alamitos, would drive his sons into Los Angeles each morning for school, and then back home at night — an hour each way.

Music was as necessary as gasoline, maybe more.

Which music? “Everything,” Bentzi remembers. “Lots of Marvelous Middos Machine, and later, Mordechai Ben David and Megama. Oh, and Avremel, of course.”

Avremel is their uncle, their mother’s brother — Avraham Fried.

The love for music permeated the house as well. “We were a family of ten children, bli ayin hara, so there was always singing and playing and harmonizing.”

Shabbos in Los Alamitos was special, song spilling out of the Marcus home into the warm night, but it was on visits to their maternal grandparents in Crown Heights that the brothers heard a Shabbos sound unmatched in richness and authenticity.

Reb Yaakov Moshe HaKohein Friedman was a Bobover chassid. His own father, Rav Meir Yisroel Isser Friedman, had been rav of the Galician resort town of Krenitz (Krynica), a prewar resort town paid homage in 8th Day’s popular “Babinyu,” a song that will make you long for a time and place you’ve never even known:

Everyone’s your friend in this cobblestone land

Everybody seems to know your bubbe

But there ain’t no highway back to Krenitz

There ain’t no train inside this ride

Bubbe, Bubbe Babinyu

Bubbe, Bubbe it’s up to you

Bubbe, Bubbe show ’em you’re still cooking

Reb Yankel Friedman had survived the World War II and settled in Crown Heights, sending his children to Lubavitcher mosdos. He would produce a prominent Chabad family of rabbanim and shluchim; but musically, they would never let go of the Zeide’s zemiros, the spirited, rousing notes of Bobov.

Along with the songs, the Zeide told stories, and a generation later, 8th Day would interpret these memories and tunes in their own lively way.

“Back in Europe, the Zeide was placed in a dark cell one Shabbos, imprisoned, alone,” Bentzi Marcus says. “He made a promise to the Ribbono shel Olam — if he would get out, he would sing zemiros each Friday night.”

In 8th Day-speak, the dark image would become the kernel leading to a sunny refrain:

Through the oceans and the river

Through every single door

No matter what the soldiers said

Or how the rain would pour

Zeide always kept that smile

And wiped our tears away

Nothing could ever bring him down

When he’d start to say

It’s Shabbos now

And we’ll sing

“Mah yedidus menuchaseich, Shabbos   Hamalkah….”

On those New York visits, the extended family would gather together. Singer Benny Friedman — son of Rabbi Manis Friedman, another sibling of Avremel and Mrs. Marcus — remembers those spirited sessions. “My family was from freezing Minnesota and our cousins would come from sunny California, but somehow we were into the same songs — Moshe Yess and Megama, Zohar, Yitzchak Bitton. Now, my brothers and I also sang nicely, but the Marcus brothers could do these sophisticated low harmonies. They were way ahead of us. I was always jealous of their sound,” he admits with a laugh.

Both brothers, Shmuli and Bentzi (who is five years younger), went through the standard Chabad yeshivah system, playing and singing all the while, but never really contemplating a career in music.

While they were still single, they would do informal shows at their father’s Chabad house and entertain at local events. The crowd — friends, family, and community members — had a generous appreciation for the cute local kids with their improvised band, so there was no real barometer of skill.

Until today, their music has that quality, echoes of years of blissful oblivion to their own gift.

Their mother, Mrs. Ita Marcus, smiles at the memories of those years. “I myself had grown up in a home filled with music, my husband sings beautifully, and of course it was part of life here too. When Bentzi came home from camp with some extra tip money, I asked him what he wanted to do with it. He said he wanted to buy a guitar, so off we went to the music store.”

Shmuli, on the other hand, was always scribbling. “As a teenager, I kept a notebook where I wrote what I thought was poetry, musings, and reflections based mostly on chassidic thought. I showed it to an editor I knew, and he informed me that in fact, it wasn’t poetry but lyrical prose. It’s how songs are made.”

Older sibling Chaim Marcus, an advertising executive, believed in his younger brothers, and he encouraged them to record some of their music in a studio.

Shmuli and Bentzi, along with younger brother Eli — who pitched in as drummer — got together for their first recording. “It was just a big Chol Hamoed trip,” Shmuli recalls, “nothing more.”

Not to listeners though. The tape was copied and recopied, making its way across the Chabad yeshivah network. “It was the ’90s version of going viral,” Bentzi quips. “Bootlegged tapes in dormitory drawers.”

