The Shift

Whatever your job, you sometimes wonder if you still have what it takes. Who says you’re not burned-out? Well, interviewing Avraham Fried is a good way to deal with that. And it’s not just that Avremel is, bli ayin hara, celebrating 40 years of song.

(That’s 40 years. Like, when he started, the Lubavitcher Rebbe and Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky were walking the streets of New York. Reagan was president and car pool was in those long blue-and-brown wood-paneled Caprice station wagons with rear-facing seats in the trunk and Miami Boys Choir was coming to life and you sat on an orange couch playing Donkey Kong and life was perfect.)

It’s also that the singer with the silver in his beard spent the coronavirus period — the sudden shutdown, the instant clearing of the calendar, the uncertainty about if there will ever be another concert — knocking out singles and even a full collection album, staying busy and, as bochurim would term it, “chal.”

Fried is still chal. Maybe (and forgive the reflective moment) I’m fascinated because there’s always that wonder, “Will I be chal in 25 years, im yirtzeh Hashem?”

What’s the secret?

Part of it is hard work, for sure. Legendary conductor Yisroel Lamm tells me of the pre-event commotion at a major concert a few years ago. Fried is very withdrawn before he performs, pacing back and forth nervously backstage, tugging on his beard, but someone ungifted in reading social cues approached just the same. “You’re Avraham Fried?” he blurted out. “How come you get to charge so much money for 45 minutes of singing?”

The smile. The composure. The respect. And then the answer. “I don’t get paid for the 45 minutes of singing. I get it for the three sleepless weeks before.”

Popular Israeli radio host Menachem Toker remarks that it’s not just the voice and not just the charisma. “It’s the work,” he says. “Avraham Fried is the least lazy person in the industry, the constant practicing, learning to dance, the voice lessons… his story is a story of tenacity and hard work.”

I interviewed Avraham Fried ten years ago, when 30 years of song seemed a lot, but something has changed, a clarity that comes with serious reflection. There is more candidness in the way he answers these days.

“I daven for this. Hashem, please don’t take this from me, please let me sing.” He’s not trying to impress me. There’s no mic and no audience, but I promise there is something in his voice like a song, a sudden rise as he says, Please don’t take this from me, and a door inside me opens up.

“I daven often, four, five times a day. I don’t want to stop.”

He knows that the gift can be taken just as inexplicably as it was given.

“I was doing a show for Camp Simcha this week, it was a drive-by, the crowd in their cars, and it was going well… but suddenly I felt something, it was like my voice was stuck in my throat. It didn’t come out. It was only for a moment, and then I realized the problem, baruch Hashem.”

There were smoke machines near the stage, emitting clouds of manufactured vapor, and they were affecting his ability to sing.

“They turned the machine off and I was okay, but I was happy it happened, because now I suddenly understood what happened years ago. I was doing an outdoor concert in Lod, with a huge crowd. I was preparing to do a serious piece, “Unesaneh Tokef,” when suddenly, my voice disappeared. It was strange, and also embarrassing. Baruch Hashem, the audience was gracious, but I felt horrible, and it was always a mystery to me what had made my voice dry up. This week, I finally realized.”

He doesn’t tell me more about the concert, but later in the day, I will find an item on an Israeli website about that great fashla, the epic fail in which the headliner had to walk off stage.

It was deep into the show, near the end, and he stayed around to finish the night, but he couldn’t sing very much. Thankfully, the crowd pitched in. Still, Fried wrote a public letter to the audience, and the style and tone are as distinctive as his music.

In 35 years of singing publicly, it’s never happened that I lost my voice in mid-concert. But it happened last night in Lod, and I — the “star” — was left helpless when you, the males in the audience, showed what it means to be a star. In graciously understanding and singing together, covering for me, you elevated the songs, voices raised in order to help out the embarrassed Jew on stage, and you performed the mitzvos of azov ta’azov, hakem takim, and many others.

I will never forget our evening in Lod and I look forward to coming back to say thank you….

“The fog machine explanation is only al pi teva, the natural reason, but to me, it was a reminder that every day, every moment, Hashem is letting me sing again,” Fried says. “It’s always new.”

He indicates a sefer nearby, the Baal HaTanya’s Likutei Torah. “Being home for weeks on end was something new for me, and this,” he taps the sefer, “this helped me a lot. I had the time and headspace to really get into it. Finding chiddushim keeps a person young, vibrant.”

New, he’s saying, doesn’t have to be in the style of music. New can be in the person singing, too.

