Photos: Eli Cobin, Abbie Sofia

An audience sits rapt in a darkened venue in Jerusalem as a guitar sounds plaintive notes that wind into chords. The crowd — men in knitted kippot, as well as black yarmulkes, fedoras, and some shtreimlach too — starts swaying as the chords build on each other and the melody takes a familiar shape. As the audience rises in one voice to take hold of it, the band picks up the cue and Shlomo Katz begins the lyrics, while everyone instinctively grabs his neighbors’ hands and joins the dance…

A wedding in New York. Soft music wafts across the hall as the guests mill about in anticipation. A murmur builds and then a sudden crescendo from the band alerts the crowd to the entrance of the chassan and kallah. Eitan Katz steps up to the microphone and begins belting out a leibedig niggun, as the communal emotion that has been seeking an outlet finally spills over. And soon Eitan himself, guitar in hand, steps off the stage and joins the dancing…

Brothers Shlomo and Eitan Katz have been inspiring audiences for nearly two decades. Since they went public with their debut album, Eilecha, in 1999, they’ve been inviting listeners to join them on the soul journey that beckoned to them through the fusion of music and Torah. It’s a journey that has taken them to opposites ends of the world — Shlomo in Efrat, Israel, and Eitan in Far Rockaway, New York. They have settled into different communities and have each adopted individual styles — but anyone listening can hear they are really engaged in one shared avodah.

The brothers’ melodies — “Yismechu,” “L’maancha,” among others, and their well-known versions of Shlomo Carlebach niggunim — have by now established a certain familiar place in the collective Jewish music consciousness. Their spare arrangements, pure voices projecting above rich guitar chords with minimal instrumental accompaniment, hearken back to the era when the forebears of the chassidic movement began revealing the potential that emanates from the Heichal Haneginah. And just as those tzaddikim sought to unlock that storehouse in the hopes of accessing higher worlds, Shlomo and Eitan Katz have segued from the stage to the song of Torah.

“This generation is desperately in need of shirim kedoshim, of neginah with kedushah,” says Rav Moshe Weinberger, rav of Congregation Aish Kodesh in Woodmere, New York, world-renowned teacher of chassidus, and spiritual mentor to the Katz family. “Dovid Hamelech said, ‘Ani tefillah.’ He didn’t say, ‘I am davening.’ He said, ‘I am tefillah.’ His every word, his every action, was the embodiment of what it means to turn to Hashem. Even when he wasn’t davening, his existence was a statement of seeking Hashem.

“So with Shlomo and Eitan, it’s not just that they compose songs, that they have beautiful voices, that they’re talented. They themselves are the songs. They themselves are the music, expressing their excitement about being Jews, their love of Torah, their love of Am Yisrael. It’s not about entertainment, it’s an outpouring of their own avodas Hashem.”

The brothers themselves make clear that this is their overriding motivation. “At a certain point, you look at things Hashem gave you, you have to just make a conscious decision and say, Hashem, use me,” says Shlomo, who is also the rav of Kehillat Shirat David in Efrat, Israel. “Whether it’s through music, whether it’s through teaching, the point is that being a Jew today who feels close to HaKadosh Baruch Hu is really possible for all of us. And anything I can do to help make that a reality for others is the greatest gift I could ever receive from Hashem. It’s my anchor.”

Eitan Katz reflects on the demands and conflicts involved in performing — and the only sure remedy he’s found.

“There’s a certain risk when you perform onstage,” says Eitan, a kollel yungerman in Far Rockaway, New York. “You project a certain persona, and people form an image in their minds based on how they perceive that persona. But that image is not necessarily shayach to the reality, to who you really are, in any way, shape, or form. On the other hand, producing music can create a genuine connection with people, with positive results, genuine feedback. But you have to go in with the right intentions.

“So that’s why you’ve got to be learning Torah. If you’re not learning, you’ll lose focus, you might not go in with the right kavanah.”

A Piano in Every Home

Shlomo and Eitan Katz entered this world, respectively, in 1980 and 1982, in Englewood, New Jersey. Their father, Avshalom Katz, is a well-known, highly regarded chazzan born in Buenos Aires, whose mother had jumped off a train on its way to Auschwitz. Reb Avshalom made aliyah on his own in 1962, at the age of 14, went through high school and the army in Israel, and then arrived in America. Their mother, Sharon Katz (nיe Warshaviak), is a direct descendant of the Chiddushei HaRim of Gur, whose family emigrated to Passaic, New Jersey, before World War II; her father helped found the Young Israel of Passaic-Clifton.

