It’s Our Song Too
“Something had opened inside of me, a new channel of feeling, and it found expression in music. Whatever opened that day has never really closed.” He closes his eyes. “Baruch Hashem.”
Photo Eli Cobin, Family Archives
He’d rather forget the first record he produced as a teenager in a Petach Tikvah yeshivah, but although that album is long hidden away, it was the inspiration that sent Moshe Mordechai (Mona) Rosenblum on his journey. From director of the IDF Rabbinate Choir to the first Belz albums and early MBD, Mona’s decades-long career as the most celebrated arranger and conductor in Jewish music brings everyone into the niggun
U
ntil I met Mona Rosenblum, I was sure he’d match the cool first name. But the gentleman who comes out of the Bnei Brak apartment building to greet me doesn’t look like I imagined a “Mona” to be — artsy and casual. Instead, he looks like a rebbi or vigilant kashrus mashgiach, his hat jammed securely on his head, peyos wrapped tight around his ears, avreich-style dark suit jacket flapping in the breeze.
He leads us into the apartment in the way of someone unaccustomed to this sort of thing. He generously pulls out the chairs and places a closed bottle of water on the table, but forgets about the cups. A few minutes later, he realizes and sheepishly hurries back to the kitchen.
There is kind of a silent laugh in his eyes and he chuckles audibly and often, seemingly amused by his own story. He’s generous with stories and commentary, but it’s when this celebrated conductor, arranger, and composer of modern chassidic music is seated on the dark bench near the large piano that he’s most natural, words flowing as easily as the fingers that dance across the keyboard. Music, in his retelling, isn’t an escape, or even a passion. It’s an identity: The moment he learned about self-expression, the music started playing and it’s never stopped.
Niggun of Tears
The Rosenblums, Reb Ephraim and Bluma, arrived in postwar Eretz Yisrael broken, like so many others. They had two sons, Yitzchak and Moshe Mordechai, but the house was largely defined by its quiet.
“My father,” says Mona, “wasn’t a big talker. He was very much a Gerrer chassid in the way he kept things inside.”
It was a song, a niggun, which was the lone vehicle of expression. Mona begins to sing it, a well-known chassidic slow tune, with no words. “It’s a Vorka niggun. My mother never cried, not a single tear — but whenever my father sang this niggun, she would weep uncontrollably.”
One morning, Bluma was carrying little Moshe Mordechai through the streets of Ramat Gan, and suddenly, inexplicably, she began to talk. And talk.
“She told me about another three-year-old — the same age as I was — her daughter, a sister about whom I’d never known. My mother had been in the process of handing her child off to a sympathetic non-Jewish neighbor when a waiting Nazi lifted his gun and shot the baby, killing her.
“I know,” Mona pauses, “I know that today, people would question my mother for sharing that with a child, but that’s what happened. And I remember it as if it were today. I heard what she was saying, I got it. I felt like I couldn’t cry, that if she was being so stoic, I had to be tough for her sake. I fought it off for a few minutes, choking back the tears, and then, suddenly, it came out in a gush, tears and pain and powerful emotion.”
That day, three-year-old Mona effectively started making music, even if he didn’t know it yet. “Something had opened inside of me, a new channel of feeling, and it found expression in music. Whatever opened that day has never really closed.”
He closes his eyes. “Baruch Hashem.”
And his mother, who inspired it, saw her son rise to the top of his profession. “Until she passed away a few years ago, she would join us for the Shabbos seudos — and she was always in a good mood, never emotional or heavy. But my children knew that during Shalosh Seudos each week, when I would sing that song, the Vorka niggun, the tears would come. That’s when she cried, then — and only then.”
It’s Not About Lessons
The Rosenblums had brought over mini accordions from Europe. “I would play and play. My father would look at me say, ‘Vuss gratchet er? — What’s he wasting his time with?’ but my mother sent me for music lessons. My father also enjoyed music, he davened for the amud in the Gerrer shtibel on Yamim Tovim, but he was a very practical person and didn’t see much value in using time that way.”
