It’s Been So Long

As Meilech Kohn takes a seat in the sunny courtyard outside the well-appointed Givat Hamivtar home of old friends Shmulik and Esty Deitsch, he picks up a guitar and begins strumming a haunting, blues-tinged ballad, partly for the photographer’s benefit, but also, seemingly, to collect his thoughts. The mood and tempo are, once again, unlike those of any other Kohn composition, at least of those released to the public. His voice is gravelly as he takes up the refrain.

It’s been a while since I sat down to sing a song to You

It’s been a while, L-rd, I always want to be with You

It’s been so long and we used to be so close

It’s been a while and it’s all my fault I suppose

It’s been a while but I guess that’s how it goes

It’s been a while and I pray that Your generosity shows

It’s been so long and I guess it’s all up to me

It’s been so long but still I don’t see…

So please join me now ‘cause I’m afraid that somehow

I’ll tell You again tomorrow what I done told You now

The song — which he composed after the upcoming album was already closed — serves as an appropriate preface for the life tale Kohn is about to impart.

Elimelech Kohn was born in 1969 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in a stalwart Satmar family. He is an einekel several generations removed from his namesake, the Noam Elimelech of Lizhensk. One of five brothers, along with three sisters, Meilech has early memories of the Divrei Yoel ztz”l of Satmar.

“I sat on Reb Yoelish’s lap,” Kohn recalls. “He was my sandek, and when I was three years old I used to daven next to him. My father used to tell me, ‘Remember his face.’ I used to wonder, what does he mean? But I used to look and just stare at the Rebbe’s face. I can close my eyes and see it.”

The Kohn family’s musical roots extend back to the old country. In Nanash, Hungary, Kohn’s father was a meshorer in the choir of Reb Osher Wieder, patriarch of a family established in chazzanus, whose son was Cantor Yehoshua Wieder. Meilech’s father passed along his passion for singing to his sons, and the family’s Shabbos zemiros drew an appreciative audience of neighbors.

“My father and us five brothers used to love to sing together,” Meilech recounts. “He wouldn’t let us harmonize the first round of the song. If someone was off-key, he would cringe.”

Meilech in particular had a musical bent. He had an introverted, sensitive nature and would sing to himself and compose songs in his head. His dreaminess, unfortunately, did not endear him to his fellow students, or his teachers, once he started cheder.

“My life wasn’t easy there,” he admits. “I was like the korban in my class, I was the one the kids didn’t want to speak to. For a lot of years they wouldn’t stand in my daled amos.”

Ostracism often veered into emotional and physical abuse, from both students and melamdim; Kohn claims that when he came late to school, teachers would sometimes tell the other kids not to talk to him — sometimes they even spat on him. When he turned 13 he transferred to a different yeshivah, but when that didn’t work either, his parents sent him to learn in London, England. He ended up staying there for four years.

“Then, I never really went home,” he says. “I’ve kind of been on my own since I was 13.”

After finishing yeshivah in London, Kohn went to learn in Israel for a year — against the wishes of his parents. It was in Israel, he says, that he “first became nonreligious.” On the outside, he was still seemingly part of the fold, but inside, something had closed off. After Israel, he made his way home to Brooklyn. That Pesach he tried to start learning in yeshivah again, but that was short-lived.

“I remember coming late and the rosh yeshivah yelling at me, ‘Who knows if you even put on tefillin today?’” he recalls. “And I’d be like, whoa, I don’t need people yelling at me. Look, I came back to yeshivah, I’m trying. I’m still here.”

By Shavuos, Kohn had closed the door on yeshivah life. He traveled a bit, then came back to Brooklyn to live with some friends. They eventually all decided to move out of the neighborhood together, as Kohn says, because “we wanted to go — far.” Not long after that, the friends decided to split up, so that each could follow his own path.