The Katz brothers have two sisters: Mrs. Tali Weiss, currently in Binghamton, New York, where she and her husband do kiruv on campus; and Mrs. Michal Reinetz, who lives with her family in Efrat, just around the corner from her brother Shlomo.

The family moved often when the children were young, due mainly to the itinerant nature of the chazzanus trade — although, as Shlomo recalls, “there was always a piano in every home we ever lived in.” Singing as a family, whether at the Shabbos table or gathered around the piano, figured heavily in the children’s upbringing.

In 1983 the family left New Jersey for Los Angeles, California. They stayed there until 1989, when they made aliyah to Ra’anana, Israel — for which Shlomo says their mother was the prime mover: “Her love for Eretz Yisrael is what I think brought the family back home.”

The Katz children thrived in Eretz Yisrael; Shlomo says growing up in Israel from age nine to sixteen “had such an impact on every part of me.” One lasting influence to come out of it was his and Eitan’s introduction to the music of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach — although it came about from an unusual source.

When Shlomo was in high school in Ra’anana, a baal teshuvah child of divorced parents named Ido transferred into his class — at a time when both divorce and teshuvah were rare there. Ido liked to stay inside at recess, fixated on his Sony Walkman.

“I’m always intrigued by people who do things differently,” Shlomo admits, and so he approached Ido and cajoled him to join the other boys playing ball outside. Ido demurred and put his headphones back on — but then offered them to Shlomo in response to his inquisitiveness.

“He put the headphones on me,” Shlomo recounts. “It was Reb Shlomo singing ‘Ufros Aleinu Succas Shlomecha.’ I felt like a king was singing with a king’s orchestra, praising the King of Kings. I knew at that moment that this was my derech for the rest of my life.”

Exile and Return

The Katzes’ idyllic youth in the Holy Land came to an end when a job offer from Congregation Beth Jacob in Beverly Hills drew Cantor Katz to move his family back to Los Angeles in 1997. The change of scenery made for a rough transition.

“It was very hard to relate to anyone my age there,” recounts Shlomo of the return to California. “I was just relating to older baalei teshuvah who were very much influenced by Reb Shlomo and the chassidic movement. In the beginning it was painful to be such an outsider, but it became clear to me at a young age — your calling is just different. You can’t try to make it work the way it should work, you have to really be mevutal to something else that Hashem has in store for you.”

One of those things was music. The two boys shared a room and often sang together. Soon they began collaborating on songs.

“I’d have part of a song, he’d finish it,” Shlomo remembers. “He’d have part of a song, I would complete it.”

“I was singing in choirs since I was a little kid,” says Eitan. “I picked up the guitar when I was 16 — mainly because my brother did. And for me, the guitar was the tool that opened up the ability to compose niggunim.”

Eitan in fact wrote his first niggun at age 16. A rivulet had been opened that would eventually become a rushing current.

Both brothers nurtured a keen desire to try to return to Eretz Yisrael. As it happened, younger brother Eitan would be the first one to go back; after finishing high school, he spent two years learning in Yeshivat HaKotel. Shlomo’s return was more protracted. At age 18, he became assistant chaplain at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, visiting the newly admitted Jewish patients with his guitar and conversations about Torah. He would even earn a degree in clinical pastoral education, which, he says, “prepared me for a lot of big moments that were coming.”

Meanwhile, the brothers’ musical collaboration proceeded apace and finally bore fruit. Under the guidance of their father, the brothers soon produced their first disc, Eilecha. Shlomo was 19, Eitan was 17. The family never went all out in promoting the album, but somehow, says Shlomo, the songs “just got out there.” Two years later, after Eitan returned to the US, the brothers put out a second album, Biglal Avos — this time on their own, which Eitan describes now as “a very good idea.” (Fun fact: the violinist on that disc was future conservative commentator Ben Shapiro.)

But at 22, Shlomo came to the realization that he wanted to be one of the “new kind of rabbis” that Shlomo Carlebach had called for, and for that, he would need to earn semichah. He finally returned to Eretz Yisrael and found Yeshivat Hamivtar in Efrat, under Rabbi Chaim Brovender. And as he embarked on this stage of his life, thoughts of performing in public were the furthest thing from his mind.

“My father even had to convince me to bring my guitar with me,” he says. “Because I never, ever thought I’d be a musician. It was never a passion. I thought I was going to be a rabbi who plays some niggunim.”

