Fifty years after Diaspora Yeshiva Band played the soundtrack for a generation of return

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Diaspora Yeshiva Band, the once-upon-a-time icon of the Diaspora Yeshiva that was founded by Rav Mordechai Goldstein at the height of the baal teshuvah movement after the Six Day War.

Part of that soundtrack of those times is the rhythm that reverberated off the stone courtyard adjoining King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion every Saturday night for a decade, from the mid-’70s through the mid-’80s. Of course, you didn’t have to be a musician to learn in Diaspora Yeshiva, but it certainly seemed that way to the masses who flocked to the band’s weekly concerts and purchased their six released albums.

Band leader Avraham Rosenblum’s journey to Yiddishkeit began in 1970, when he was a young, up-and-coming professional musician from Philadelphia. But a spontaneous trip to Israel with his mother changed it all — something Jewish woke up. After a short stint in a secular kibbutz, he found himself in Jerusalem’s Old City, and a fellow backpacker suggested he pop into Diaspora Yeshiva. From Rabbi Goldstein’s first “hello,” Rosenblum was hooked. Somehow, he knew it was the life he was destined for.

There were about 15 young professional-caliber musicians in the yeshivah at the time, and the band, cofounded by Rosenblum and Benzion Solomon, was launched in a 1975 Chanukah concert at the Jerusalem Beit Ha’am auditorium, while their famed Melaveh Malkah concerts took off in the summer of 1976, after the miraculous Entebbe rescue. They then released their first album, and in 1977, the group won first prize in the Chassidic Song Festival with “Hu Yiftach,” composed by Avraham Rosenblum and his friend, collaborator and brother-in-law Yosil Rosenzweig a”h (Avraham met and married Yosil’s sister Gracie in 1972, when she delivered him a package from “back home”). The following year, they again won first prize with the song “Malchuscha,” composed by Reuvain Sorotzkin.

Although many talented musicians played with the band in its early years, the Diaspora Yeshiva Band as we know it was whittled down to six musicians. The original members were Avraham Rosenblum, guitarist and lead vocalist, who composed many of their classics before returning to the US where he worked in kiruv and then became a Baltimore businessman; San Francisco-born Benzion Solomon, a disciple of Shlomo Carlebach who played guitar, violin, and banjo, and whose sons are well-known musicians and band leaders today; Rabbi Simcha Abramson, originally from White Plains, New York, who played clarinet and saxophone and was responsible for all the harmonies in the group, served as international tour coordinator, and is still a rebbi in Diaspora Yeshiva today; Gedalia Goldstein, from Long Beach, NY, who wound up at Har Tzion after a providential meeting at the Kosel with Rabbi Meir Schuster, today a Lubavitcher chassid living in Bnei Brak, and probably the best drummer I’ve ever seen play; Ruby Harris, from Great Neck, NY, famed for his violin, mandolin, and harmonica, and still playing beautiful music today in Chicago; and Menachem Herman, originally from Winnipeg, who joined the yeshivah after hearing the group on one of their US tours, and is today the singing guitarist of his own orchestra and a Breslover chassid.

Other musicians who played with Diaspora over the years include Rabbi Moshe Shur, who, for the last 40 years, has been director of the Queens College Hillel. He’s written many famous songs, including Diaspora’s “Ivdu Es Hashem B’Simcha” and “Hofachta”; Chaim Dovid Saracik, who came to Diaspora Yeshiva in 1975 from South Africa, still lives in the Old City, and performs all over, having released 11 albums over the years; and Rabbi Shimon Green, who today is a rosh yeshivah at Bircas HaTorah in Yerushalayim.

After years of touring and recording, in the mid-1980s the Diaspora band members all went their separate ways — until 1992, when I received a call from Avraham Rosenblum: He wanted to get the group together again, not full-time, but for nostalgia’s sake. Meanwhile, I’d been approached by Shoroshim, who organized concerts to help support Russian Jewry. As soon as I mentioned the idea of a reunion for Diaspora, they grabbed it. It was almost a decade later, but I had underestimated how popular they still were.

I booked Carnegie Hall and we scheduled a concert entitled “Diaspora, The Reunion.” When the concert began, emcee Nachum Segal introduced them with “Ladies and Gentlemen, the long-awaited reunion of the Diaspora Yeshiva Band!” The audience went wild. In all my years of doing concerts, I generally remain backstage in case of some emergency, but for this event, I took a seat in the front row just to soak up the electric atmosphere. Even Rosh Yeshivah Rabbi Goldstein a”h came from Israel for the show, and brought along a special guest who sat next to him the entire night. I couldn’t see who the guest was until both of them went on stage at the end — and it was none other than Shlomo Carlebach, shepping nachas from some of his own former proteges.

In 2014, I had the privilege of once again reuniting them for HASC 27. During the concert, an anonymous person approached me backstage and said, “If you get them to sing ‘Ivdu’ tonight, I’ll donate a $300,000 bunkhouse to Camp HASC.” I looked over at Avraham Rosenblum, who was pumped for the challenge, so we decided to go for it. They went out there without the benefit of a rehearsal, joined spontaneously by Avraham Fried, Benny Friedman, and 8th Day — and the song brought the house down that night.

And now, 50 years after the beginning of those magical Saturday nights at King David’s Tomb, it’s still fascinating to notice how valuable and inspirational the group was to an emerging awakening of Klal Yisrael. That was the music that accompanied the glory days of the baal teshuvah movement, when young people were discovering the neshamah within. Today, though, it’s a different era — those young people are now parents and grandparents, staunchly committed, while many children are struggling. Maybe that’s why, half a century later, the music is still alive and inspiring as ever.

Personally, I’m looking forward to another reunion, be it in Carnegie Hall, or even better, in Yerushalayim.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1103)