But the music is also alive. In fact, he’s just come from the studio.

“I recorded a new song, and in the middle, I felt this rush of emotion. It reminded me of “Chazak,” something so uplifting and hopeful, that I grew emotional. I actually made myself cry.”

I ask, but he won’t share the words of the new song. It’s a surprise, for a new album, im yirtzeh Hashem.

In general, the projects of the last few months have opened up new avenues inside of him.

“I told my kids that once the concerts and simchahs dried up, it was like being in airplane mode — sometimes a person just has to focus on what’s in front of him and live. The income wasn’t there, but there were other, smaller opportunities, and I tried not to miss them. The singles were nice. The Project Relax album was nice, I took the work that was there.”

Note to corporate strategists and producers of rookie singers: Avraham Fried took the work that was there. Also, he nailed it.

“I’ll be honest with you, I don’t know many of the contemporary songs, I don’t have much time to listen to music. When I’m in the car, I listen to what I’m working on, trying to make it better, so the Relax album, which focuses on current hits, forced me to learn them.”

He smiles in genuine delight. “I loved it. There are some really nice songs from the last few years I might never have known otherwise.”

He taps the table and starts singing, “Fahr Dir, Fahr Dir, nohr fahr Dir…

“You know, over the years, we didn’t generally address the Ribbono shel Olam directly in song, but something has shifted.”

The Evolution

Hours before the HASC concert this year, when 2020 was just an innocent new year, I was in the David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center, watching the rehearsals on stage. The seats were empty, only the stage lights on, but there were a few people scattered around watching, various handlers, family members, theater staff.

In the third row, sitting by himself in a black hoodie, was Ishay Ribo, just watching.

I took the seat next to him and he told me he had been hoping someone would sit down and chat with him, and out of sheer gratitude, he immediately sang “Halev Sheli” just for me.

Okay, not really, but he did look up politely.

A longtime Fried fan, he searched for the words to explain what it’s like to sing alongside Avremel. This was going to be their first time performing together outside of Eretz Yisrael.

There’s chashmal, he told me, an electricity on stage when Avraham Fried sings, and he also stressed that there are no shortcuts. Fried works hard. He practices. He cares. He puts all his energy into each song.

Finally, he shrugged elaborately. “Tishma. Zeh Fried,” he said with a shy laugh.

Ribo, Avremel tells me now, is part of the phenomenon he’s describing, this new brand of soulful Israeli ballads of teshuvah, hope, regret, and Yiddish conversations directly with the Creator.

It reminds him of something.

As a child, he was part of Eli Lipsker’s chassidic boys choir, an innovative fusion of outreach and music, a little troupe of Crown Heights chassidic children that traveled across America. They would take the stage and the local Lubavitcher shaliach would speak in between songs, trying to channel the emotion of the audience into something holy.

Nine-year-old Avremel Friedman was the star of the show one night in Minnesota, singing the high part of “Tzamah Lecha Nafshi” — “Oy, kein bakodesh chazisicha…” After the concert, an older, secular-looking man was wheeled over to the child.

“My dad wants to tell you something,” said the young fellow pushing the wheelchair.

The older gentleman leaned toward the child.

“After hearing you sing,” he said in a shaky voice, “I wish G-d were to give me back my eyesight simply to see you.”

“I realized what he was really saying,” Avremel reflects. “It wasn’t that he needed to see the color of my hair, or my smile. He wanted a deeper way to connect with what he was hearing, what he was feeling. He wanted to see the inspiration. Today, I understand how personal it all is.”

And the new music of right now, says Avraham Fried, who has released over 35 albums and done hundreds of concerts, reflects that.

He tells me about a Chabad shaliach who was circulating with tefillin. Some people politely rejected the offer, but one admittedly Jewish passerby explained that he was angry at G-d. “And the shaliach told me later that ‘angry at G-d’ is better than ‘indifferent to G-d,’ because it’s a feeling — bitterness is a feeling, a connection that can be worked on. And I think that’s what we’re seeing in music as well, the connection is there, even if people are feeling somewhat confused.”

In his case, it’s what led him to one of his more recent hits, “Abba.”

“When I first heard it, I wasn’t sure. It was so raw and direct. But then it grabbed me, the message that there is no red tape when trying to get an appointment with the Eibeshter, there’s no waiting time or bureaucracy, you just have to call out, Abba. That’s it. The response to the song is proof that it suits the mood of the people, they want that authenticity, so yes, we’ve evolved.”