It seemed that destiny, in a sense, preceded him. One night as he was sitting in yeshivah in Efrat, the Arutz Sheva radio station called for him, wanting to interview him about the albums he had made with his brother. Shlomo agreed, but after the call, the magnitude of it hit him like a ton of bricks.

“I hung up the phone,” he says now, “and I started crying, and I said, ‘Ribbono shel Olam, if You want this, I’ll do it.’ And that was the beginning.”

Always Making Aliyah

Since then, the brothers’ paths have diverged somewhat. Eitan returned to the States after his years in Yeshivat HaKotel and went to learn in the Yeshiva of Greater Washington in Silver Spring, Maryland, headed by well-known rosh yeshivah Rav Ahron Lopianksy. Under Rav Lopiansky’s tutelage, Eitan decided to make Torah learning the focal point of his life and his future. He learned there for four years, during which time he got married (he and his wife Malki recently celebrated the birth of their sixth child, bli ayin hara). Eitan has also sought Rav Lopiansky’s guidance on questions pertaining to his musical career.

“I once asked him an eitzah about playing in a certain venue,” Eitan says. “He said that while there were bona fide heters for me to do what I needed to do, it was most important never to do something I felt was the wrong thing. He told me, ‘Always hold on to that place of relentlessly pursuing the emes.’ ”

After Silver Spring, Eitan and his family briefly moved to New York, then spent a year in Israel, where he learned at Yeshivas Mir. He says now that although his time at the Mir was short, he considers it the “most meaningful” period in his life.

“I had learned only in small yeshivos up to that point, and at the thought of going to the Mir, I was overwhelmed by the size,” he says. “But I found there the world my neshamah was looking for. The levels of limud Torah and the atmosphere in general are an experience I can only thank HaKadosh Baruch Hu for allowing me to taste, even for only such a short time.”

Following his year at the Mir, Eitan and his family then returned to the States, to learn at Yeshivas Sh’or Yoshuv in Far Rockaway, where they still live today.

Shlomo, on the other hand, has remained in Eretz Yisrael. He received his rabbinic ordination in 2006 and began teaching Torah and chassidus at several yeshivos in Gush Etzion and Jerusalem. In 2008 he married Bina; they now have four daughters, kein ayin hara, ranging in age from one to eight.

“I’ve played music and taught Torah on every continent, except maybe Antarctica,” Shlomo reflects, “but none of it feels as exciting as one niggun at the Shabbos table with my daughters, or one question they might have about Hashem.”

Two years ago Shlomo became the rav of Shirat David in Efrat, a shul of about 70 families that he describes as “a beautiful kehillah of mevakshim.” The community is made up mainly of Anglo olim in their mid-thirties to mid-forties, who want to “keep making aliyah,” in Shlomo’s words. They are a mixture of baalei teshuvah and frum-from-birth, and come from all over North America: Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Los Angeles, Montreal, New York, Texas, and Toronto.

“There’s just a lot of learning going on,” Shlomo enthuses. “There are a lot of niggunim, too, but we have learning for men and women every single day. We also bring in rabbanim from outside to give shiurim. It’s very active like that.

“What’s so amazing is that the ones who are frum from birth are under no illusion that they’re not also becoming baalei teshuvah, in a very real way. There’s no attitude of, ‘Well, I grew up frum, so I know…’ It used to be like that, but in today’s dor, everyone is, at a certain level, starting from scratch.”

Confronting Success

The brothers have each put out a number of solo albums — Eitan’s include L’maancha, Eitan Katz Unplugged (covering Reb Shlomo’s niggunim), Boruch Hu, Unplugged 2, Shuvu, Live in Jerusalem, and Pure Simcha; Shlomo’s include VeHaKohanim, Malei Olam, Likrat Shabbat, and Yismach Melech. They still perform together at least a couple of times a year. And since those first two discs came out nearly twenty years ago, their following has burgeoned — forcing them to confront the reality of commercial success.

“When I moved back home to Eretz Yisrael, a few niggunim came down,” Shlomo says. “And those were the ones that really went out strong back then, and I realized that this is bigger than me. People were recording my niggunim before I even had a chance to record them. I’m not going to say names, because it was a bit uncomfortable, but I couldn’t believe it — give me a chance to record my own niggunim, at least. And they’d say things like, ‘What do you mean? People are begging me all the time to record this.’ Yeah, but to me, this isn’t a meat market. These niggunim are such intimate messages from Hashem. It took me a while to realize that not everyone relates to it like that, because that idea comes with a price — but I try never ever to lose sight of it.”