All in the Recipe

Today, Meilech Kohn is able to be philosophical about the experiences of his youth. He recognizes that everything that happened to him was part of the “recipe” Hashem had arranged for his life. Still, he feels it’s important for people who suffer such trials to confront them openly and honestly.

“I tell my story, I lived through it, because it’s my life,” he says, “but I can’t be separate from it. To be separate from it is a lie. You know, be real with yourself.

“You put flour in water, and you still don’t have dough. You gotta knead it, you gotta work it. If you have sour milk, you don’t have butter, or cheese — you gotta work it. But when you work it, then you have it, and you don’t ever forget where it’s from.

“Sometimes I have to talk to myself as a seven-year-old kid. I think it’s important for kids who are going through these things to know, hey, the sun comes up — you can use this situation as an opportunity to have a more serious conversation with Hashem. Look at it as a direct channel, a special moment you have right now. Hashem has a perfect plan, He doesn’t make a mistake. Those moments you thought were dark, you can make them the brightest moments.”

Kohn stresses that he assigns no blame to his parents, and emphasizes that they never shut him out of their lives at any point during his years away from the fold, as painful as it was for them. They always made sure to maintain a connection.

“My parents never threw me out. Maybe I was afraid of being thrown out and I didn’t want to deal with it, and the easiest thing was to run away. But throughout the years, if I would ever drop in, on Purim or something, they never threw me out. We always had a very strong connection.

“My father, who was niftar in 2009, was a holy Jew, he was a Holocaust survivor. Out of his whole family, he returned with one brother. I don’t know how a person could carry on, coming from such a past. He was an extremely sensitive person, but he had to harden his shell, because of his experience. He tried to have an emotional wall around him and not let anyone in, but he was just a softie anyways, and I really miss him. My mother baruch Hashem is still alive. She was born in ‘43 and grew up in Hungary, so she also experienced the emotional fallout of the Holocaust.

“And it was the same for some of the older melamdim at cheder — some of them had also come from postwar Europe. Who had understanding there, or patience? Who was calm, cool, and collected?

“So, this is the result. The laundry is very, very wet, and takes a couple of spin cycles to dry out all the clothing — but in the end, it will smell beautiful.”

Nevertheless, he emphasizes, there is a lesson from his past he hopes today’s parents and educators will learn and apply, as least from his vantage point.

“The people yelling at me didn’t give me the chizuk to try to have a brighter day. They meant well… it’s just, like, there was this hammer and screwdriver. All I’m saying is, the hammer didn’t work.”

Three Strikes

Meilech basically entered young adulthood having to improvise a life plan. When asked about “striking out on his own,” Kohn ponders the question and dissects it.

“Striking out on my own,” he repeats. “Striking out. On my own. Gut gezugt.”

His sojourns took him across the entire breadth of the country several times. He started out in Los Angeles, where, as he puts it, “things didn’t work out.” An Israeli friend coaxed him to move to Georgia, but after stints in a sportswear store and training to repair computer system boards, he found himself back in Los Angeles. He was accepted to a music school there, but when he turned up for registration, he learned for the first time of the $3,500 fee, which he had no means of paying. Kohn was out on the streets.

When Kohn had first gone off the derech, he had picked up a guitar, but had little discipline about practicing. Unable to advance at a pace that satisfied him, he put the guitar aside — “I decided I’m not a talmid chacham, and I’m also not a guitar player” — but in doing so he found that music had lost its pleasure for him.

He became itinerant again, migrating between New York, Georgia, and again Los Angeles, before somehow making some “Italian connections.” He went to Puerto Rico, he says, “with some bad people.”

“Uncle Tony, Cousin Blackie, how you doin’,” reminisces Kohn, doing his best gangster accent. They referred to him as “Vinnie Pasta.” He concluded his assignment there soon after they watched a movie about a Jewish mob insider who runs crosswise with the bosses, and openly cheered for the Jewish character to be rubbed out.