What he might not realize is that he’s been doing that all along.

Connections

He’s known to remember the names of cholim he’s visited in hospitals long after they’ve recuperated. The backstagers — adult choir members, musicians and sound crew — know that he’s unfailingly gracious and pleasant.

But it’s the people out front he’s trying to reach.

Avraham Fried enjoys telling jokes, mild Borscht Belt mixed with Yiddish badchan. He tells me about the upscale congregation that invites a world-famous rabbi and a prominent chazzan for the same Shabbos. On Sunday morning, the president pays both of them, and the chazzan sees that the rabbi got more money.

“I davened three times, and he only spoke once,” complains the chazzan.

“Yes,” says the president, “but when he spoke, he had to see the people squirming, and your face was to the wall.”

Fried is sharing the joke to accentuate the difference between singing in studio and performing live, but he’s also conceding that there’s a relationship between artist and audience.

“I try my best to get a sense of what they’re looking for — sometimes you can feel it in the air. It’s the time of year, or type of community, and other times you have to work harder to connect, to give the people an experience that goes beyond the music.

“If I’m davening, I want them to daven with me. If I’m happy, I want them to feel happy.”

Is all music meant to be happy? Is the goal of a concert just to rejoice? Aren’t there other emotions?

His father, he tells me, had a close relationship with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. “Whenever he would approach the Rebbe, he would do so with a big smile on his face, radiating simchah. He would say that the Rebbe saw enough pain, he deserved to see happiness.”

That’s his answer.

That connection with the audience shouldn’t be taken for granted. He remembers a concert at the old Homowack Hotel. He was in the middle of introducing a song, and from the front row, someone called out, “Enough with the talking, Avraham, sing already.”

He laughs, but it’s clear that it hurt him then, and the memory still stings. “You can try to build that connection and hope for the best, but it doesn’t always happen.”

Crossovers

Lag B’omer marked 40 years since his first album, No Jew Will Be Left Behind. “The idea of releasing an album at that time of year was, like so many other brilliant ideas, a Sheya Mendlowitz innovation,” Avremel recalls. “He reasoned that the summer camps can make the album popular, songs take off there, so a few weeks before the season was the perfect time — it gave the kids a chance to learn the songs before camp.”

Album after album, spring was release time using the Sheya logic, and so many camp theme songs, cheers, and alma maters reflect the wisdom of the approach.

Sheya Mendlowitz, whom many credit with giving Fried his start, is still a big presence in the singer’s life, a trusted confidant and advisor, but Avremel has worked with many of the other talents in the industry as well, even some who weren’t yet born on that first Lag B’omer.

“His sense of smell is unparalleled,” says Menachem Toker. “He knew when to go with the long, more complex pieces, then he anticipated when the world was ready for Chabad — he literally made Chabad songs popular in every other community, then embraced the Dati Leumi community with his Hebrew songs, and now he’s ready to work with the younger, hipper, hotter composers. He does it seamlessly and he does it without giving up his essence, whatever it is that makes him who he is. He doesn’t change, but somehow, he changes music.”

Humility, someone once said, is even cooler if you can appreciate greatness in others.

“L’maaseh,” Fried says at one point, “there’s no one like Yossi Green, nisht azoi? You can still hear these songs regularly, ‘Retzei,’ ‘Acheinu,’ ‘Yedid Nefesh’…

“It’s not just Yossi’s songs — I’ve had so many great composers and arrangers over the years. Suki, Ding, Sheya, Moshe Laufer…. You still hear ‘Invei Hagefen’ and ‘Yosis Alayich’ at weddings. At the Siyum HaShas this year, they were singing ‘Hinei Mah Tov,’ and I had chills. Baruch Hashem.”

Wait. “You were at the Siyum HaShas?”

“Sure, it was very special. They were singing ‘Ahallela Elokai,’ and I was crying, Hashem’s chasadim are so much bigger than us, we’re so small, so fortunate to be able to praise Him. It was a zechus to be there.”

But he understands my question. Beyond the music, there’s a general paparazzi interest in the fact that he, a proud Lubavitcher chassid, was there. “There were many chassidim there, not just me, but I’ll tell you something funny.”

Years ago, he recalls, he sang at a Chabad-sponsored Siyum HaRambam, and from the stage, he mentioned that he was also among those who had completed the cycle.

He overheard one person tell another, “Look at him, shamelessly trying to flatter the Lubavitchers into thinking he’s one of them….”