“It’s a hard call,” agrees Eitan. “It’s the struggle of all struggles.”

He pauses a moment, then tells a well-known story about the Satmar Rebbe at a wedding. The badchan knew how to imitate the Satmar Rebbe very well, but refrained from doing so when he saw the Rebbe in attendance. The Rebbe insisted the badchan must do whatever would be mesameiach the chassan and kallah. The badchan proceeded with his imitation, to the delight of everyone there. Almost everyone — the badchan happened to see the Satmar Rebbe crying at one point. Later the Rebbe told the badchan, “As I watched you, I realized that I also imitate the Satmar Rebbe.” Eitan brings it back to his situation.

“When a person is singing ‘L’maancha’ at a chuppah, and it’s very inspiring and very deep — the next night, people want to see that again,” he explains. “How do you grab all that? What if it’s not as big and as good and as solid as the night before? Okay, so you finagle it around and you make it sound like it. You know how to put on a show. But that’s already a chisaron in its purity.

“The key is you can’t drive yourself crazy, you can’t lose your brain over it. You continue to be connected to the right people, to do what you can do to bring people closer to Hashem — yourself, and your family, and your community. That’s what you can do.”

Receiving the Niggun

For both brothers, music provided a gateway into Torah and chassidus; now Torah and chassidus provide them the balance for avoiding the pitfalls of performing and producing for audiences. This allows them to pay it forward — so that their music can provide the same gateway for their listeners. Both brothers credit Shlomo Carlebach for the initial hook, but also find inspiration in other sources, notably Chabad.

“There are certain niggunim of Reb Shlomo that move me deeply, all it takes is a couple of notes and I’m there,” Eitan says. “And so do niggunim of Chabad, although the two are very different. Chabad niggunim are harsh, intense — a shter-your-kishkes-with-no-warning type of attitude in the niggunim. Reb Shlomo’s niggunim are softer — you have just a couple of kneitshes here, a couple of notes… The two styles work in such different ways but they have undeniable power.”

“Something about Chabad niggunim puts me into some place of hisbonenus and avodas Hashem that nothing else can do,” says Shlomo. “The Alter Rebbe — some of his niggunim… It doesn’t matter where you’re holding — you hear it, and everything stops, and the Rebbe takes you to that zone.”

Recognizing the power inherent in music also brings an appreciation that it must be handled carefully.

“Music has been a big tool, and that’s why I never have any plans of abandoning it,” says Shlomo. “I’m very thankful. But Heichal Haneginah is a very delicate heichal to go into. It’s not this place where you say, you know, let’s jam and see what happens. To bring down a niggun — it’s a place of yirah va’fachad. It’s like gilu u’rada. You don’t write niggunim — you receive them.”

The Katzes agree that Jewish music today is giving expression to a modern thirst for chassidus. Shlomo sees it in the people coming to his shiurim, whether at his shul or in other settings; Eitan sees it in the beis medrash.

“We’re just scraping the surface, I really believe that,” says Shlomo. “It used to be that the avodah was yafutzu mayenosecha chutzah [Mishlei 5:16 — your springs will stream outwards]. It was about spreading out. But it seems like the hisorerus of today is yafutzu mayenoseinu penimah.

“Okay, so the world knows there was a Baal Shem. The world knows Reb Nachman existed,” he goes on to explain. “But if we could take one Torah of the Baal Shem and truly make it into what leads our day, and daven over it, and cry over it, that’s what seems to be the direction of the avodah in this day and age.”

“Even though my brother and I went on different parts of the path,” says Eitan, “it’s still really all part of the same path. I ended up going to yeshivah in America, with more of a tremendous focus on learning Gemara … the beauty of the shakla v’tarya of Gemara, the beauty of the flow, of the whole tumult to understand what the devar Hashem is in the Torah He gave us… it blew me away.

“You know, you see so many people who hate learning. They can study the stock market b’iyun for two days straight, but to sit for ten minutes and learn, they feel like they can’t. But it’s not that they can’t do it. If a person doesn’t understand the power and potential of his own neshamah, then of course he won’t feel fulfillment in learning. But if he spends his time properly in davening, and he makes time also to learn chassidus and mussar, he’ll come to realize that the same tears a person sheds while he sings a deep niggun, or when he’s standing in tefillah, those same tears can be shed when learning a piece of Gemara, or understanding a machlokes between Rava and Abaye.”