These days, parents will often stop Mona Rosenblum and ask about their children’s musical prospects. “They come over and say, ‘My son sometimes plays guitar, I think my daughter has potential on the piano, should we be sending them for formal lessons?’ and I think to myself, ‘You know the answer. The child who needs music needs music — it’s not about lessons. If it’s in them, they’ll gravitate to it like to the food they need to exist.’”
Chazzan Yitzchak Freund of Shaaray Tefila in Lawrence, New York, was a student in the Horev Talmud Torah in Ramat Gan with Mona, and remembers that tiny little accordion. “He carried it around and made music, and it was clear that the music was coming from within him. We sang together as teenagers in the Nachelei Ron choir and as adults in the IDF choir. And I can tell you that he feels music like no one else.”
After his bar mitzvah, Mona was sent to learn in Yeshivas Nachalas Reuven in Petach Tikvah.
“I wasn’t busy with music then, but after a few years in Petach Tikvah, people knew I was musical. I had a friend named Chaim Brozak, and he was sort of a Pirchei leader, working with teenagers at the local Agudah center. One day he says, ‘Listen, I want to make an album with the boys. Can you produce it?’ It made no sense, I had no experience, but I jumped at the chance.”
At the time, Rosenblum points out, there were few albums in the religious world. “A new record came out, that’s all you heard for the next five years. It was a huge undertaking.”
Mona, teenager on a musical mission, took a bus to Tel Aviv.
“In those years, there was this place, Cafe Noga, which was the unofficial ‘exchange’ for the music industry. The musicians sat around each afternoon and customers would come in — this one was getting married, that one was making a concert. There were some instruments at the cafe, and informal little groups would form and take the next job. It was all very charming.
“I remember thinking that all the musicians seemed old, their equipment outdated. I sat around, tried to find the right people and ideas and slowly, it came together.”
Eventually, that album — the maiden offering for Moshe Mordechai Rosenblum — was released: Na’ar Ha’Agudati shel Petach Tikvah. “No one has it,” Rosenblum says, “the album is hidden away.”
And again, he raises his face and spreads his hands apart. “Baruch Hashem it’s hidden.”
Today a father to several musically gifted children, Rosenblum concedes that talent and instincts are imperative, but not enough. “You need to learn music too. Today’s teenagers are much more capable than I was, because they’re growing up in a culture of music, they know more than I did, and they’re exposed to much better sound. I knew nothing.”
Yet even if the album itself remains hidden, it was the inspiration that sent Mona Rosenblum on his journey.
Warm-Up Act
From yeshivah, Mona continued on to the army — to the military choir, a division of the Chief Rabbinate. “We had military responsibilities too, of course, but since the choir is a formal part of the rabbinate, it was a religious framework.”
Concerts by the IDF choir were held at military outposts across the country. “The audience was about the same size as the choir,” Mona jokes. “A few guys singing in a military base dining room, with just an accordion and guitar. More than once they gave us a dark room with no light bulb and no electricity.”
But there was the electricity of connection. “Those concerts taught me about what really works, how to engage an audience in an emotional way.”
The big hit at the time was an Israeli song with the words, “Ani zocher neirot shel Ima.”
“They would always cry. These big, tough men with hardened expressions would suddenly melt. They were all away from home, sometimes for many months, and everyone had an Ima somewhere.”
There was the occasional big gig as well.
“One night, we appeared together with an American guest, Chazzan David Werdyger, at the Beit Knesset Hagadol in Tel Aviv. There was no real rehearsal. Twenty minutes before the show, we went into a side room and he belted out the words ‘David melech Yisrael,’ and we replied, ‘chai!’ — that was pretty much our job. So we changed out of our uniforms and got ready.”
Before the chazzan came onto the stage, the master of ceremonies announced a warm-up act. “Reb Duvid told us that he had a son who could sing, who would be starting off.”
