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?”