“Throughout the years Dovid was sick whenever he was home and had the energy we would record him singing because we knew his music was so special ” says Reb Yonason. “This wasn’t about preserving his memory with advanced planning because we always hoped and prayed that he would survive. Had he lived we would also have created the disc. This is holy music music from the depths of the soul from a little boy wise beyond his years who understood that Hashem was holding his life in the balance. Why shouldn’t everyone benefit from it?”

While five of the songs are arranged over Dovid’s own voice the harmonies and the rest of his compositions are sung by his 22-year-old brother Ari who in the family spirit of neginah is a sought-after vocalist on the Israeli simchah circuit. For Ari singing his brother’s songs is more than just keeping the voices in the family — it’s a sacred mission.

“For me this is so much more than a disc ” says Ari. “This is Dovid’s life. His legacy. And it’s like I’m representing him becoming his voice to the world. It’s a strange thing with all this technology — on one hand I’m doing a voice-over and it feels like he’s singing right here with me and on the other hand it’s like an illusion of his presence that keeps us from fully separating. But maybe that’s the point — maybe there’s really no separation after all.”

Dovid began writing music together with a young man named Yisrael Gavra, a yeshivah bochur at the time who spent his free hours volunteering in Hadassah Ein Kerem’s children’s hematology ward. Yisrael spent the time reading stories and learning Torah with the stricken children, escorting them on trips, and taking over shifts to relieve exhausted parents.

“I became close to Dovid before I knew anything about his musical abilities,” Yisrael remembers. “We would speak a lot, and I was amazed at this eight-year-old boy’s wisdom and maturity. And then one day I heard him sing. He had the voice of an angel.”

The next time Yisrael visited Dovid, he told his young friend that he’d once composed a niggun and asked him if he could sing it. “It was a pretty abstract tune,” says Yisrael, “and I don’t have the greatest voice — so it was actually amazing that he was able to pick up the tune at all, but he caught on to all the transitions right away. I said to him, ‘Dovid, you’re a natural. You know, you could compose on your own.’ ”

From then on, the two of them collaborated. Yisrael would choose words — pesukim that spoke of faith, hope, healing, overcoming challenges and adversity — and Dovid would give them expression as only someone in a daily battle with the malach hamaves can.

“We were sitting together in Hadassah, Dovid hooked up to tubes and needles dripping chemo into his fragile veins, and I told him, ‘Dovid, let’s open the siddur and daven with a new niggun. It won’t only be a tefillah for your refuah sheleimah, but for every sick child in the ward.’ Slowly, at first unsure of himself but gaining confidence with every note, Dovid put the words of the brachah of Refa’einu Hashem v’neirafei to song. We recorded it on my phone, played it back, listened again, improved it, until Dovid was satisfied. He couldn’t believe he’d actually composed a niggun.

“Another time,” Yisrael continues, “I suggested, ‘Dovid, even though things don’t look so good now, let’s write a song of thanks to Hashem for healing you.’ He looked up with those eyes full of pure emunah and said, ‘You’re right. We need to prepare a happy song for the seudas hoda’ah.’ By the end of the day Dovid had composed a leibedig niggun to the words ‘Chasdei Hashem azkir tehillos Hashem.’ ”

But there was no seudas hoda’ah, although there were months of reprieve — times when it seemed like the bone marrow transplant he’d undergone with his sister Nechoma as donor would put him into remission for good. Once on a day visit, Dovid was feeling pretty energetic, sitting in the hospital shul between treatments together with Yisrael and his two older brothers, Yosef Chaim and Ari — both of whom are also gifted with beautiful voices — when Yisrael suggested the words of the midrash explaining how Moshe Rabbeinu begged Hashem, “Ribbono shel Olam, asei mimar matok — Hashem, draw sweet from the bitter.” With the brothers drumming on the table to a knee-slapping, hand-clapping dance beat, the song took on a life of its own, in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English.

And then Dovid suffered a relapse. “Yisrael,” he told his friend and mentor one day in the hospital, his body equally ravaged by the disease and the treatments, “now I’m scared.”

