With the release of his new album, Shmueli Ungar gives his listeners the most important lesson of all — to “mach a brachah” of thanks

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here are two kinds of smilers: the ones who wake up expecting a sunny day, beaming in anticipation of all the good things coming their way, and those whose smile is borne of the toil in finding that lone ray of sunshine on a cloudy day.

One smile comes naturally, while the other is a choice.

And Shmueli Ungar’s smile is both.

Shmueli (pronounced Shmili) is a smiler and a laugher and an embracer. He has also, in his relatively young life, endured the loss of his beloved father, the death of the grandfather who stepped in to raise him, and a divorce.

The two tracks — blessed optimist and determined warrior — meet in his music. He can cry out to the Rachamana d’ani lisvirei liba, the Merciful One who answers the pleas of the brokenhearted, but also exult and urge listeners to “mach a brachah.” Life is good. Even for those with broken hearts.

Shmueli’s story starts with his mother — and her music.

“I grew up in Monroe, in Kiryat Joel, but the music we played was different than most of the neighbors. My mother was raised in Melbourne, Australia, in a very musical environment, and to her, music wasn’t just noise to fill the house, it was art. She was very specific about what we could listen to.”

Little Shmueli came home from cheder one day eager for her to purchase a popular new album. “All the boys were talking about the songs, so I wanted it too. I asked her to buy it and she said ‘no.’ I was surprised. ‘Why not?’ I asked her. She looked at me. ‘Because it’s not good music, that’s why.’”

Mrs. Ungar would play Miami Boys Choir for her children — and point out the complexity of the harmonies. “I’m not sure how many homes in Monroe played JM in the AM every morning, but we did and she made sure we appreciated good music.

“I was a heavy kid,” Shmueli stops suddenly and shrugs. “Fat — why use other words? I know, looking at me now you can’t imagine it, right?” He winks. “But my mother always told me I was a star. When I sang, I believed it.”

Weight issues notwithstanding, it was a relatively happy childhood — until a few months before Shmueli’s bar mitzvah, when his father got sick.

It was a painful time. After being diagnosed with a serious illness, Reb Yaakov Aryeh Ungar was moved to the hospital and was often there for long periods of time.

“After a few months in the hospital, they let him come home for a few weeks,” Shmueli remembers. “Then he had to go back. I remember one of those nights when he was home; I was supposed to be sleeping but he came into my room and kissed me on the forehead — it was very unlike him, he didn’t generally kiss us. I felt that kiss. I still feel it.”  

About a year after his bar mitzvah, Shmueli was standing by his seat in the Satmar yeshivah after davening. “I always liked to say the additional tefillos in the siddur after davening, the Thirteen Ikarim and Iggeres HaRamban. I was just standing there, minding my own business, when someone came in and tapped me on the shoulder.”

The older man, a Satmar askan, looked serious. “Come with me,” he said, “let’s go visit your father, Shmueli, but first switch your reckel for a chalat; it’s a hot day.” Later, Shmueli would understand that the switch in attire wasn’t due to climate, but because the polyester chalat is cheaper than the woolen reckel, and the askan understood that the boy would be tearing kri’ah later that day.

“I don’t know if I was oblivious or if I chose to be oblivious, but I sat quietly on the way to the hospital. When we arrived, my father was still alive: he was sleeping, and I remember leaning over to kiss his forehead, just as he’d done to mine before leaving home for the last time.”

It was a small family — four children, no father.

“My mother did her best to keep our spirits up, but something basic had been torn away from us. I think music became even more a part of my life after I was orphaned. I remember hearing a new song, ‘Aneni,’ from Sruly Ginsberg and I felt this thirst — I thought, I want to sing, I want to speak to Hashem this way.”

When Shmueli Ungar needed it most, someone came in to his life to pick up his pieces.

His zeide, Reb Binyomin Ungar, wasn’t young, but he was tough. “He was a fighter. He didn’t have much patience for sitting around and feeling bad for himself, even though he’d lost his son. He was born in Hungary just after the war, and absorbed a culture of rebuilding wherever he’d gone. First he’d lived in Eretz Yisrael, in Komemiyus, and then he learned by Rav Michoel Ber Weissmandel, in Mount Kisco. He’d seen survivors and he was indomitable — and determined to teach me how to survive as well.”

Over the next few years, Shmueli would need that message.

“I was very heavy, the type that I couldn’t close my reckel, and yeshivah was not without struggles. I left to learn in London, then came back. My father’s brother, my Uncle Dudi, also helped me stay strong — we would learn Mishnayos together for my father’s neshamah. That meant a lot to me. Music and my family, that’s who was there for me.”