Mona Rosenblum and Mordechai ben David first met that night in Tel Aviv: It’s a friendship that has spanned decades. Both children of survivors, raised on the Gerrer shtibel music of Yankel Talmud, blessed with exceptional talent; all these years later, they still work together.
I ask Mona what song Mordechai ben David sang that night and he frowns, struggling to recall. “I think it was ‘Eliyahu Hanavi.’”
Looking for a New Sound
Mona knew what he wanted to do after he completed his service. “My father was still skeptical, but my mother encouraged me to enroll at Tel Aviv University, where I formally studied music.”
Surprisingly, the intensity level in the classroom was low. “The teacher would plead with the students to stop playing games, to focus, but I’m not that type. If I do it, I’m all in, and I immersed myself in music.”
So much so, that one evening after class Mona boarded the Bnei Brak-bound bus, headed for home. “But I had a song in my head, and I was completely there, lost in the notes. The bus reached Bnei Brak, then turned around and headed back to the station for the night, and I was still on it, completely under the spell of the harmonies playing in my mind. I got off that night and said, ‘Mona, this is no good. This isn’t a way to live.’”
Mona left school and spent the next year playing in a band. “I got a feel for the scene, I did some weddings, some concerts. I played guitar on one of Shlomo Carlebach’s albums. I experimented with taking the sophisticated sound of the conservatory and applying it to the so-called ‘chassidic music’ genre.”
Mona, industry old-timers recall, was perfectly positioned at the intersection between supply and demand, the audience for so-called chassidic music growing just as an industry stood ready to make those sounds.
It wasn’t just Reb Duvid Werdyger and Ben Zion Shenker anymore, and someone had to help the would-be singers, groups, and chassidic choirs looking for fresh ground.
That someone was young, barely 20. Now, as then, he resists labels, but he concedes that the move to kollel in his later years wasn’t in the plans back then, and his look wasn’t classic chareidi. “But I guess I always had a chassidishe neshamah and I understood what they wanted.”
Insider Privileges
It was the early 1980s, still before the era in which virtually every chassidic group would see the benefit in recording their own music: Mona remembers one rebbe that was ahead of the curve.
“The Belzer Rebbe was a fairly new rebbe, and even though music hadn’t been a big part of Belz, as in other chassidic groups, the Rebbe knew he wanted music within the chassidus.”
The groundwork was laid for the future Belzer choir when tens of chassidishe yungeleit came to Ramat Gan for a tryout, each one filing by and singing a few notes. “I heard one yungerman sing and I said, ‘Wow, you’ve got it. You can sing.’”
It was Yirmiya Damen, whose voice would become synonymous with Belzer song.
Mona produced several albums for Belz, and even as he moved on to other chassidic groups, he kept his connection with the Belzer court.
“First of all, I was very taken by the Belzer Rebbe musically. He understands music. He even composed several songs — ‘V’chesed Hashem’ is his. ‘Ki L’Hashem Hameluchah’ is his. His ‘Ashreinu Mah Tov Chelkeinu’ we later used for Mordechai Ben David. You have to understand that those first Belzer tapes were everywhere, secular taxi drivers were tapping their steering wheels to the Belzer hakafah niggun. It was super popular.”
The Belzer Rebbe became a personal mentor as well. “It’s a long time ago, so I can tell the story again.” When Mona laughs at his own jokes, he throws his head back in delight. “I was driving and a motorcyclist cut me off. A policeman saw and gave me a ticket. I explained that it wasn’t my fault, that the motorcycle had pulled into my lane, and the officer saw my impudence as reason for another ticket. I was young and stubborn, and the policeman was angry. I was facing a real court case and I didn’t have money for a lawyer. I told the Rebbe about it and he waved it away. ‘Go alone, you don’t need a lawyer,’ he said. For years, they kept pushing off the court case until the date finally came. I walked in alone, like the Rebbe said, and the judge looks at me. ‘One second, you’re Mona Rosenblum?’ she says. ‘I can’t judge you, your music means too much to me.’”
Case closed.
