The Tzuf Family Band, with their harp, flutes, lyres, and drums, creates healing vibes for a sometimes off-key world

Photos: Menachem Kalish, Family archives

Nestled in the valley among the rolling green hills of the northern Galilee, just a few minutes from Meron, lies the settlement of Safsufa, and there, in a sprawling rustic home surrounded by trees and flowers, live the Tzuf family — Simcha Binyamin, Chaya Rachel, and their five children. Their lounge is cozy, decorated with colorful ethnic rugs and wall hangings, musical instruments strewn all around like part of the furniture, the wood fire casting a comforting orange glow. It’s the perfect backdrop for the music that emerges from between these walls: meditative, spiritual, soulful, penetrating. And for the Tzuf band, it’s also a family affair.

“Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember,” Simcha relates. “It’s where I discovered my inner healing.” He grew up playing piano, guitar, and harmonica, and learned to improvise and compose original music as well. With a musical wife as well, the Tzuf children have inherited the talent and passion, and their ensemble, the Tzuf Family Band, has created its own niche and style.

Simcha tells of some of the challenges he had growing up, despite a warm and happy home, and how music got him through — and he’s happy his own children have that outlet as well. He was born and raised in Los Angeles’s Pico Robertson neighborhood, where his father, Rabbi Irwin Katsof, started the local Aish HaTorah.

As his father was an Aish HaTorah rabbi, Simcha grew up in a very kiruv-oriented household — there were always people coming over for Shabbos, after the popular davening at Aigh HaTorah, and most of the week, too.

But then, for Simcha at least, everything changed. When he was nine, his family moved to Wesley Hills in Monsey, New York — and Simcha hated it.

“New York was a shock to me,” he remembers. “I went from being a popular kid to one who was teased all the time, for my accent, for everything. I had a tough time in school.”

Simcha attended yeshivah, but dropped out after eighth grade. “I just didn’t feel at home there. I didn’t feel any spirituality. There were over a hundred kids in each grade — they didn’t even get a chance to teach us the meaning of the words in davening — and davening is supposed to be our most intimate connection with Hashem.” (He admits that when he dropped out, it was a situation of mutual agreement.)

Then he learned for half a year at a different yeshivah high school, trying to find himself. “I was a sad teenager,” he remembers ruefully. “No one could figure out how to help me. I remember they sent me to talk to someone, and I didn’t know what to say, so I just cried.”

But music was his redemption. “I was the keyboardist for the Pey Dalid band — they were in their thirties and I was just 15. But I didn’t care. Music was my outlet — it was so therapeutic for me.”

Music runs in Simcha’s blood. His progenitors include professional pianists, a saxaphone player, a violinist, and a Yiddish singer. His grandmother passed on the love of music and the passion for it to Simcha’s mother, who in turn, passed it on to him.

“My mother believed in me and wanted me to connect with music, encouraging me to follow my own passion for music. It’s really in her zechus that I play.”