When he was 17, Shmueli returned to the Satmar yeshivah in Monroe, but the transition wasn’t as smooth as he would have hoped, and so he was sent to Monsey, to learn under Rav Chaim Leibish Rottenberg, the Rebbe of Forshay.

“That was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I finally had a rebbe. The Rebbe took my hand and never let go.”

Shmueli’s older sister got engaged and the Zeide, Reb Binyomin, made a decision.

“Shmiel Duvid will sing at the chasunah.”

The grandson had a demand of his own: “Fine, Zeide, but then I need musical equipment; if I’m singing before a crowd I need my own sound system and I need some voice lessons.”

The sharp old man had the last word. “Okay, but if I’m paying for your lessons and your equipment, then I’m the producer. That means I’m a partner in all the jobs you’ll do after people hear you sing at the chasunah.”

Shmueli sang at the wedding, and just as the Zeide foretold, the crowd took notice of the young man with the hint of a brave smile in his voice.

Shmueli started to sing at small events, and he had a willing driver: The Zeide would drive him to and from those early gigs, the producer overseeing every detail.

Yoily Polatsek of the Zemiros Choir remembers hearing Shmueli sing. “His voice was just so fresh, clear as running water. On the spot, I asked him to join our choir, and he was shocked. He didn’t see himself as particularly gifted.”

Even as the jobs piled up, Shmueli kept his end of the deal, splitting the take after each gig, half to the Zeide and half for him.

Soon after he started singing, Shmueli became a chassan. Just before his wedding, the Zeide called him over. “Shmiel Duvid,” Reb Binyomin said, “we made a deal, half the money for me, and half for you. Here’s my half.” The old man handed a thick envelope to his orphaned grandson. “Use it to set up your own home.”

“That was typical of him,” Shmueli reflects. “He was tough enough to demand his share, and generous enough to make sure it found its way back to me once I’d kept my end of the deal.”

At Shmueli Ungar’s chasunah, people were genuinely happy. He’d endured a few early blows, but the young man was putting his life together now. With a wife at his side, he was ready to take off.

Except that, once again, things appeared to veer off course for Shmueli Ungar.

One of the adjectives used to describe Ungar’s singing voice is “honest.”

“There’s something about Shmueli singing that makes you feel like he’s performing just for you, like he’s letting you in a secret. His voice, like him, is refreshingly straightforward,” says Sruly Meyer, director of marketing for Schnitzler Productions.

I get to see the honesty first-hand.

It’s the middle of the night — Shmueli has just completed a gig, and he’s clearly exhausted — but there’s intensity and force to what comes next.

“Getting divorced was devastating. I finally had a real home of my own, and I lost it less than two months after the chasunah. But the lessons I learned are what gave that whole difficult period meaning.”

He closes his eyes for a moment, and then he’s ready to talk.

“First of all, divorce is a horrible experience, no matter what. There’s no comfort when people tell you, ‘Oh, at least there were no children.’ It didn’t help me to hear that.

“Second of all, a person needs a rebbe — not after they’re in a rough place, but before. They need to have the relationship before they fall, and then the rebbe can be there to hold them up. My rebbe, Rav Chaim Leibish, saved me, he took care of me like a father and mother and friend.

“And finally — and this is a lesson that changed me as a person — we have no idea what the plan is or how things work. When my marriage collapsed, I was sure that my career was over as well. Who wants to hire a divorced wedding singer?”

He credits his producer, Naftali Schnitzler, with pushing him through that difficult time. “He’d come into my life not long before that, when my zeide and I realized it was time for a real producer. Naftali gave me confidence, he gave me dreams, and carried me through that whole period. ‘You have to do your thing, and Hashem sends the parnassah,’ he would tell me. ‘You keep singing and He’ll decide if people want to hear you or not, whether or not you have chein by them. You can’t give up.’”

So at a most improbable time, Shmueli Ungar went from being just another wedding singer to a star. “One day I was doing small gigs at lower-end weddings when suddenly, there were booking piling up at upscale weddings — they wanted the divorced guy!”

Which brought a whole new type of pain. “I would sit in the car after investing myself totally in a wedding and I would cry, ‘Hakadosh Boruch Hu, when will I be that happy chassan?’ It was a very lonely time.

“I started to realize that often, divorced people hang out together, it makes sense. I get it. You want people who understand you, who can relate to what you’re going through. But for me, I felt it was pulling me down, bringing me into an unhappy zone, and I didn’t want that to happen.”

And so the stage, evening after evening, became Shmueli Ungar’s place.

“I tried to give myself over, one hundred percent, to the event, to leave everything else outside in the parking lot and just rejoice with the new young couple.”