Yisrael answered, “Dovid, now you have a chance to give your fear to Hashem. Use the words of Dovid Hamelech, who gave his fear to Hashem and created a tefillah for all generations.”

Dovid began singing the words from Tehillim Chapter 6, words expressing fear and pleading for salvation — “V’nafshi nivhalah me’od… hoshi’eini l’maan chasdecha.” In the end, “V’nafshi” is the song that made Dovid famous, the niggun he sang on the clip that went viral — and the title of the upcoming CD.

A Year of Miracles

When Dovid was 12, his health took a turn for the worse, and his medical team in Eretz Yisrael felt the best place for him would be back at Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan, where he’d had his first bone-marrow transplant and where they could better handle his acute situation. It was just before Pesach when Dovid was transported, accompanied by Yonason (who, as a musician, doesn’t work during Sefirah in any case). The doctors wanted to do a second transplant, but the last debilitating round of chemo had so weakened Dovid that it wasn’t feasible. And then his lungs failed.

Dovid was transferred to Cornell Medical Center, intubated and put into an induced coma, his situation critical. Leah Hill didn’t waste any time — she booked a flight for herself to New York, and arranged tickets for the rest of the family to follow: They’d all relocate and rally around Dovid, no matter where he was, conscious or not.

Leah says she’s still overwhelmed with gratitude for the generosity of individuals and for chesed organizations Chai Lifeline, Bein Ish U’Bein Achiv, and Mekimi, who found a home in Boro Park for the Hills and the eight children who moved together with them, arranged for schools and tuition deferments, provided meals and daily transportation, and established a crew of volunteers to help in all sorts of other ways.

“It turned out to be a year of Divine chesed,” says Leah, “an extra year that Hashem granted us. In the end, my daughter, who was an HLA match and the donor for his first transplant, gave him her stem cells — they couldn’t do a transplant, but they shot her stem cells into him and we just kept hoping and davening.”

And then the miracle happened: after just a day and a half, Dovid’s white blood cells began to grow, and two months later he was out of ICU, fully conscious and back at Sloan’s regular facility nearby.

But instead of being elated, Dovid was distraught. While he was unconscious, the day of his bar mitzvah has passed. How could it be that he’d turned 13 and hadn’t put on tefillin? “Dovid told me that the hardest thing in all these years of challenge was when he woke up and realized he’d missed his bar mitzvah,” says Reb Yonason.

His father assured him that on the day of his bar mitzvah a cadre of volunteers indeed put tefillin on him, but he wasn’t consoled — he thought that because he was in a coma, perhaps he hadn’t fulfilled the mitzvah. To cheer him up, Chai Lifeline coordinated a gala bar mitzvah celebration several weeks later, attended by hospital staff, family, many volunteers, and chassidic entertainers Lipa Schmeltzer and Michoel Schnitzler. Before that, one month after he turned 13, Dovid put on tefillin for the first time with the Skverer Rebbe.

“You should have seen how he sweated putting on those tefillin,” remembers his father. “His muscles had atrophied after two months in a coma and he could barely wind the straps around his skinny arm — he was sweating, but his eyes were beaming.”

Dovid had regained consciousness, but there was one catch: Although he was no longer sedated with a tube going down his throat, the medical team decided to do a tracheotomy, surgically opening the windpipe by creating a hole in the neck, so that in case of another respiratory crisis, his lungs would have immediate access to oxygen.

After a trach — which prevents airflow from reaching and activating the vocal cords — patients have to relearn to talk, and singing is generally out of the question.

“I was scared that Dovid would never talk again, let along sing,” says Leah, “but he figured it out. There’s a way to put a cap on the hole so the air can get pushed to the vocal cords, but Dovid didn’t like it, he didn’t feel like he had enough control. So he figured out how to use his finger to block the hole instead — and amazingly, he even figured out how to sing.”

Dovid’s bar mitzvah year was a time of hope and light. “Dovid was a very happy person and he enjoyed whatever he could out of life,” says Reb Yonason. “He knew what was happening but didn’t have tainehs to Hashem. But you know,  the day before he passed away there was something in his eyes, a different kind of knowledge and vision. He was actually feeling pretty good and we even went out on a boat trip from Seagate with volunteers from Mekimi and Bein Ish U’Bein Achiv, but I knew something changed.”