Throughout the 1980s, Mona Rosenblum moved between various chassidic groups, an outsider given insider privileges, welcomed as a cherished friend by the great rebbes who appreciated his work.
“Moishe Mordche,” he drawls out his own name, “that’s how the Vizhnitzer Rebbe, the Yeshuos Moshe, always referred to me. He loved music and liked to discuss the songs in-depth. He once said to me, ‘Moishe Mordche, do you have oilam hazeh, do you enjoy This World?’ I looked at the Rebbe, not sure what he meant. ‘I mean, do you have the blettel Gemara?’ the Rebbe asked.”
There were many rebbes, but only two pictures adorn the Rosenblum dining room.
One, in the breakfront, is the Lubavitcher Rebbe — Mona’s wife is a daughter of the prominent Halpern family, descendants of the Baal HaTanya. The other, a large portrait on the wall, is of the previous Nadvorna Rebbe of Bnei Brak, Rav Yaakov Yissachar Ber Rosenbaum, who passed away in 2012.
“Our relationship started with music, but in time, I found myself becoming his chassid as well. He was different than other rebbes in that I would ask him a question, or for a brachah, and he wouldn’t say very much. Then later, I would hear different things and put two and two together and see how he’d been trying to help me in a practical way.
“I remember they invited me to play for him just days before he was niftar,” Mona continues. “The Rebbe had a practice of joining one of his children each month for the Rosh Chodesh seudah, a private family gathering, and I was often invited to play. This last one was in his daughter’s home, and I played and played, seeing that it gave him pleasure. When I finished, he summoned up his strength and, with a frail hand, he lifted his cup toward me — l’chayim. He couldn’t speak and could barely walk, but as he was being led out of the apartment, supported by his gabbaim, he insisted on going to the kitchen and standing straight so he could properly thank his daughter and son-in-law. I saw the effort he exerted into saying thank you.”
Mona’s smile dims. “It was very hard for me to say that story. Very hard.”
And it’s only part one. The Rebbe’s determination to give a proper thank you, his parting message to Mona, echoed a prior lesson.
A few years earlier, Mona had been asked to join in the birthday party for one of the icons of Israel’s music industry, someone to whom he owed a debt of gratitude. “The venue wasn’t for me, the crowd wasn’t for me. They’d asked me to perform in honor of an old friend, something I really wasn’t comfortable with. I asked the Rebbe, just the same, and he said, ‘If it’s a question of hakaras hatov, I think you have to go. You’ll stay for a short time, you’ll perform and leave, but you have to show hakaras hatov.’
“You know, I once traveled to Eastern Europe to sing, and I told the Rebbe I’d be going to Mezhibuzh. He wrote me a kvittel, in his own hand, to leave at the Baal Shem Tov’s kever. He wrote his name and a request,” Rosenblum’s voice trembles slightly, “that he merit a refuah sheleimah, to do teshuvah sheleimah and to be part of the Geulah Sheleimah.”
Every Voice Shines
Mona learned the value of a choir early on. With friends from Yeshivat Nechalim, which was near his yeshivah in Petach Tikvah, he organized a choir, Nachalei Ron. “At the time, there were no choirs singing chassidic songs, and our chevreh, it was me, Dudu Fisher, Avi Albrecht and Yitzchak Freund, were unique — they all became star chazzanim. I remember, we joined a local choir competition and we came in first place, singing Rabbi Baruch Chait’s ‘Hallelu Es Hashem.’”
During the 70s, he joined the IDF Rabbinate Choir, eventually replacing his mentor, Conductor Menashe Lev-Ran at its head. Mona remained the choir leader for over 30 years, giving it up just a few years ago, in 2012.
When Mona hears a song, he hears the possibilities along with it, and a choir allows him the versatility to realize his dreams.
It was a choir, in fact, that branded him as Mona. “People called me Moshe, or Moshe Mordechai, and only family and close friends called me Mona, a nickname that stuck from the time my brother had trouble pronouncing my name as a child. When I worked with Yigal Calek on Pirchei Yerushalayim in the 1970s, the boys started calling me Mona, which was easier. And then, on the album cover, the name appeared. Arrangements by Mona Rosenblum. That was it.