The extra effort paid off. “Shmueli Ungar redefined what it means to be a wedding singer,” says a veteran band leader. “He really gave it his all.”

Because he had no other choice.

My second meeting with Shmueli takes place at his new Monsey home. This is important to him, that we see the new life he’s built. He and his wife, Mrs. Yiddes Ungar, are just days after their first anniversary.

“We just ended shanah rishonah, but we’re still smiling,” she says. “We’re both so happy to have found each other.”

Shmueli’s debut album, released two years ago, was called Shmueli 2. Some saw it as a cute marketing gimmick. “But one of my friends jokes that I called it Shmueli 2 because I know better than most people that sometimes it takes two tries to get it right, so two is really one.”

Shmueli’s new wife laughs delightedly, even though it’s obvious she’s heard the joke a hundred times.

Over the last year, Shmueli has been able to up his game, because, as he says, “Now I’m not just committed to doing it right, I’m also really happy. Finally. Baruch Hashem.”

There was a time when Shmueli kept a chart on the wall of his bedroom listing the halls in which he’d appeared. “I was so proud, Ateres Chaya, Ateres Charna, the Continental… My sister would tell me, ‘One day Shmueli, you won’t be checking off halls but countries.’ Now, baruch Hashem, there are bookings all over.”

Shmueli has enjoyed astonishing success in Eretz Yisrael, appearing alongside Mordechai ben David at sold-out concerts. I ask Israeli radio host Menachem Toker about Shmueli’s popularity: What does an American, chassidishe singer who speaks lousy Hebrew bring?

“First of all,” says Toker, “his producers aren’t scared to market him, they clearly believe he’s a star, and also, he’s got personality, he’s young, his sound is young, his arrangements are young… there’s an undeniable appeal there.”

The frequent travel schedule can’t be easy on a couple in shanah rishonah.

Mrs. Ungar waves her hand. “It’s fine, we’d been through a lot before we found each other, so Shmueli and me don’t get thrown off by a tough work schedule.” She and her husband exchange glances. “Well, there was one hard day…”

It was last Purim, a few months after their wedding. Shmueli had accepted a booking in Lakewood on Purim night and then in Cleveland on Purim day.

“We’d spent weeks coordinating our shalach manos, we had a theme and costumes and I was so excited. I’d been alone on Purim in the past, and now I wanted to celebrate with my own family. Then, after the Megillah, we went to my parent’s house for a big seudah — and Shmueli had to leave, so I was sitting there alone again. It was very rough.”

“I remember singing in Cleveland that day,” Shmueli interjects. “It was one of the hardest shows of my career, because I knew my wife was sad. I didn’t want to push that out of my mind.”

So clearly, I speculate, this Purim, Shmueli won’t take a job. “Actually, no,” he doesn’t hesitate, “but this year we’re going to be ready for it, that’s all,” and he and his wife burst out laughing.

The new album is called Mach a Bracha.

“Yes, I know it’s not a hip name, and some people might find it tacky,” the singer says, spreading his arms apart, “but it’s what I feel. There are a million reasons to thank the Ribbono shel Olam, always. I saw grief in my life, but I never felt differently.”

It’s bittersweet for Shmueli that not long after he married Yiddes, with the new album nearly complete, he lost the single biggest influence in his life.

My dear Zeidy, he writes on the album jacket, Not a day goes by that I don’t think about you. I miss you so much. You will always be with me in spirit…. I’m sure you would have loved this album.

“So when I’m singing ‘Mach a Bracha,’ I’m thinking about that as well,” Shmueli says reflectively, “there’s a brachah of ‘Dayan HaEmes’ too, and in that, I give thanks for the gift of my zeide and what he did for me.”

Each song has its own story, but the song “Im Tachaneh” is extra special to him, since it’s his own composition. “The words spoke to me, no matter what challenges we face, ‘b’zos ani boteiach’ — and it’s a happy song, because if a person isn’t happy, then he has a hard time finding the strength.”

When he’s alone in the car, Shmueli enjoys listening to the songs of Reb Moshe Goldman of Camp Shalvah. “That’s the music that speaks to me, and one song of the new album, ‘Kel Mistater,’ is that style. It makes me think of his music, because it’s fartzeitish [old-style], evocative, and warm.”

A second album means you’re serious, says Menachem Toker. “It says a singer is ready to invest and is for real.”

But even with album and concert successes, Shmuely isn’t looking to shed his identity as a wedding singer.

“That’s the stage where I feel most comfortable, where I’m myself.”

And he’s still learning.