The next day, Erev Shabbos, he developed an acute infection and was in tremendous pain, barely able to breathe despite the heroic efforts of the staff. But through his intense suffering, he remained unusually calm, undemanding, and accepting. “He didn’t ask for anything,” Leah remembers. And that’s how he passed away.

Neshamah Dance

In a way, the short life of Dovid Hill, the young Skverer chassid who touched the hearts of so many, was a coming full circle for the Hill family. It started back in 1962 when Yonason (Johnny) Hill was a six-year-old boy with a famous father who had made it big on the screen and in the emerging industry of television. That year, Steven Hill took his son to spend Simchas Torah in the presence of the previous Skverer Rebbe, Rav Yaakov Yosef Twersky ztz”l, which ignited the actor’s lifelong connection to the chassidus and a commitment to become Torah-observant. When Steven Hill was once asked what drew him to the Rebbe, he replied that he’d observed many talented dancers, but never someone who was able to dance with his neshamah rather than his body.

For Yonason, that Simchas Torah was also pivotal, although as a little kid, mostly what he remembers was the warmth, the simchah, and the big black boots, a unique element of the Skverer levush. “We lived in Skyview Acres then, a very liberal suburb outside Pomona, about a mile from Skver. My father became transformed, totally dedicated to being frum. He made a shul in the house, built a communal succah, and had a Hebrew teacher come over to learn with us four kids. The Rebbe left a big imprint on me too, giving me a brachah that I would become religious — even though I took a hiatus for 20-something years.”

The Hills divorced when Yonason was eight, and the children went to live with their mother, who, although gracious, wasn’t interested in adopting a religious lifestyle. Meanwhile, Steven Hill remarried and would establish a frum family with five more children. In 1966 he was cast as the leader of an elite covert operations unit in the new TV series “Mission: Impossible,” but he was replaced after the first season, speculatively due to his uncompromising conditions of davening with a minyan and being home for Shabbos. Although the Rebbe didn’t initially advise him to abandon his career, Hill took a ten-year hiatus from acting, settling in Monsey and trying his hand at various ventures, including diamonds and real estate — none of which were especially successful.

“He couldn’t find his niche,” says Reb Yonason, “so the [current] Rebbe told him he could go back to acting under certain conditions.” But it wasn’t simple to break into that competitive field again after a decade’s absence. He started out doing a commercial for nasal spray, then moved into soap operas, and had some roles in film as well. But Hill eventually became most famous for his role as the stern DA on a popular TV series that ran from 1990 to 2000 — his character said to be modeled on Manhattan’s long-serving district attorney Robert Morgenthau. Dick Wolf, creator of the show, once said in an interview that Steven Hill “is the Talmudic influence on the entire spirit of the series. Steven has more moral authority than anyone else on television.”

According to Reb Yonason, his father’s secret was keeping his career separate from his private life. “He’d have Shabbos guests who would try to draw him into a discussion about what would happen in the next episode, or young people who sought his advice about breaking into the field. He’d tell them, ‘It’s a dirty business, better to stay in the beis medrash,’ and end the discussion there. And he was always learning — in the trailer, during breaks in the shooting. He finished Shas three times.”

Reb Yonason says that although his father was considered the “rabbi” of the industry and everyone appreciated his wisdom and integrity, it was no simple matter to touch the hearts of the other secular Jews with whom he was surrounded. “He was actually very close with Dustin Hoffman,” Yonason Hill remembers. “They did some films together, and when Hoffman was starring in a Broadway show, my father went to see him. Afterwards, Hoffman went over to him. ‘Steven,’ he said, ‘You’re a better man than me. You lived your life the way you were supposed to.’ ”

In the early 1980s, the previous Skverer Rebbe’s words were fulfilled, and Yonason, who by that time had become an accomplished musician, decided to reconnect with the Torah he’d been exposed to as a kid. He says one of the most inspirational conversations he had with his father at that time was regarding a million-dollar contract for a movie that the longtime actor turned down. “This was 25 years after he’d already been religious,” says Reb Yonason. “He turned it down because they wanted him to work on Shabbos. I asked him, ‘Dad, why would they try to convince you to do such a thing when they know you haven’t worked on Shabbos in 25 years?’ He said, ‘It wasn’t them, it was just Hashem, giving me another booster shot. Just a little more medicine.’ ”