Somehow, he’s managed, this proud Lubavitcher chassid, to have crossed every sort of boundary in the frum world, beloved in Lakewood as in Yeshivat Har Hamor, in Kiryat Sefer as in Williamsburg.

I think perhaps it’s because he’s not a singer of chassidic songs, but a chassid who sings, and you can’t close the door on authenticity.

The Real Concert

He is reflecting on the world he inhabits, neshamos connecting with neshamos — and he recalls an incident from several years ago: The caller ID screen on his home phone showed that an Israeli number was trying to get through, calling again and again. Finally, feeling badly for the person — he assumed it was a fan who wanted to schmooze — he called back.

The woman who answered was so grateful to speak to him. Her father-in-law, she told him, asked her daily if she’d managed to reach him. It turns out that a few weeks earlier, the singer had been on a flight to Tel Aviv, and he’d been sitting near a certain tzaddik, an older man with a radiant countenance. Throughout the flight, people approached for brachos, and Avremel wanted to get a brachah too. One of the talmidim, though, discouraged him from coming. “You sing in concerts,” he said, “and the Rav will not bless you.”

Avremel went back to his seat. Okay then.

This woman on the phone continued. Her father-in-law, the aforementioned tzaddik, had only heard what happened after they’d landed and he was distraught to learn that a Jew had been turned away. She was calling, again and again, at his behest, to invite Avremel to come meet the Rav next time he was in Eretz Yisrael.

The Rav was the venerated mashpia Rav Don Segal — the fire of his avodah, the passion of his tefillah, the kedushah of his Torah, and the depths of his ahavas Yisrael sending a message of its own.

***

My host walks me outside, where it’s raining. A moment before we part, I ask once more if he will tell me the words to the song that made him cry in the studio earlier in the day.

He hesitates, then shrugs and starts to sing, right there under an umbrella on Albany Avenue.

“Gut morgen Ribbono shel Olam…”

He dances a bit and passersby smile, not in a gawkerish way, but with pride. This is their man. Their neighbor. Their Avremel.

It’s early evening and the rain is picking up, but it’s a new day beneath the umbrella. Gut morgen, Ribbono shel Olam.

It’s always a new day for Avraham Fried.

THE SONG THAT SAYS IT ALL

Imagine that someone comes up to you and asks you to explain to him who Avraham Fried is. This person has never heard his music and wants to understand what makes him so special, why he’s still relevant 40 years later. You can only play him one song to explain it. Which song would you choose?

“ATAH BECHARTANU,” from his second album back in 1982, The Time Is Now. I remember bringing him the niggun — it was composed by Reb Menachem Irenstein of Bnei Brak — and I felt like it had the right ingredients, the yearning, the simchah, the pure Yiddishkeit, and the flavor. Avremel didn’t just deliver, he gave Klal Yisrael a Yom Tov classic. How many Chol Hamoed concerts, by various singers over the years, have opened with that song?

It’s exciting, actually, because we’re currently working on a similar niggun, by that same composer, that I’ve been waiting for Avremel to record for close to 40 years — maybe “the time is now,” and listeners will be that much richer.

—Producer SHEYA MENDLOWITZ

The song “TANYA” (composed by Yossi Green, from We Are Ready) includes everything I can say about Avraham Fried — the eidelkeit, the sweetness, but also the power and excitement. The lyrics, from the Gemara, tell a story about the Kohein Gadol drawing down Hashem’s mercy, transforming His harsh judgment to chesed. Jewish music should have meaning and depth, and this song has that as well, really allowing the words of Chazal to unfold before our eyes. It’s classic Fried.

—Conductor YISROEL LAMM

“EMES KI ATAH HU YOTZRAM,” from the We Are Ready album. To this masterful Yossi Green composition, Avraham Fried brings… Avraham Fried, every part of himself, from the low keys to the highest notes, but also as a chazzan, the emotion and range — and there is even an audible smile. There are many songs of his that stand out, but the full Fried is on display in this one.

—Maestro YOELI DICKMAN

Over the years, I’ve watched Avremel perform often, and seen him farbreng and simply sit with our guests and sing. It’s always special, and he has so many songs to choose from, whether it’s “Yedid Nefesh,” “A Gutte Voch,” “Aderaba,” or so many others, but I think if I need to choose one it would be “TATENYU,” from the 1983 Forever One album, which he performed at the first HASC concert. Avremel took a classic chassidishe niggun, put beautiful hartzige Yiddish words to it and sang in a way that is so pure, no add-ons, no gimmicks, just a beautiful voice allowing the niggun to shine. It’s a song and performance that I can just listen again and again.

