"Oy v’avoy if we don’t change from corona. I thank Hashem because He cleaned me and I came out as a new person”

Photos: Elchanan Kotler

If Mona Rosenblum composed Italian opera instead of Jewish masterpieces, the musical version of his own dramatic last few months would test the most skillful tenor.

February 2020 found the legendary arranger and composer from Bnei Brak on a whirlwind tour of Tel Aviv, London, and New York for a series of dazzling performances in honor of Dirshu’s Siyum HaShas. Roshei yeshivah, chassidic rebbes, and tens of thousands of others focused on his diminutive form and dancing baton as he conducted dozens of instruments and singers through a masterpiece that he’d labored over for two years.

A month later, nobody would get near him.

As the first wave of coronavirus hit Bnei Brak just after Purim, elevated temperature and breathing difficulties sent him to the hospital, into a world of panicked doctors and gasping patients. “The staff was so scared that they wouldn’t take my ID. I was told to walk on my own to an isolated ward, where a disembodied voice directed me to ‘turn right, then left… don’t touch the button!’” he says. “I’ll never forget bed number 13. I felt so alone. I said Shema and Vidui — I felt that I was finished.”

Sitting with his back to the baby grand piano in his spacious Bnei Brak apartment, Mona (Moishe Mordechai) Rosenblum sums it up with an understatement: “It’s been a year of ups and downs.”

Although shaken by his encounter with illness, that “down” didn’t last long. Far from home, and recovering in a corona hotel together with the mix of Jews only a pandemic could have thrown together, Mona’s music — on a borrowed accordion — worked its magic. The shaky smartphone video that emerged shows a white-bearded Yerushalmi nodding along to the Israeli hit “Mi Shemaamin Lo Mefached,” alongside a stocky type getting carried away with “Oooo ayayayay.” There was a message along with the music: “I said to them, ‘Oy v’avoy if we don’t change from corona. I thank Hashem because He cleaned me and I came out as a new person.’ ”

As ever, this man, whose first language seems to be music, has translated his journey into a tune. If the majesty of the Siyum HaShas found expression in a 50-piece symphony performance, his fear and faith led him in a different direction. Drumming on the tabletop, his eyes closed, he hums a folksy tune that he’s just composed: “Eis Tzarah hi LeYaakov,” meaning the suffering of the Jewish people — “umimenah yivasheiah,” he concludes triumphantly, alluding to the eventual salvation.

And glancing up at the large portrait on the wall, this classically trained musician who grew up singing Gerrer marches in postwar Ramat Gan explains what drives his unending creativity, and our generation’s thirst for music.

“The Nadvorna Rebbe once told me, ‘Today we have no Beis Hamikdash and no korbanos, but there’s one thing that remains from then: song. It’s an avodah to sing for Hashem.’ ”