The Gift

Leah and Yonason moved to Israel 27 years ago, where they’ve raised their large chassidic family as devotees of the Skverer court. Leah is a professional dancer who gives classes and choreographs women’s performances, and Yonason — who spent his first 20 years in Jerusalem learning in yeshivah — is a vocalist and musician who teaches music and plays with Menachem Herman’s band and other groups. When he and his music partner Eliezer Kosoy released an original album, Elyon, in 2011, it caught the attention of English-language listeners — not only because the intriguing compositions stimulate the imagination to connect to growth, yearning, and higher values above and beyond the pressures of the material world, but because they felt it was also how the composer strengthened himself in the face of his son’s critical illness. Surely the song “Keep Your Eye on the Light” is an ode to staying focused in times of crisis:

Keep your eye on the light… Keep your heart on the goal, bring out your soul

Keep your ear to the sound, keep your ear to the song, moving along…

Reb Yonason smiles sheepishly as he says that yes, the song became an anthem of inspiration in times of challenge and has personally helped him through the recent painful stops on his life’s journey, but admits that he actually wrote the first lines years before for a student who was having trouble playing his instrument to the rhythm of the music. Yonason took his metronome with the flashing green light and chanted to his student in the tune that would become popular years later, “Keep your eye on the light…” It’s not as dramatic as writing the song at his son’s hospital bed, but, says Reb Yonason, inspiration comes from all kinds of places. Every blip in our lives is a lesson in our avodas Hashem, even a student who can’t keep the beat.

That’s one reason Reb Yonason is so excited about Dovid’s celebrative CD. A frightened, suffering boy in a hospital room can unwittingly go beyond his own challenges and become a catalyst for inspiration to Jews all over the world.

“You know,” says Leah, “I used to cry out to Hashem in anguish — How could this happen!? How could this super-talented boy with a photographic memory and brilliant mind be relegated to such a fate? This high soul can do so much for Klal Yisrael — How can You take him away?! And then the answer came to me: Hashem gave Dovid this mission, this suffering, this nisayon – we obviously don’t know why, but what we do know is that he used his limited time in This World to give  over a gift to the Jewish People.”

But in the world of studio time and musicians and mixing and production costs, the most precious musical gifts might never be delivered, if there’s no capital investment.

“We’ve been trying to put this together ourselves for a few years already,” Reb Yonason says, “relying on the goodwill of such musical friends as Leib Yaakov Rigler and Jeff Horvich, but how much can you beg people?”

And then, unsolicited, a sponsor appeared — right at their kitchen table.

It was a wealthy woman from Monsey who was close to the Tosher Rebbe, Rav Meshulam Feish Loewy ztz”l of Montreal, considered a tzaddik and baal mofeis. On a visit to the Rebbe before his passing in the summer of 2015, she’d told him that she feels there’s some sort of “master plan” for her related to music, and the Rebbe sent her to Israel — maybe there she would stumble on her mission. When she got to Jerusalem, someone connected her with Yonason Hill because, they said, he does a lot of original, beautiful music. She found the Hills’ apartment on Rechov Ofira, climbed the stairs and knocked on the door — but Reb Yonason was in the back teaching, and so Leah invited her into the kitchen.

“I started to tell her about Dovid,” says Leah. “I showed her pictures and played our demo disc, and she asked if she could take the recording back with her. A few weeks later, the Rebbe’s gabbai called us and said, ‘The Rebbe wants you to know he’s davening for your family, and said to tell you that the music comes straight from the ethereal heichal haneginah.’

“With the help of our new friend from Monsey, sent to us by the Tosher Rebbe, we now have the means to gift Dovid’s message to the world — how a person can mekadesh Sheim Shamayim in the most catastrophic situations; how no matter what, one can keep going and keep hoping, can keep seeing the good and thinking good and teach others to see Hashem’s Goodness and blessings.”

Because as long as the niggun doesn’t end, neither does the light.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 655)