Who Am I? We’re sitting in the offices of the worldwide Chabad shluchim network, graciously made available by world traveler Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky (who’s gone for the day on a mission to who-knows-where).

It’s an apt setting; both brothers did their own stints as shluchim. Shmuli’s year in Kharkhov, Ukraine, would prove transformative; in many of the songs he writes, one hears reverberations of that experience. It inspired him to publish a book of stories and poems, the narrative of Jewish souls from a different time, tired old men seeing a Yiddishkeit once snatched away from them being returned in small parts.

His book, titled Chicken Kiev, is hauntingly beautiful.

One day an elderly man walked into the shul. His one hand held a wooden cane, the other somehow was suddenly on my shoulder. “Can you daven?” he whispered. “Yes.” I answered.

“Can I watch?”

I prayed in Hebrew and he stood listening to every word. I finished one chapter and he begged for more. Then he asked me, “Was that one for me?”

The chief rabbi of Lvov was killed in World War I. His son Nochum was only eight. Nochum started telling me the Aleph-Bet he remembered; only a few holy letters and sacred memories would outlive Communism. Years later, in the old shul in Kharkov, Nochum thanks me in tears. He finally saw his father pray again.

The story is themed again in 8th Day’s 2012 hit, “The Rabbi’s Son.”

When the soldiers they took me away

they said

We need the young and strong

When the soldiers took me away

My father was singing this song; he sang

“V’af al pi shechata Yisrael hu”

So sing me the song just one more time, maybe I’ll understand

Sing me the song just one more time, I want to know who I am

How can I know where I’m going, if I don’t know where I’m coming from

How can I know why I’m living, if I don’t know what he was dying for

Just for Fun Shmuli points to the pictures and posters that line the office walls. “Shlichus made us who we are. And back then, it was the shluchim and their families who put us in the music business.”

Chabad houses across the country regularly host events and celebrations, a perfect market for an act heavy in authentic Jewish content yet with a sound that appealed to secular audiences.

“We were doing these little shows for shluchim, having fun across what we called the Chabad circuit,” Shmuli recalls.

“Hey, remember the first time we did a sound check?” Bentzi breaks in. “We were so proud of ourselves. Looking back, it was so…” he pauses, searching for the right word. “It was so shtetl.”

The audiences were courteous and warm, but the brothers didn’t have any real fans yet.

“Actually, we did. Our parents came to shows whenever they could. They were real proud,” Shmuli recalls. “So they were our biggest fans.”

“They still are,” Bentzi adds.

Benny Friedman, who did shlichus in California as a bochur, would try to join his cousins’ shows whenever possible. One night, the Marcus brothers called the talented Minnesotan up to perform with them on stage. Benny sang, and as he finished, he heard Bentzi telling Shmuli, “Wow, that kid’s got a set of pipes.”

“And I still remember the feeling,” the hugely popular singer reflects. “Here was this musical genius, Bentzi Marcus, saying that I could sing!”

Beyond Time and Space Both brothers married into prominent Crown Heights families — Shmuli to the daughter of Reb Chaim Meir Lieberman, Bentzi to the daughter of Reb Simon Jacobson — but neither mentioned musical ambitions to their new wives. “We weren’t thinking in that direction. At that point, it was really nothing more than a cute pastime.”

Shmuli opened a Chabad house in the Southern California town of Cypress; Bentzi settled in Los Angeles. They were still playing for fun, accepting gigs here and there.

Avremy Werner of KMR Luxury Vacations remembers inviting the California duo to perform for KMR guests. “I thought, hey, they have nice voices, they’re Avremel’s nephews, let’s hear them sing some of his hits.”

The program opened with their cousin, Benny Friedman, and then they joined him onstage.

The brothers started to sing, Werner recalls. “And we thought, ‘Wow, these guys are good. They’ve got more than just a family connection going for them.’ ”

Another step toward being less “shtetl” came when Eli Marcus left home for yeshivah. “We lost our drummer, so we had to actually hire a real drummer. We’d been playing for expense money until then, so it marked a turning point when we had to invest in what we were doing.”

The group had developed a nickname — Hassidic Ramblers, after one of their songs — and it was starting to stick. “We didn’t like it though,” Shmuli says. “We wanted something more reflective of who we are.” 8th Day hints at Shemini Atzeres, a Yom Tov seen as beyond time and space, a celebration of the unique bond between HaKadosh Baruch Hu and His People. It also happens to be Shmuli’s birthday.