He landed another job during this period with a Jewish-owned business in Texas. Unbeknownst to Kohn, the business was credit card fraud. A law enforcement raid rounded up the employees and Kohn found himself in a jail cell. The lawyer supplied to him — by the business — gave him a bad feeling. “He came and told me, ‘Well, we’ll find out on Friday how much time you’ll get.’”

A desperate phone call to a friend in New York turned up a reference to a local Jewish lawyer, who advised him to stay in a nearby hotel and wait for news. Two weeks later, the news came: Leave, go home.

“I left, I never looked back, and I never heard about it again,” Kohn says. “Hashem treated me with kid gloves.”

Working Overtime

Around 1996, after a few years of this lifestyle, Kohn made his way back to New York and bonded anew with his family. As with the previous times he “dropped in,” he was welcomed home with open arms. He had also reforged a connection with music. He recalls being in his parents’ house, playing guitar with his brother Moishe — a partner in music and “a good friend of mine.” He remembers that they were “doodling around,” perhaps playing a Yeedle Werdyger song. Their father — already not well — was in the room with them. He got up to leave, but at the door he paused and turned to Meilech and asked, “When are you coming out with a CD?”

In those days putting out a CD was much more of a major undertaking than it is now, both financially and technically. Meilech recalls being taken aback by his father’s interest. “Here I was, with long hair,” he quips. Nevertheless, he says, it was a moment whose significance seemed lost on him at the time, but he somehow knew things would become clear eventually. And clarity did finally come, although his father had already passed on to the Olam HaEmes.

“That was a moment I remember clearly, my brother remembers it,” says Meilech. “So now, after this first song, ‘V’nahafoch Hu,’ it started making sense to me — whoa, something’s happening here. My father’s working overtime.”

Not long after he returned to his family, he made another connection: He got married. His wife was Jewish, but from an assimilated family and had no desire for religious practice; still, during this period he did finally manage to settle down somewhat. He soon started taking cantorial positions in Reform and Conservative synagogues. His wife, meanwhile, worked as a graphic designer. The couple earned a decent enough living to able to afford a place in Brooklyn, and also upstate. There were no children, but Meilech’s progression in music continued apace.

“Music is what kept me sane,” he says now. “It was a way for me to express myself. When I was married I always had a few guitars, a keyboard around. I would record myself on cassettes, which now I don’t even know where they are. I’ve lost all my possessions a few times in my life.”

Even though life had taken on a slower, more settled pace, Meilech wasn’t calm.

“I was searching,” he says. “There was always unease. I always felt that deep inside, I’m different. When I was down South, I always knew. I always felt I don’t belong here.”

He began to make tentative moves toward religious practice, but didn’t really follow through. He made abortive attempts at keeping Shabbos and kashering the house. But his wife, who was Jewish but not from a religious background, could not go along. Meilech acquiesced — “I didn’t fight the fight” — but Torah observance would not leave his thoughts.

With the Current

In the end, the pull of teshuvah proved stronger than the bonds of his marriage. Although Kohn says they had always gotten along well, with no major conflicts, this decision now brought them to a crossroads. To come back to Yiddishkeit, Kohn had to turn his entire life upside down. Was there an epiphany that drove him to the fateful choice?

“I don’t have a zetz of a maiseh,” he says simply. “In terms of coming back, there was no one thing — I didn’t OD on any drugs, no malach showed himself to me… Ultimately, I wanted to swim with the current instead of against it, already.”

His divorce was final in around 2007, and after a couple of detours, Meilech began making preparations to return to Eretz Yisrael — and to the beis medrash. He joined a kollel in Jerusalem, and also formed a connection to Rav Elazar Mordechai Mentzer, a noted mekubal in Meah Shearim, becoming a frequent Shabbos guest.