Music Lessons

Having spent their entire adult lives bringing niggunim before audiences, Shlomo and Eitan Katz have gathered ample experience to apply in their current roles. Shlomo carries all the responsibilities of the rav of a kehillah, as well as conducting shiurim daily for his members. Eitan has assembled a group of musicians that has become one of the most sought-after simchah bands in the Tristate area. Besides that, he travels to Jewish communities around the country to conduct shabbatonim centered around niggunim, elevated tefillah, and divrei Torah, usually topped off with a Melaveh Malkah performance. He is also hard at work on his next album, titled Ashrecha, a collection of brand-new niggunim that he hopes to release in the next couple of months.

A recent shiur in Tanya at Shirat David found Rav Shlomo presenting the material, guiding the discussion, and seemingly anticipating who was going to ask what question, when. The questions rained down, coming from every participant — yet there was a certain respect in each question for the others, and each seemed to flow seamlessly to the next.

“It’s almost like with music — it’s a rhythm,” Shlomo says. “It’s almost like you’re strumming a chord. What makes a chord perfect is that every string is playing a different note — each string gives harmony to the next one. It’s the same when we’re learning together. The greatest joy of learning is when there are a bunch of questions, because they’re all giving harmony to each other.”

For the past five years, Eitan has been bringing harmony to the White Shul in Far Rockaway, leading a nusach Sefard minyan there that he helped organize. Incorporating singing and dancing — “not just fun, but the real deal, a serious davening for bnei Torah,” Eitan says — the minyan now draws 100 mispallelim every week. Eitan’s wedding band is all about hitting all the right notes, as well.

“Nobody in the band is trying to stand out, including myself,” he says. “Our focus is to play niggunim the whole night, not to put on a show. Of course you want to have a good time, have a beautiful chuppah and arrangements — which, baruch Hashem, we’ve had plenty of. But everyone who leaves our weddings sees the focus is not on trying to entertain and just look great. It’s really about making simchah.”

He also hopes to dash some preconceptions people have about what simchah is and what a wedding band can accomplish.

“People think that hartzig music is just slow music,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be slow — it can be fast and hartzig. It just means that it comes from the heart. I’ve seen people who are dancing up a storm and have tears streaming out of their eyes.”

The Katz brothers are both grateful for the guidance and advice they have received over the years from Rav Moshe Weinberger, attributing a large share of their success to him. Eitan has had the opportunity to work closely with Rav Weinberger over the last 11 years, serving as baal tefillah during many a Yamim Noraim.

“All the niggunim and all the music and all the good, positive things that can come from neginah wouldn’t happen if I didn’t have a rebbi holding down the Torah fort in front, being mashpia together with the niggunim like that,” says Eitan, who sees Rav Weinberger at least once a week. “He really gets me — you know, music and neginah and hashpa’ah — like no one else.”

Shlomo still recalls his first meeting with Rav Weinberger, back on Erev Pesach 2003. Shlomo had been regularly ordering tapes of Rav Weinberger’s shiurim on the Izhbitzer Rebbe from Aish Kodesh, when the shul contacted him about opening a show for Chaim Dovid Saracik. Shlomo readily agreed and flew in from Israel. His plane landed at Newark at 5 a.m., and the shul president was there to pick him up. He advised Shlomo that if they hurried, they could still catch the end of Rav Weinberger’s daily Piaseczna shiur.

“I’m thinking there are probably four schleppers in the room at that hour, hippies or something over there hanging out,” Shlomo recounts. “We open the door at 6:30 a.m. — the place is packed. Bochurim, all ages… Anyway, afterward, they brought me to the front. It was like I met someone that I knew for many, many years.”

Rav Weinberger remembers that meeting too. “It was like meeting up with an old friend. Sometimes it takes a long time till you become old friends, sometimes you become an old friend right away. Shlomo and I became old friends immediately.”

For Shlomo and Eitan Katz, Rav Weinberger says, that was one impetus for teaching Torah through neginah, giving HaKadosh Baruch Hu over to the generation with niggunim.

Eitan says he finds, in particular, that the interplay between Torah and music is a direct relationship. “The gigs are good when the learning is good,” he declares. “When you feel disconnected from that Source, you can play the same tunes you played the night before, but it’s not the real package.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 711)