Choir members under Mona found their roles greatly enhanced. “There’s a reason that most people who’ve worked with Mona had success in their later careers,” says Zevi Fried of Shira Choir. “He is a master, the rebbe’s rebbe, able to imagine a use and place for each voice and instrument so that they shine.”
Mona taught choir members etiquette as well, how to stand, to smile, to sing as if they’re enjoying it.
“That’s not just for choir members,” he points out, “a Jew has to be happy, always.”
And there are no extra choir members, as radio host Menachem Toker remembers all too well.
When Mordechai Ben David was recording his Tamid B’Simchah album, Toker came to the studio as part of his entourage. Soon, all the extras cleared out and the choir got to work. Toker, who thought it would be fun, joined 30 other adult males, thinking his presence wouldn’t make a difference.
After a few moments, Mona grimaced. “There is a voice here that isn’t working,” he said. He looked around suspiciously. They started to sing again and Mona identified the culprit. “Listen,” he told Toker, “maybe you want to go buy drinks?”
Years later, Mona got his payback. He sent one of his new albums to Toker, but the host didn’t play any of the songs on his popular show. “What’s wrong with the album?” Mona asked.
“Nothing, it’s just that we have a history. I want you to come on the show and say, ‘Even if Menachem Toker can’t sing, he’s a great radio host.’” Mona laughingly obliged and Toker ran the promo for months.
This Is the One
As we speak of different choirs, Pini Paley, a sometime-musician who runs all the technical aspects of Mishpacha production and is heavily involved with Mona’s new album, mentions the once-popular Tzlil V’zemer boys choir.
“There was something in those arrangements, no? It was a new sound,” he says.
Mona looks intrigued. He hurries to the piano and starts to play, slowly at first, and then he gives in to the nostalgia and allows his fingers to reminisce. He lights up as he remembers snatches of different songs, closing his eyes as he plays their tune for “Nachamu Ami” several times.
“The synthesizer was new for chassidic music and Avrohom Rosenberg, the director of Tzlil V’zemer, was very willing to go along with our ideas.”
(With Mona planted at the keyboard, the photographer moves close and tries to move the large piano over, into better light. Mona shrugs and says he can’t move it without asking his wife — she’s a piano teacher, and it’s her instrument. The photographer also asks Mona to remove his hat at one point, and though Mona doesn’t actually say the word no, and he keeps smiling as if agreeing, it’s clear that it’s not happening.)
The piano keys become the marker stones along memory lane, winding back to the 70s, through the 80s, and crossing the 90s in varied beats and styles.
He closes the impromptu little melody with what is widely considered his best song.
“Look, ‘Moshiach’ was the most popular — it gained fame across the world, even in secular circles, but for some reason, people always say ‘Ribbono shel Olam’ is the one.”
The song, composed while with the army choir, carries undertones of the time and place.
“The slow beginning tells of long hours on the road, for sure, but the high part, ‘kedei shenizkeh l’chayim tovim’ is a giveaway. It was composed between people and for people who were never really sure how much longer they’d be around. It expressed the hope of parents whose children were on the front and they wondered about the future — there’s genuine tefillah in every note.”
Mona’s friend Sheya Mendlowitz knew the song, which had been somewhat successful, but had never become a classic — and Sheya was convinced that Mordechai Ben David had to sing it. “He insisted and didn’t give it up until Mordche and I both gave in.” At HASC 2, in 1989, Mordechai Ben David took the stage while a tuxedoed Mona stood behind him, conducting the huge choir: Sheya was right.
Mordechai Ben David remembers it well. “I also knew about ‘Ribbono shel Olam’ and in fact, that led us to ‘Moshiach.’”
