Zusha’s Shlomo Gaisin and Zach Goldschmiedt have created an old-new mix of mantra-like songs that cut through factions and go straight to the heart of a post-modern generation

Photos: Naftoli Goldgrab

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f you’re looking for arty, hip Jewish food, clothing, and culture, Crown Heights is the place to be. So it’s totally fitting that there’s where I meet Shlomo Gaisin and Zachariah Goldschmiedt of the five-year-old band Zusha, over café au lait and croissants in the Brooklyn Artisan Bakehouse. Zusha’s fusion music, a conglomeration of many styles in search of spirituality, is both new and old, avant-garde and old-time shtetl. Shlomo and Zach took the name after 18th-century chassidic master Reb Zusha of Anipoli, known for his modesty and hakaras hatov to Hashem even as he lived in extreme poverty.

Zusha’s music videos show the two of them, often with original member percussionist Elisha Mlotek, riding subways (for the song “Mashiach,” whose words Ani maamin b’emunah sheleimah accompany a subway excursion, as they explain, since “we’re still riding trains, still moving and praying until the great day comes,”) driving speedboats, roaming deserts, walking city streets, singing in the Holy Land. The style is dreamy, soulful, yearning; the songs are often slow, with a reggae feel but high on Hashem. The musicians, though, are just as likely to employ folk, jazz, and classic niggun styles. Shlomo, the lead singer, has a somewhat hypnotic, gravelly yet magnetic voice with an expansive tone and range, but his meditative, experimental/improvisational style seems to aim for the greatest common denominator among a broad range of listeners. While he’s brimming with raw talent, he admits he never studied voice formally for more than a few weeks at a time.

“I tried out the chazzanus classes at Yeshiva University, but it was too intense,” he says. “There was an insane amount of exercises, and I wasn’t interested in being obsessed with voice to the exclusion of all other elements.”

Both men arrive at the Bakehouse attired in long frocks, beards, and long, swinging peyos, but the physical resemblance ends there: Zach is of medium height, slender and blond, with perspicacious blue eyes; Shlomo is at least six feet four, a jolly giant with dark hair and merry brown eyes (when they’re not closed in song). While both attended college — Shlomo majored in psychology at Yeshiva University, Zach in marketing and computer programming at New York University — their parnassah these days comes from performances and recordings. They’ve set up a small home studio in Zach’s shanah rishonah apartment, where they jam and put together ideas for a new generation of avid followers.

“The Zusha band has transformed the Carlebach/Breslov/neo-chassidic scene,” says music arranger Avremi G.

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 760)