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Marching to His Own Tune

By Shlomi Gil | May 2, 2018

For Chilik Frank, a virtuoso whose concerts are more like lessons in chassidus, playing around the clock in Meron on Lag B’Omer is his ultimate prayer

(Photos: Ezra Trabelsi)

In Jerusalem, some people still know him as Reb Yechiel Meir Frank, but here he is simply Chilik — and they’ve come to hear him play, but they also know that behind each song is a story and behind each tune is an entire Torah.

If you’re anywhere in Meron when the sun is about to set at the end of Lag B’omer, you can’t escape that special sound rising over the surrounding cacophony — closing the holy day of dancing and music and prayer with notes and niggun that somehow rise above the din. It’s Chilik Frank’s clarinet, and he’s about to launch the final hadlakah — the holy bonfire of the Toldos Aharon Rebbe.

Frank has been playing pretty much straight since the night before, starting with the hadlakah of Boyan and then moving onto the main stage at the tziyun of Rabi Shimon, where for years he’s had the chazakah of playing the first shift in the morning once the music restarts after the haneitz minyanim.

“This is the day I give back, when I basically play 24 hours straight,” he tells Mishpacha. “In between I try to find time for a few kapitlach of Tehillim, but the truth is that on Lag B’omer I daven through my clarinet more than with my mouth.”

But it’s this final podium where Chilik seems to transcend the day with his music. Thousands of travelers to Meron won’t miss the famed Toldos Aharon hadlakah; but what’s the connection between this world-class Breslover clarinetist and the Toldos Aharon Rebbe, leader of Meah Shearim’s most insular community?

“A few years back there was a group of Yerushalmi kano’im who made the Rebbe’s life miserable, attacking him over the subject of the hadlakah in Meron,” Frank relates. “They couldn’t fargin the success of the chassidus in holding this traditional hadlakah that draws tens of thousands of people.

“I’d heard that the Rebbe was planning to cancel the hadlakah that year, so I went in to him. I told the Rebbe that I personally know of hundreds of people who are able to connect to the hilula of Rashbi only in the merit of his hadlakah. How many tears have been shed, how many prayers offered, during this elevated event! I told the Rebbe that rabbanim in Am Yisrael need to lead the tzibbur even if an evil campaign is being waged against them. I told the Rebbe that if he gave up on the hadlakah, it was like he was giving up the leadership. The Rebbe liked my honesty and I think I was able to give him a bit of chizuk in this battle.”

Frank speaks like an ardent chassid, despite the fact that he’s one of the few so intimately associated with Toldos Aharon who aren’t part of their closed kehillah. But the connection between Frank and Toldos Aharon is long-standing and deep. He accompanies many of the community’s events — including the famed Simchas Beis Hashoeivah and the hakafos sheniyos that draw thousands to the large beis medrash at the end of Rechov Meah Shearim.

“They aren’t quick to bring new people in,” he admits, “and that includes musicians.” The community has its own musicians, but from the first time Frank stood on the stage in their beis medrash, he says he felt connected, a special bond formed between him and the Rebbe. “He’s a gadol b’Yisrael, and there is more concealed about him than revealed.”

This past Tu B’Shevat found Frank at the Rebbe’s side in Antwerp — they’d both flown to Belgium for the wedding of one of the Rebbe’s granddaughters to the son of the Shotzer Rebbe of Antwerp.

At the chuppah he played the famed niggun of Rav Michel of Zlotchov, the chuppah niggun of the Ruzhiner Rebbe, “Daled Bavos” of Chabad, and “Kah Echsof” of Karlin. And at the final dance, as the Rebbe embraced his grandson, Frank’s clarinet wailed the niggun of the Sixth Hakafah of Toldos Aharon, the song most identified with the Rebbe.

“Every wedding is a responsibility, especially one between rebbes. But because I feel very close to the Rebbe and the chassidus, for me there’s also a lot of emotion and excitement as well,” Chilik told me at the time. I’d been tagging along with him for months, getting a feel for the various audiences throughout Israel and around the world who are drawn to him.

Out of the Darkness

Fact is, that while Chilik treasures his personal relationship with the Toldos Aharon Rebbe, it’s just one facet of this broad-based musician who’s found his comfort zone all over the Jewish spectrum — who’s managed to create a bridge to all types of Yidden.

A concert I attended with Chilik in the yishuv of Beit El before Purim was more like a chassidic farbrengen than a show. Hundreds of residents of the town had switched off their phones and were sitting quietly, waiting for the microphone to be switched on, when Chilik, clarinet in hand, began to speak.

“Who is Amalek?” he asks and immediately answers, “Amalek is the one who is trying to subjugate us to a reality of darkness and depression. And we don’t let him. We come out stronger from this encounter with Amalek. For most of us, Purim is a day of boundless joy. A day when we drink and become inebriated and forget ourselves. But surely each one of you has once asked himself: What does it mean for me? True, they hanged Haman, we erase Amalek, but what does this whole story have to do with me? How does this connect to my personal life?

