A motif people began to expect at every subsequent HASC concert

A few weeks before the second HASC concert back in 1989, I was speaking with Sheya Mendlowitz when I suggested we add a special surprise to the event. “How about we add a segment, something like ‘50 years of Jewish music’ featuring people like Jo Amar, Benzion Shenker, Shlomo Carlebach, D’veykus, Ohr Chodosh, and Diaspora?’” Sheya thought it was a great idea, but wondered why it should be a surprise, if it could still be added to the flyer as an exciting part of the show? I answered that there’s something extra special about a surprise guest — the audience goes crazy over it. And it turned out to be true: The excitement that all these special guests generated was so electric that it became a motif people began to expect at every subsequent HASC concert. (At the time, though, who could imagine HASC 35?).

In the following years, the audiences always expected Abie Rotenberg to show up after having composed some special surprise for the evening — songs like “Candles,” “A Small Piece of Heaven,” and “Atah Echad,” to name a few.

Sometimes popular Jewish singers not on the playbill were the surprise, and other times it was a politician, like Governor Rudolph Giuliani. Then there was New York Yankees manager Lou Piniella, Bello the Clown flying down from the Lincoln Center ceiling, and Wally Eastwood, world-famous juggler who played the HASC theme song by juggling balls onto a piano on the floor. One memorable surprise was Yigal Calek, walking onstage at the end of the HASC 25 Anniversary Celebration and speaking about the great kiddush Hashem the HASC concert makes each year.

One year, the entire concert was a surprise. It was year seven, and as the audience poured into Radio City expecting a standard HASC concert, they found themselves watching a kind of variety show. And 28 years later, I still can’t get the image of MBD dressed as Napoleon out of my head.

There was Baruch Levine’s surprise visit soon after his “V’zakeini” became world famous. The unforgettable time Avraham Fried and Itche Meir Helfgott sang “Tanya” together, which my father-in-law said was the closest thing to Olam Haba he’d ever experienced.

Sometimes, even the producers are taken by surprise. One year at the Met, a performer got stuck in traffic and wouldn’t make it to the show on time. The producers had to kill ten minutes until his arrival, and so Zale Newman, the emcee, just walked onto the stage, sat down at the edge, and started schmoozing with the audience, regaling them with the backstories of how the concert concept began. Leave it up to Zale to get the job done — and this one wasn’t planned at all.

One time, the surprise guest pulled off a surprise of his own. At “A Time for Music 26,” featuring MBD and Avraham Fried, Abie Rotenberg was scheduled to be the surprise guest. The plan was that he would come out and do “Neshamele” together with both Mordche and Avremel. When Abie arrived at Lincoln Center about two hours before the show though, he was extremely excited — he’d come up with a bombshell idea while on the plane. His concept was to give tribute to both MBD and Fried without letting them know in advance — if they knew, they surely wouldn’t agree. I was a bit skeptical about pulling something like that off with no rehearsal, but I went along with his plan. Abie just told both of them backstage, “When I sit at the piano, just go with it, and leave the rest to me.” Abie ended up doing segments of about 15 of their most popular songs, which not only surprised the audience, but surprised the people onstage and backstage as well. Of course, both the superstars ended up joining in the singing — it was pretty unforgettable all around.

The “HASC surprise” became so looked forward to, that certain producers actually thought it would be better off not to list any performers at all and keep the entire show under wraps. That’s how it’s been for the past few years, and this year is no different. So while thousands are looking forward to going to the Bell Works in Holmdel, NJ, on Sunday night, no one really knows exactly what to expect.

So here I am, with my spoiler alert. If you don’t want to know anything about this year’s show, now’s a good time to stop reading. There’s no guarantee, but I have a strong suspicion that both Avraham Fried and Mordechai Shapiro will be appearing. Or not.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 893)