He had been in Jerusalem for a while already when the inspiration struck for “V’nahafoch Hu.” He had come home from a shiur, not long before Purim, and wanted to make a joke: Let’s make a sad song from V’nahafoch hu. He came up with a slow blues-y tune, and his friends told him it sounded pretty good, so he recorded it. He sang it in the kollel the next day and then again that night at a shiur, where they sang it for a long time. Because it was a Purim song, ultimately it refused to be sung slowly. Encouragement from friends and a gathering momentum led him to a studio to record the song — Gershy Schwarcz worked his magic to bring out the final product — and it quickly found success.

Riding the coattails of “V’nahafoch Hu,” Meilech now felt inspired to approach Rav Mentzer with a request. “I went to him for a brachah to have more matanos like ‘V’nahafoch Hu.’

“Ahavas Yisrael is a very big inyan with him — Mashiach won’t come until we get along. He said, ‘You write a song about ahavas Yisrael, you’ll be matzliach.’ That was another one of those moments where I knew I would understand someday but not now.”

Rav Menzer advised Meilech to write lyrics with an ahavas Yisrael theme set to the Kaliver niggun “Galus, Galus.” Then, less than two years ago, Meilech was at a Tosh family simchah. Motzaei Shabbos, his brother Moishe had already gone to bed, in the room they shared; but sleep eluded Meilech.

“In my head I’m daydreaming that song [Galus, Galus] and I’m ripping a mean solo. And then the song ends, and my thought starts: ‘V’uhavtu,’ the way it sounds. And I thought, wow, this is good. Okay — tomorrow. No, no, no, I won’t remember.” This internal debate continued until he reached a compromise: “B’kitzur I had to get my phone. My brother was in the room, and I didn’t want to wake him. So I whispered it into the phone. I have it on this black phone right here.”

After he finalized the words and the melody, he brought it back to Gershy Schwarcz in the studio. They recognized the potential in the song, and recorded many versions trying to find the vehicle that would give it the right boost. The version they ultimately settled on left Meilech with a feeling of unease. He approached Rav Mentzer again, this time with his concerns about the song.

“ ‘V’uhavtu’ is not my style of music, the electronic pop,” says Meilech. “As a matter of fact, I called Rav Mentzer to tell him that the song is coming out, and in the process of making it, the music became very modern. He said, ‘You know, when you go to war, you want to make sure you know what arms your enemy has. Because if you come with sticks and your enemy has swords, you’re going to lose.’ That mamash made me embrace it. Now I get surprised by seeing the places where it’s played, the types of people who are dancing to it, but… it’s war. We have to win. We’re going to win.”

Every now and then Kohn sees a sign that a battle has been won on some front somewhere. Last week he was offered a ride, and when the person cleared off the passenger seat for him, he picked up the sefer Mishlei that lay there and told Kohn, “You’re the reason I’m learning.”

Menachem Toker offers his bird’s-eye industry perspective on Kohn’s potential role. “Because of his way of life, because he came from Satmar, and then he went down a bit and then he came back in his way — the youngsters today are always looking, fighting and looking, and someone like him who’s fought and has been searching and looking — he could be their model. This is not the generation of 20 years ago, when people went against music and against singers, like what happened with Shlomo Carlebach. This generation needs people like Meilech Kohn. Our generation, the youngsters today, need singers like him.”

Yeshivas Kochavei Ohr of Monsey posted a video online of a visit by Meilech Kohn last year. It’s a small chassidish yeshivah, for boys who don’t quite “fit in the box.” In the video Kohn briefly narrates the story of “V’uhavtu,” and then, accompanied by only a guitar (later joined by a keyboard) he begins a kumzitz rendition. The song is stripped to its bare essentials, perhaps closer to his original artistic vision. The bochurim are carried away on his first notes, their neshamos one, standing and swaying and locking arms with the staff, who have found a new tool to use when a hammer won’t work. And they all raise their voices in chorus with Meilech Kohn, singing their redemption song.

As we wind up our discussion, Mishpacha’s photographer Lior Mizrachi asks Kohn to lean forward a bit. “I need your face to be in the light.”

Meilech Kohn looks up from the guitar and smiles. “Me too.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 665)