“The answer is that Amalek is inside each and every one of us. And the war with Amalek continues all the time. Every single hour, every moment that a Yid lives here, he is fighting the war with Amalek, and this Amalek brings along a lot of darkness and depression. We try to serve Hashem with joy and love, but when it’s a bit hard for us, Amalek appears and tries to drag us into the darkness.”

And then Chilik brings the clarinet to his lips, and the notes of Breslov’s Purim dveikus niggun fill the air. No one remains indifferent. They’re all swaying in unison as the niggun seems to float over the large hall.

“Throughout the year, we look for reasons to love Hashem, because He gives us children, parnassah, happiness,” Chilik tells the crowd. “If it doesn’t go, we can grumble and be angry. But on Purim we’re above this logic. Suddenly you’re able to discover how much you love HaKadosh Baruch Hu, without any vested interests.”

Later, Chilik tells me how he stopped working on Purim, even though the phone rings off the hook for jobs on that day. “There were years when I did take jobs, but I realized pretty early on that I couldn’t absorb the holiness of the day if I were working. No sum of money in the world was worth giving that up.”

I look around at the crowd, most of them residents of Beit El and a few from nearby yishuvim. Yet they all know the man with the clarinet well. In Jerusalem, some people still know him as Reb Yechiel Meir Frank, but here he is simply Chilik — and they’ve come to hear him play, but they also know that behind each song is a story and behind each tune is an entire Torah.

“Chilik is part of the cultural and Torah scenery here,” explains Beit El veteran Giora Weiss, a close friend of Frank who’s also become his chavrusa. “There is no one who can unite between various sectors like he does. The people here know that when Chilik comes, it’s much more than music — it’s Torah and chassidus and lots of Yiddishkeit. And who doesn’t like Yiddishkeit?”

Weiss first brought Frank to Beit El about 15 years ago, after meeting him at a Simchas Beis Hashoeivah in Toldos Aharon, which is attended by all types, including many knitted-kippah wearers. “He stood playing on the bimah, near the Rebbe, and he simply captivated me. So I asked to meet him, and we’ve been close ever since. We learn chassidus every day together.”

Coffee with the Creator

For Chilik, music and chassidus are one package. “The Baal Shem Tov taught that a person has a mission to disseminate chassidus everywhere.” Most people identify him as a musician as opposed to a mashpia, but there is a chassidus shiur in his home every morning, right after the haneitz minyan, where he teaches Likutei Moharan and Tikkunei Zohar. Afternoons find him in a kollel in the Breslover shul near his home in Jerusalem’s Mekor Baruch neighborhood, and then there’s an hour of hisbodedus.

“I can’t get through a day without speaking to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Every day, one hour,” he says. “A daily meeting with HaKadosh Baruch Hu. I prepare a cup of black coffee, go up to the women’s section of the shul and sit down for a conversation with Hashem. It’s the easiest thing in the world. A cup of coffee with the Creator.”

In between his music and shiurim, Frank helps his wife raise their 15 children, bli ayin hara.

“There is no greater joy than that,” he says. “I see homes with four or five children and the parents are going crazy raising them. But there’s no more powerful experience that having such a tribe growing up in your house. It’s intense.”

Frank, 40, was born in Bnei Brak to a family connected to the communities of the Old Yishuv. His great-grandfather was the rav of Jerusalem, Rav Tzvi Pesach Frank, and while he was raised in a Breslover family, the genealogy tree has branches extending to Vizhnitz and other groups as well.

“The connection to music was always there,” he says. “My mother plays accordion in preschools, and there was always chassidic music playing at home. One of my uncles is Reb Chaim Welcher, a musician who was in the Vizhnitz choir for many years. He had an old clarinet at home, and one day I asked my mother to get it for me.”

Chilik began studying music with Roman Kuntzman, a baal teshuvah with a global music reputation, but that wasn’t his original source of parnassah — after his marriage he move to Jerusalem and began working as a melamed in a Talmud Torah. “I never imagined making a living from music,” he relates, “until one day a good friend, a Toldos Aharon chassid, invited me to come and play at their Simchas Beis Hashoeivah.”

Chilik broke through the glass ceiling of “chassidic artist” more than a decade ago, when he established the Halev Vehama’ayan (The Heart and the Well) choir, which brought authentic Jewish music to places distant from Yiddishkeit.

“The goal was good,” he relates. “The choir was born out of a real need to bring high quality original Jewish music to the broader public. We took the most authentic music, rearranged it a bit, and brought it out front to the Israeli music stage.”

Chilik worked together with contrabass player Naor Carmi, who does the arrangements for the choir, and they generated a new type of music. The songs of Halev Vehama’ayan were the first sparks on the way to igniting the Israeli mainstream through Jewish-Israeli music.

“We came from a place of trying to reach out,” Frank relates. “We wanted to make good Jewish music, and through it, to appeal to the hearts of the masses. At first we felt that it was really working. Tens of thousands of Israelis were exposed to this music. Through music, we believed, it is possible to have a great influence on the human soul.”