The brothers remember another turning point. They were in Crown Heights for a Chabad on Campus International Shabbaton. “We did a concert on Motzaei Shabbos and we saw that our uncles and cousins had come to watch us.” Shmuli looks at me meaningfully, as if to emphasize just how much it meant.

“That was a big haskamah for us.”

The Best Years 8th Day created its own niche, fusing longing with rhythm, soul-speak with harmony.

For us veteran fans, those were the best years. We felt something personal in their music, their messages: there was Russian cold and California heat, good times with family and genuine joy — and layers and layers of meaning.

We were proven right when their 2011 release, “Ya’alili,” would bring them into the streets, stores, and cars of Brooklyn and Monsey, and their name was on everyone’s lips. Still, it felt strange to let go of a secret. We’d known it all along.

The title track of their first album, Tracht Gut, epitomized their approach: the lyrics are based on a chassidic teaching — “Tracht gut veht zein gut  — think good and it will be good” — and the sound, while contemporary and fresh, carries traces of classic chassidic spirit.

But if you’re looking for pop-mussar, you won’t find it here. Their lyrics, while accessible, will always be somewhat remote. Some are cryptic. The comments in an online discussion group feature intense analysis regarding some of the more original vocabulary in the songs. I think Lama Balu means, Why are you blue if you’re Hashem’s Chosen Nation? suggests one commenter. Another understands the words as a reference to the nothingness that existed before we were chosen.

Shmuli is pensive, looking off into the distance before explaining.

“There are words of tefillah, and there’s the sound of the shofar. There’s the neshamah of a niggun and the outer levush. Some songs have words, while others are sounds inviting listeners to express their own truths.”

“Huh?” I don’t even pretend to understand what he’s saying.

“Everyone is right. The music is our gift, the meaning is what they add. We can try to create a sense of what we’re conveying, but not more. Imagine,” Shmuli fingers his beard, “imagine you overhear a Hispanic mother scolding her child in the street, speaking Spanish. You don’t know the language, but you know exactly what she’s saying. It’s not just about words.”

Mrs. Ita Marcus draws her own conclusions. “Shmuli is very interesting, he always had this fantastic disposition — always smiling even when he was sick — and the music he writes reflects that simchas hachayim. But then, listen close and you’ll hear something else. I don’t think there’s one album that doesn’t have a song about tears, always tears. Under the smile there’s this depth that he’s trying to express.”

Benny Friedman, who knows a thing or two about creating likable music, has an interesting take on his cousins’ success. “I don’t think they came to fill a void in heimishe music: They were targeting secular Jewish teenagers, which is why there’s a certain contemporary sound. The fact that their music made such inroads in our community tells us more about us than about them. Apparently we also connect not just with their incredible sound, but with their messages, their depth, their spirit.”

Line by Line Today, Shmuli invests the bulk of his energy in his Chabad House like any other shaliach, working to build a school and inspire his community. He runs a program for public school students called Hebrew High, while Benzti works in the music industry full-time, leading his own band and arranging music in his home studio.

When it comes to 8th Day, the division of duties is simple. Shmuli writes the lyrics and basic tune and Bentzi creates the music. They come together on the vocals, sort of an allegory for Jewish unity.

Singing  alone, I’ve been known to do

But it’s not the same as singing with you

I’ve walked alone, and I know it’s true

It’s not the same as dancing with you

Life is so much better, with harmony together

We could out storm any weather, with harmony together

Shmuli is eager for me to understand his brother’s contribution. “You have no idea what kind of magic he does. He really gives a song its layers. I’ll show you. Name a song,” he challenges me.

Without hesitating, I name a current favorite, “Akiva,” off their newest album, Inner Flame.

“Perfect,” Shmuli nods. “I wrote the lyrics as a fast song, imagining one thing; Bentzi heard something else. He rewrote it in a totally different way.”

The slow, haunting ballad does justice to the image of Rabi Akiva’s wife:

A winter’s day a summer’s night

Rachel sat by candlelight

She could wait forever graciously

Came back to town a little gray

A thousand students in his way

She was in the back so patiently

He held a crown for all to see

I can never teach what she taught me

And I learned bravery

Shmuli reflects on a string of lyrics.

