What’s it like to raise a child whose talents have turned him into a Jewish music legend?

When Simcha Leiner was ten years old, he tried to get into his camp’s choir, but was rejected. He was very disappointed. Decades later, his mother, Chavi Leiner, smiles at the memory. “The rejection doesn’t seem to have stopped him…” she says.

“I thought my children were musical like anyone else who was musical,” says Carol Razel, mother of famed singers and composers Yonatan Razel, Aharon Razel, and Ricka Razel-Van Leeuwen, “until my oldest, Yonatan, began high school. They placed him in the regular track for math, instead of the honors track. As a mom with a college degree in mathematics, I was furious. When I asked the principal why Yonatan wasn’t in the higher-level classes, he looked at me and said, ‘Well, your son is an extremely talented musician. I think it would be a pity for him to be doing math homework instead of practicing music.’ That was the first time I understood that what Yonatan had was a real gift.”

World-renowned chazzan Avremi Roth’s parents realized his incredible musical talent when he was all of eight months old. “Avremi was a baby who cried excessively, much more than the average infant. One day, I decided to play music for him. I put on some classical music, and to my surprise, he immediately calmed down,” says his mother, Sarah. “Around that time, we met someone involved in music, and I pointed out that when Avremi cried or babbled, he didn’t sound like a typical baby. The man listened carefully and responded, ‘He has a unique voice.’”

When he was a little older, Avremi’s grandfather would sing him pieces of cantorial music, and after hearing it once or twice, he’d already know it by heart and be able to sing it in his own little voice. By the time he was five, he’d begun learning to play the piano. Since his feet couldn’t reach the pedals, special pedals had to be made for him.

“I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when music entered Yishai’s world,” says Miriam Lapidot, mother of singer Yishai Lapidot. “But even as a young child, he was very interested in music, especially the London Boys’ Choir. He’d line up his younger sisters, organize them into a kind of choir, and teach them to sing together. He even gave this home choir a name — ‘Lapidon.’ ”

Sometimes, a child is a musical prodigy to the extent that not only his parents, but others also notice it. That’s what happened in the case of  solo vocalist and former Zemiros choir director Yoily Polatseck, whose mother, Bashy, says he was singing before his first birthday. Yoily inherited his gifts and finely honed musical sense from both sides of the family. One grandfather was a beloved baal tefillah in Bnei Brak, while a great-grandfather was the famous Satmar composer, baal korei, and baal tefillah, Reb Avrumele Werzberger.

“Yoily joined the Satmar choir when he was just four, singing during Yamim Noraim in the court of the Beirach Moshe on the lap of his Zeida Reb Avrumele, and later on led and composed many of the choir melodies in Satmar-Monsey himself,” says Mrs. Polatseck. “Over the years, he became very close to veteran composer Yossi Green. He once shared a song he’d just composed with Yossi. Yossi turned to him and said, ‘I knew someone who composed the exact same style melodies, and I can quite literally hear him in this piece. His name was Reb Avrumele Werzberger.’ My son began to laugh and said, ‘I knew him, too. He was my great-grandfather!’”