But then Chilik had a change of heart. “It took me time to realize that music alone, in and of itself, is not able to make the difference. It perhaps can penetrate the heart, but it cannot generate real change. Change needs communication. Music can help, but it is not the main thing. The content needs to be at the center.

“In many events, with famous secular artists, they asked me to come and play, but they didn’t agree to let me talk to the audience,” he continues. “And that bothered me, because if I couldn’t have a dialogue with the audience about Judaism and chassidus, then what was the point of the music? So I’ve pretty much stopped with events for the general public. Here and there I still do shows, but only on my terms — meaning that I be able to speak and infuse the music with content. The music by itself isn’t enough.”

It sounds a bit defeatist from someone so closely identified with authentic chassidic music, but Frank explains that being selective gives his performances more real value. I recently accompanied him to Heichal Hatarbut in Maaleh Adumim, where he performed for a mixed religious-secular audience who’d come for a chazzanus evening.

“You know, in the last few years I’ve seen how there’s a need for outreach in our own kehillos no less than a need to draw close our secular brothers in Tel Aviv,” he tells me as I accompany him backstage. “You don’t have to go out to find broken souls. There are so many right around us. And when you create a spiritual musical experience for them, it has an effect.

“Today the chareidi public isn’t satisfied — people are all looking for more spiritual experiences,” he continues. “That’s why you see thousands coming to Simchos Beis Hashoeivah, thousands going to Meron and so forth. When I was a boy, there were maybe 200 people at the hadlakah in Meron. Today there are tens of thousands. The public is thirsty, they want the spiritual experience, and maybe I can help give some of it to them through music. Today, for me, this is more of a burning mission than standing on a stage in Tel Aviv and trying to penetrate the depths of a heart that is completely disconnected from Yiddishkeit.”

Two Players

Frank hasn’t kept his musical vision to himself. One of his sons plays violin and has begun joining him professionally in shows. Two other sons are drummers, another plays saxophone, and another a guitar. No one’s taken up clarinet, though.

“Well, you can’t force a person to play a particular instrument,” he says. “In Soviet Russia it was like that. I have a good friend, Reuven Ben Channan, a violinist from Russia. He wanted to play the saxophone his entire life, but they forced him to play the violin. So he became a professional violinist, but it’s really against his nature.”

Chilik says he doesn’t believe in putting his children in boxes, but in his home, it’s hard not to pick up his passion for chassidus. “I have at home an archive of 1,500 seforim that touch on every area related to chassidus, from its history and development to its profound and timeless Torah study,” he says, explaining that that passion led him to organize trips to kivrei tzaddikim in Europe.

What began as a private initiative with a few friends became an anticipated event for Jews all over. These trips, on which Frank serves as a guide, are enriched by the world of music. “During these trips, I give over the history accompanied by my clarinet. It becomes a truly emotional and spiritual experience, for other participants — and maybe mostly for me.”

One of the most meaningful trips that Frank leads each year is for the parents of children who attend Seeach Sod — the flagship institution for children with special needs, autistic children, and boys and teens who have various disabilities.

The connection between Chilik Frank and Seech Sod was forged through his own challenge with one of his daughters, who has suffered from severe autism since birth.

“A parent raising other children at home who needs to deal with a child with special needs, copes with an unimaginable difficulty,” Chilik says. “And so Rabbi Shimon Levy, the director of Seeach Sod, opened separate group living apartments for young men and women, and I can’t describe to you what a salvation it is for families.

“But the bottom line is that HaKadosh Baruch Hu sends every person in the world his tikkunim,” he continues. “This is my tikkun and her tikkun. HaKadosh Baruch Hu surely knows what he is doing. I never had any questions or doubts on the subject. Like my other children, I love her dearly and have brought her into my music world. She loves music and gets very excited when I play, so I’m trying to fulfill the mission that has been given to me in the best possible way.”

Because, he says, it’s all part of the same package. At the end of the day, is Chilik Frank an onstage celebrity bent on buttressing his career even further, or is he one to focus on a more transcendent version of talent and fame?

“I think that any artist who is a yerei Shamayim copes every single moment with the question of his exposure,” Chilik admits. “Rebbe Nachman of Breslov says that there are two types of musicians — one is a rasha and one is kosher. To hear a niggun from the latter is beneficial and good for avodas Hashem, while the former can harm one’s avodas Hashem. But Rebbe Nachman then explains that it’s really not two people, but rather the same musician who hold inside himself these two personas. What Rebbe Nachman means is that it’s a question of where your head is when you play. Where are you? In the money and the honor, or truly connected to the song and the event? I think that the audience feels it. The Western world is built entirely on money and ego, honor and glory.

“Look, I’m no tzaddik. This struggle is constant. It’s there every second of my work. There are times that I tell myself, ‘Wow, what a successful event, I really brought the house down,’ and then I immediately have to work on myself and remember that I’m just a conduit. Nothing comes from me. I’m actually just like the instrument itself — no one appreciates it or thinks it’s very special. I am the vessel to convey the niggun. To open the heart and draw Jews closer, through music, to their Father in Heaven.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 708)

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