—AVROMI WERNER, KMR Tours

It’s impossible to choose one tune that represents 40 years, but I can select a song that is the “engine” of so much else, the inspiration of so many albums and concerts. Because first and foremost, Avraham Fried is a Lubavitcher chassid. And he’s a shaliach.

He’s not another singer looking for a career and parnassah, although baruch Hashem he’s been able to find both — but what motivates him is the sense of shlichus, reaching Jews. There are thousands of Chabad shluchim in the annual convention photo, each one of them a hero — but Fried is sort of a super-shaliach, and his posting isn’t a desert locale, communist country, or developing nation. It’s in the spark buried deep within every single Jew, and he’s being sent to reach it, to fan the flame and make it come alive, wherever that Jew might be.

Therefore, the song I’ll choose is from the Hupp Cossack album, which Avremel released as a collection of Chabad and vintage chassidic nigunim (and I hope he’ll continue to put out other such albums). He sings the old Lubavitcher niggun “ACH L’ELOKIM DOMI NAFSHI,” of which it’s written in the Chabad Sefer Haniggunim, “The notes of this niggun serve as a bridge carrying a person from the darkness of This World to a higher, holier plane, and with each part, the coldness surrounding the neshamah melts away with yearning for above….” And that’s what Avraham Fried has been doing with all his songs for the past 40 years.

—Radio host YEDIDYA MEIR

My brother Yossi passed away four and a half years ago. His wife Chayale is a Rubashkin from home, so during my yeshivah years in Brooklyn, I would eat at their home often. They sang Shalom Aleichem to a “niggun yashan” attributed the Alter Rebbe, and when I had the zechus to arrange the Yankel, Yankel album, I suggested that this be included. With Avremel’s voice, heart and depth, and his ability to transmit not just the niggun but the feeling of Leil Shabbos, this SHALOM ALEICHEM is sung in many homes today.

—Arranger Avremi G. (Gourarie)

I would choose the song “ZECHOR” from the Bracha V’hatzlacha album. The whole album is incredible, but this song — Avremel’s top-notch vocals, the tune, the words, the range and powerful crescendo of “Lema’ancha ulema’an Yerushalayim tizkor” — make this song a standout.

—BENTZI MARCUS, 8th Day

I remember my zeide, Rav Chaskel Besser a”h, packing for one of his trips to Poland, and I noticed that he was packing CDs — several of the same one — a new release called YIDDISH GEMS by Avraham Fried, featuring the songs of Reb Yom Tov Ehrlich.

My grandfather would spend these trips with trapped neshamos. Many of the people he sat with in Poland had been children after the war, raised by non-Jews, married to non-Jews, but now — their hair already turned gray — they wanted to know, to feel, to taste. The CD, my zeide told me, was something he could give them that would help them experience what it means to be Jewish, something essential and pure captured in every song. And, my zeide, a classical-music aficionado, added, “the music is something to be proud of.”

Like Yakob, a trapped soul himself drawing on a powerful nostalgia for the beis medrash, for home, for his mother, these people too had a past. “Hit mein Yankele Basheffer, ehl zohl bleibben dort a Yid.”

Decades later, those songs still remain classics. Who hasn’t sat in a beis medrash, in front of an open Gemara, and at least once, sang out the words of a broken, lonely Yakob, “Omar Rava, Omar Rav Papa… Nisht duh in der velt noch kein bessereh ta’am.”

I know the tune isn’t Fried’s, nor are the words. But the magic is his, and that magic still lives.

—Yisroel Besser

I would choose “ADERABA.” Not because it’s the most complex, or the most artistic, or even the one that best showcases his range and skill, but because it’s the song that really encapsulates his appeal. The song combines a prayer by an Eastern-European chassidish rebbe with a tune that perfectly expresses the emotions within. Musically, it has the ideal buildup: a contemplative opening, a soaring climax, a softly pleading finale. But the real magic is the way it makes a historic text so relevant — so urgent — to Jews of all types and stripes. If you’ve ever listened to a dati-leumi crowd singing “Aderaba” at a Fried concert, you’ll hear the same unabashed yearning that fills the room during a Bais Yaakov kumzitz or Shabbos meal at yeshivah. The song strips away our façade of stripes and types and exposes the kernel inside that wants to see good and be seen for the good.

—Shana Friedman

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 830)