He Had the Hit in Him
In 1976, when Mordechai Ben David was getting ready to release his first album, he knew he wanted arrangements like the ones written for his father’s 1973 album, Niggunei Werdyger. “I traveled to Eretz Yisrael specifically to meet Mona,” MBD says, “because Mona wasn’t just skilled, he was also a chiddush in that he was formally trained, he’d gone to school and you could tell.”
Mona was still single, and the marathon sessions took place in his parents’ Ramat Gan apartment. Their joint efforts resulted in an album called Neshama — and a real bond between their neshamos.
“Over the years we stayed close, we worked together on several albums, but it was about 15 years later that we really connected again,” Reb Mordche recalls. “I was finishing up the Moshiach album, but I felt like it was missing something, it needed a hit. I thought about ‘Ribbono shel Olam’ and I had a hunch that Mona had the hit song in him. I came to visit and we worked out an arrangement, we would sit down each morning and first he had to disconnect the phone, otherwise it would be ringing off the hook. Then we would learn, I think it was Reishis Chochmah, Sha’ar Ahavah.”
That missing hit song, “Moshiach, Moshiach, Moshiach,” came on the heels of one of those learning sessions, “but we also came up with two others, ‘Samcheinu Hashem Elokeinu’ and ‘Shema Beni.’ ”
According to chareidi lore, Moshiach — released in 1992 — is the best-selling chassidic music album of all time. Whether it’s so or not, the title song, “Moshiach,” was at the top of the charts well beyond the religious community and Mordechai Ben David’s star — and that of his friend, arranger, and collaborator — had never shone brighter. But life was about to change in other ways, too.
Where’s Our Fire?
Mona doesn’t like to talk about a shift. “I always tried to be a good Jew — the size and color of a kippah never made a difference.”
But he does concede that sometime around the release of that album, he discovered what has become his first love, his passion.
“The credit goes to Rav Yitzchak David Grossman of Migdal HaEmek. He invited Mordche and me to join him in Russia — he was going on a chizuk mission. What can I tell you… it changed my life.”
It was 1991, and the Iron Curtain was in the midst of toppling.
“I remember the faces, the looks of the people — I had never seen anything like it. We were in this dark room in the grand shul in Moscow and these old men sat there with their Russian caps jammed over their ears, their faces lined and worn — but there was such fight in their eyes! They had nothing, they’d been beaten down for so long, but they refused to give in. They would stick together, these families, in the hope that their children would marry one another and this way, their descendants would remain Jewish. On that trip, I learned what Jewish spirit means, what tenacity means. I remember thinking, “These are Yidden who won’t give up even though it’s so hard, and what about us, for whom it’s easy? No one is stopping us, we can have all the Torah we want. Why aren’t we more thirsty? Where’s our fire?”
Rav Grossman launched a concert tour with no producer or advance team. “He heard a few musicians in a tavern near the hotel and he told us, ‘Come, let’s get them.’ We paid them to join us, and we hit the road. The concerts in Moscow and Leningrad were incredible. I’d performed so many times, but I’d never seen the power of music until then.”
Mona stops speaking and starts playing again, eyes closed. “Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu… this was Mordche’s anthem on that trip.”
The Mona — post-return from Russia — wasn’t the same person, and not just because of the full beard and black hat. It had everything to do with the “blettel Gemara” that the Vizhnitzer Rebbe had asked him about years earlier.
“Seeing the commitment of those Yidden in Russia drove me to make my own commitment, and I found myself a chavrusa, made myself comfortable in the beis medrash. It was like discovering life all over again.”
Mona kept his job as musical director of the IDF Rabbinate choir, but became more selective in the private projects he took. He stopped appearing before mixed audiences (he would write the notes, music, and arrangements for the IDF choir, but didn’t join them at performances). His work began to reflect his newfound closeness to Torah and chassidus — and two of his most recent hits were both born over open seforim.
It Wasn’t Me
It was on Rosh Hashanah, in the hours between the first and second day and the house was completely silent. Mona was sitting at the table, learning a maamar from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The page was designed in a way that the pasuk upon which the discourse centered, “Veyeida kol pa’ul ki Atah pe’alto,” was in bold. Mona was carried away by the reality of the Divine Presence, the constant presence of the King, and as he sat there, the words came to life. “Melech, Melech, Melech, Hashem Elokei Yisrael Melech.”