“The Lubavitcher Rebbe once marked up a letter with a long list of sources, corrections, and observations. The secretary was overwhelmed, not understanding what the Rebbe wanted. The Rebbe smiled and calmed him down. ‘You’ll do it letter by letter, word by word, then line by line. That’s how learning is done.’ ”

The Rebbe’s comment became Rabi Akiva’s message of hope:

He saw soft water rocking stone

Maybe Torah reach my bones

And I change destiny

I’ll grab each letter as it comes

Word by word is how it’s done

Line by line, it’ll work out fine

The Fighter It’s the dual identities — entertainers and shluchim — that help the brothers both gauge and define their success.

Shmuli remembers a particular dinner for which they were invited as part of the entertainment. “We were waiting patiently for our turn, and there was this long line of speakers and awardees. Finally, after several hours, they bentshed, and the emcee said, ‘Okay, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome 8th Day.’ As he said it, five hundred people stood up and filed out. We got up and played for the lone couple who stayed to hear us. That was it.”

The brothers played with customary gusto. After the concert, the wife — half the audience — came to tell them about a particularly difficult situation she and her husband were facing and how the music had revitalized them, giving them new energy for the road ahead.

One of their central messages is that hard work, struggle, and toil is glorious — more than perfection itself.

My words they do not grow on that perfect tree

If you speak a little broken then you speak like me

I did not fall from that perfect tree

If you’re a little broken than you’re just like me

It’s written in your eyes that you’re a fighter

You’ve held the power for so long in your hands

It’s not about the latest moves that makes a fighter

And you don’t need the perfect score to dance

In reflecting on the meaning, Bentzi shares one secret of the band’s musical appeal.

“A Yid isn’t judged by his accomplishments but by how hard he works, and we all appreciate the fighter, the guy who’s got to work a bit harder. It’s like that in music too, no one wants perfection. It needs to be a little broken to create real harmony.”

Shmuli moves in. “When Moshe Rabbeinu broke the Luchos, the pasuk says ‘l’eineihem,’ before the eyes of the people. Everyone saw. But in chassidus, we are taught that the brokenness was only ‘to their eyes,’ because at the core of those broken Luchos was the perfection that comes specifically from brokenness.”

I can’t say that I totally understand him — or his lyrics — but he’s captivating just the same. “This is why Chazal say that the shivrei Luchos, the broken shards, were kept in the Aron Hakodesh along with the second Luchos.”

His eyes flash as he continues, willing me to understand. “It’s the struggle that makes us who we are, and it’s the struggle that you’re hearing in the music.”

Though the Leningrad search lights

May be far behind her

She’s living with a secret

It’s buried deep inside her

She pictures her children

And she tries to stay strong

She’s talking to Heaven when she cries

How long? How long?!

When all the songs have ended

Only Your song will sing better

You’re the only One who can put

A broken heart back together

We walk outside, our photographer preferring an outdoor photo shoot. Amir positions the brothers in front of the building and Shmuli looks at him.

“I wish you could Photoshop my uncle Avremel’s beard onto me, that’s a choshuveh beard,” he says. Then he turns to me, his expression serious. “I joke,” he says quietly, just to make sure.

Shout It Out A few days after our interview, Shmuli and Bentzi Marcus are onstage in Times Square, leading a Havdalah concert for thousands of public school students who’d come together for a CTeen Shabbaton.

The crowd is a pulsating mass of dancing teenagers: for most, this is their first exposure to Jewish music. Shmuli still wears his Shabbos kapoteh, Bentzi more contemporary in a light gray overcoat against the late winter chill.

They strum, they spin, they smile. And they sing.

Not 8th Day, and not a secular song meant to draw the audience in. They reach deep into their repertoire, to the very core of what they do.

The tune is from Shlomo Carlebach, the lyrics from Uncle Moishy, but it’s 8th Day who’s on fire.

We’ve existed so long

For the Torah kept us strong

And the Torah will never disappear —

oh, no

Through the ages it was brought

By the children, who were taught

To follow it and constantly declare

I’m a Jew and I’m proud, and I’ll shout it out loud

’Cause forever that’s what I’ll be…

After all those sophisticated, profound lyrics and complex harmonies, it’s that very unsophisticated line that rings out in the Manhattan night.

Two brothers, kind of loud, certainly proud, just doing their thing. —

 (Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 602)