Shlomo Simcha and his seven brothers pay musical tribute to their father

Photos: Family archives

For any aspiring singer, creating a music video to accompany a single or new album is a rite of passage on the often-difficult journey toward stardom. And truth be told, music clips are ten-a-penny these days, with many being released each week.

But one recent production stands out, both for its charm and its message. While this wasn’t a debut album for British-born veteran Jewish music star Shlomo Simcha Sufrin (that happened back in 1993 with “That Special Melody”), he and his seven brothers recently released an inspiring and visually stunning video of Yigal Calek’s 1974 Pirchei Yerushalayim classic “Kan Tzipor” about the mitzvah of shiluach hakein, the Torah’s directive to send away the mother bird before taking her young or her eggs. With a technology-generated animated background and motion graphics of mountains, waterfalls, and fields, the voices of all of these musically-talented siblings blend in sweet harmony.

Yet that’s not why eight busy brothers across three continents — involved in business, rabbanus, shlichus, chazzanus, and Jewish music — got together for Shlomo Simcha’s latest production. Shlomo Simcha has released ten solo albums and has collaborated or been featured on at least two dozen more in his nearly three-decades-long career, but this one is different: It’s a family video created as a tribute to their father, Rabbi Mordechai Sufrin a”h, a fiery Yid and legendary mechanech — and someone who had a strong affinity for the special mitzvah of shiluach hakein, often having witnessed miraculous results through it. Rabbi Sufrin passed away five years ago on parshas Ki Seitzei, the sedrah in which the mitzvah appears.

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It was Rabbi Sufrin’s first day teaching at King David High School in Manchester. The class was a challenging bunch with a dubious reputation of dispatching their teachers within the first couple of days.

But today, pondered the principal, something seemed different. The usual stream of delinquent pupils making their way to his office hadn’t materialized, and neither had the teacher turned up to quit. What was wrong?

Looking through the classroom window, an unreal scene met his eyes. The students were all sitting crossed legged on their desks, Chumashim in hand, listening in rapt attention to their teacher, Rabbi Sufrin — who was also sitting crossed legged on his desk.

Shaking his head in disbelief, the principal looked forward to speaking with the new recruit during recess, eager to hear his method for winning over the kids and calming the unrest that had become the norm in that classroom.

“I walked in,” Rabbi Sufrin later told the principal, “and the kids were all sitting cross legged on their desks. They were ‘trying it on’ with me on my first day. So I figured I’d play their game by sitting on my desk and teaching them that way.”

Anyone who knew Rabbi Mordechai Sufrin wouldn’t be surprised. He was a larger-than-life personality — a walking encyclopedia, an energetic pubic speaker, and above all, a man for whom chinuch and spreading Yiddishkeit with indefatigable passion, humor, and unending originality was his life’s calling.