There have been other hits as well. “Moriah,” which reused a tune he’d written in his early days to the words “Ana Slach Na,” was notable in that was sung by both Mordechai Ben David and Avraham Fried.
“But if there’s a song that reminds me Who really writes the songs, it’s this one.”
He insists on finding a Gemara Menachos and showing me the words inside. “Tears poured from the eyes of Rabbi Elazar ben Shamua and he said, Ashreichem talmidei chachamim…” Mona was sitting in the small kollel where he spends the first half of each day and, when he learned these words, he remarked that they ought to be a song. He hummed the niggun he imagined for the lofty words and continued learning.
Many months later, Mona and his chavrusa got together with their families on Succos to celebrate a siyum masechta. Several of their friends from the kollel joined, including some boys who’d struggled in yeshivah and found a place in that beis medrash as well.
One of those boys got up and announced that he had a surprise. He’d been sitting near Mona on that day, months earlier, when Mona had hummed his niggun for “Ashreichem” and, thinking quickly, the young man had recorded it on his cell phone. Now, he pressed play and shared the song with the crowd in the Rosenblum succah.
“Tell me, how can a person become haughty if it’s so clear that I’d never even composed the song — it just came from Shamayim, and was given back to me by another person?” Mona laughs and starts to tap, “Oy, oy, oy mah mah mah ahavati, Sorasecha…”
In recent years, Mona and his wife, herself musically gifted, have had the unique pleasure of seeing their children emerge as talented musicians and composers. In 2010, Mona was awarded Isael’s coveted Akum Prize, sort of a lifetime achievement award bestowed by the artists’ guild. It was the first time an artist associated with chassidic music won.
“People told me they thought it was a big kiddush Hashem, a religious artist getting the acknowledgment. Look,” Mona grins, “wearing these,” he fingers his tzitizs, “when you walk down the street is what I consider a kiddush Hashem.”
Until today, a studio technician remarks, Mona commands the instant respect of musicians and arrangers. “When he’s in a studio, they listen to his suggestions, wait breathlessly for his approval. It doesn’t matter how experienced they are, whether they’re religious or not; Mona is the authority, and they want to be part of creating music with him.”
The Response
Like his friend Mordechai Ben David, with whom he started all those years ago, Mona continues to find relevance, moving effortlessly between groups and demographics bearing this gift of music.
He is personally close to Chabad and very much part of the yeshivah world and yet, he presided over the magnificent orchestra at Satmar’s grand 21 Kislev annual celebration. When Mona met the Satmar Rebbe, “it was very special, I told him about my connection with his father-in-law, the Yeshuos Moshe of Vizhnitz.”
Does he ever think about that, how music has allowed to him travel as if with a diplomatic passport, to have merited a career backstage at the great yeshivos and chassidic courts?
He mulls over the question. “You know, people ask about the challenges in this industry. It’s always changing, there are always new faces and fresh techniques, and they wonder if I worry about parnassah. I tell them, ‘Look, the challenge isn’t when you’re in trouble — then you know to look to Hashem. It’s when you’re on top of the world and everyone is calling, to remember that we’re nothing and it’s not us doing it. So where I go is part of it. Hashem allows me to do something I love. How and where I go is part of His gift to me and I’m grateful.”
Mona walks me out. The Bnei Brak heat has lifted as the sun begins its descent. Soon, Reb Moshe Mordche will cross the street to the Vishiver shtibel, and he will try to still a million songs in his mind as he prays.
The flood was unleashed one day decades ago when a mother told her young son of what had befallen her, what had befallen her people; what came forth wasn’t anger or pain or protest, but song. His song is the response of a nation.
Is it any wonder, then, that wherever they hear it, they recognize it? For isn’t Mona’s song our song?
(Originally Featured in Mishpacha Issue 680)
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