“Now I know that it was specifically because of my pain and loneliness when I started that I was forced to close off my personal feelings and become one with the simchah. So today, even though baruch Hashem I have brachos all around me, I try to do that as well. Being a good wedding singer means being able to communicate with the chassan and the dancers.”

It’s an approach with practical ramifications.

“Often, especially with high-end baalei simchah, they will book a few singers to make the event more festive, and I get that — but it shows a certain misunderstanding about the role of a wedding singer. Because with a wedding singer, it’s not just about the voice or the talent, like at a concert, but about the connection. So when another singer and I are sharing the stage, we’re each focused on each other, on not overtaking the other guy, and it takes away the focus from where it should be — on the chassan and kallah.”

Sometimes, rabbanim come in during the second dance, and suddenly, the music switches back to something more dignified and the energy dissipates. “I understand that too, and we have to show respect, but I’ll admit it’s also a bit frustrating. Last week, Rav Shimon Zev Meisels came in to a wedding and immediately waved to me, ‘Don’t stop, keep singing that song.”

Shmueli doesn’t mind, though, when the chassan’s sweet little nephew takes the stage alongside him. “Nah, that’s just cute — unless the parents are pushy and ruin it for him by making it stressful.”

He also appreciates when the baalei simchah have good music. “It makes all the difference to a singer and it has nothing to do with how many pieces there are. Some one-man bands are better than a full orchestra. But good singers need accompaniment that works for them.”

He’s really in his element now, as he stands up and walks around the room while issuing observations and comments from the vantage point of a wedding singer. “Litvishe guys have more fun at a wedding — they’re more leibedige dancers, but chassidim have much better rhythm. Another difference is that yeshivah guys aren’t as picky with the song list — they’re okay with old songs too — while chassidim only want the latest hits.”

Shmueli stops, appearing surprised at my interest. “You want more? Okay, I’ll tell you: It’s a pain to do gigs out of town sometimes, much more travel time, but I enjoy it anyhow, because the people are so nice and so appreciative. Also, don’t assume we get food at every wedding. Some halls look at us as employees and don’t believe we should be fed. But out-of-town, everyone is like, ‘Can we bring you a main dish? Did you have soup yet?”

It’s after midnight again, the second time a conversation with Shmueli Ungar has gone way longer than expected. But now I know what people mean about the charisma.

“Look, he’s a celebrity, a real popular singer,” says a close friend of Shmueli, “but how many celebrities would go on Kol Mevaser and openly discuss their weight issues? I can’t think of one, but Shmueli has no problem, he’s always himself.”

“More amazing,” says Zevy Fried of the Shira Choir, “is that he keeps that very same openness on stage. Some singers are ‘fake news,’ one guy backstage and then a totally different one guy under the lights, but not Shmueli. Even when he’s singing, the audience feels like they have a friend up there.”

“It’s easy to keep the audience feeling connected and feeling like friends,” Ungar says. “The problem is keeping friends feeling like friends. On stage, I try to acknowledge people while I’m on stage; I smile or nod. When teenagers come over to me in the street or at a simchah to ask for a selfie with me, I always tell them how much I admire their confidence and nerve. When I was younger, I would never have had the confidence to go over and ask a singer to take a picture with me, no way. So it’s easy to connect to these people.

“But with old friends, the ones I’ve known forever, it’s harder, because they want to make sure you’re the same guy, that you didn’t change.”

For a moment, he looks very serious.

“I’ll tell you a story. I get a phone call from a young man, he’s a chassan. He says, “Listen, I’m a yasom, and I was down and out. One day, I heard you singing by the Rebbe, Rav Chaim Leibish, and you sang the chassidishe niggun, ‘Gits arein a nechuma’le,’ and something about the way you sang it injected me with hope, with nechamah. I knew two things: that my life would turn around and that I needed you to sing by my chasunah.”

The caller paused. “Now, I’m a chassan,” he continued, “but there’s no way I can afford what you charge.”

Shmueli assured the chassan that he would be at the chasunah.

A few minutes later, the chassan’s mother called to thank him. Shmueli warmly wished her mazel tov and told her how happy he was to be able to play a small part in the special simchah.

They hung up and Shmueli sat there, in the quiet car, and was struck by a thought.

“I was on such a high from having uplifted the spirits of an almanah, it felt so good, and I was like, hey, I know another almanah who would appreciate a phone call. She carried our family through the toughest times and always told me I’d be a star, I owe her everything. She’s my mother — and she’s also an almanah.”

As happy-go-lucky Shmueli Ungar stands outside his home in the softly falling snow, his face is colored with  a certain tenderness. “That’s the work,” he says, “to incorporate all the hardships and challenging experiences of my life into my music. Not to ignore them, or forget them, but to make sure they’re part of the song too.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 699)