Always vigilant when it came to community Kinnory looked out for underprivileged children who were struggling — whether with difficult family situations or with social issues — and sought to give them hope through song. A longtime RBS resident Kinnory had established the Kol B’Ramah boys choir and nothing gave him more satisfaction than watching children begin to blossom with the self-confidence and positivity that a choir can instill.

Kinnory wasn’t looking for additional projects but Melamed prevailed. “He knew this would be a way to mekarev levavot to enhance the unity of our community” says Kinnory.

They held their first practice with one first tenor one second tenor a baritone and a bass. Chazzan and RBS resident Nachie Rybak was at the helm.

Still it was a choir of amateurs. “Many of the original members didn’t know how to read notes” Kinnory explains “but it was kehillati — it created a warm camaraderie among the community and that was the goal.”

With the choir up and running Melamed once again approached Kinnory. “What about the children?” he asked. He felt the choir could give struggling neighborhood children a voice.

“Children were always welcomed to Bnei Hayeshivos” Rabbi Seltzer director of his own Shira Chadasha choir explains. “Both Shalom and Yuval are extremely caring involved people. Yuval practically adopts children from difficult situations. He sits them on his bench in shul. He learns with them. And Shalom had been helping children for years.”

Harmony & Popcorn

And so, the Halelu Choir incorporated both the sounds of sweet children and the mature harmonies of adults who loved to sing. At first, the newly formed choir performed in shul only once or twice a year, but the shul members loved it. More than that, the choir members loved being part of the experience. It was creative, unifying, and energizing. Practice was a homey affair, where members schmoozed, ate popcorn, and sang.

“I had a friend in the choir who was working on me to join,” says choir member Baruch Bergenfeld, an electrical engineer as well as a professional-level opera singer who has a recording studio in Ramat Beit Shemesh. “I did and immediately became addicted. It was a wonderful way to use the skills I’d acquired for avodas Hashem and a way for me to infuse new meaning into my tefillah. And it’s a great bunch of guys — true, we’re all from different backgrounds and might have different hashkafos, yet we all feel like brothers. There’s a lot of warmth.”

As the choir expanded its members and repertoire, the shul grew with it. The machsan soon overflowed, as did an apartment, and eventually the shul relocated to Yeshivas Avi Ezri’s eighth-grade beis medrash. Meanwhile, Halelu kept practicing, and soon invitations from other local shuls trickled in.

Why Limit Ourselves?

And then the choir received an invitation to perform in Har Nof — their first invite out of RBS.

It was after that success that choir member Tomer Levy had an idea. Born in South Africa and son of the rabbi of a small shul outside of Johannesburg, Levy grew up as the bochur who could do it all when there was no one else to go to the amud. “It was a small kehillah, and as the members became more frum, they moved away,” Levy says. “It started with a leining here and there, but ended with me filling in as the shaliach tzibbur.”

Levy, who regularly hosts choir practice (“It isn’t the same, practicing in a cold, commercial space. As Shalom says, the Nespressos, couches, and camaraderie have a big hand in keeping the choir going”), understood the choir’s potential and asked one question. Why limit ourselves?

At that point the choir’s highlight was Shabbos Shirah, but Levy had a plan — it was time to go big. Shabbos Shirah, he reasoned, belonged to the entire community, not just Bnei Hayeshivos. He spoke to Yuval Melamed about moving the choir to a broader venue for the entire Shabbos davening.

With the municipality’s help, Melamed procured the Matnas G’vanim of RBS for Shabbos Shirah of 2015 and prepared for 250 people. “We had amazing feedback from the Shabbos Shirah at our shul,” Shalom Kinnory remembers. “So this time we decided to bring in a chazzan as well and see what would happen. I honestly didn’t know if there would be a minyan aside from the choir.”

Five hundred people turned up from all parts of Beit Shemesh.

Melamed unlocked additional rooms to try accommodate the overflow. A hundred people were turned away.

“People were thirsting for a davening with heart, with soul, with song,” Melamed says. “The achdus was amazing. And it wasn’t simply a choir. People came to hear the tefillah, to daven.”

Melamed says the choir fills another void. “The outside world offers so much entertainment. Here it is much more difficult. This is b’toch hageder. I’m happy people can come and enjoy something kosher and joyful.”

After that, things began to spiral. Shmaya Reichman, a first tenor in the choir, invited Eli Jaffe, well-known conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra and one of the leading conductors in the chazzanus world, to a Thursday night rehearsal.

“And he liked us,” says Kinnory. “Maybe it was the popcorn.”

“You guys are great! Come sing with me at Beit Knesset Hagadol in Yerushalayim,” Jaffe urged.

The men looked at one another. Sing in the Great Synagogue? The shul where the greats perform? We’re amateurs, they thought.

Then, with the light streaming through the stained glass windows on King George Street, under the sweeping ceiling of the vast shul, the choir sang.

“And people cried,” Melamed says. “They were really moved. There’s something about our singing that resonates. I think it has to do with the fact that we’re like family. Everyone cares about each other and people feel that. Also, the function of our music is tefillah, not a cantorial concert. We’re very careful not to repeat words, and when we say the words we mean them.”

After hearing a performance, chazzan Avraham Kirschenbaum, the young cantor of the Jerusalem Great Synagogue, decided to join himself. “He believes in the choir’s message. He doesn’t do it for the money,” Melamed explains. “None of us do. Every once in a while we just get our expenses covered.”

Notes of Connection

Then came the next invitation. Chazzan Kirshenbaum introduced the choir to Raymond Goldstein, premier contemporary chazzanus arranger. Goldstein liked their sound and spoke to Chazzan Simon Cohen, who reached out to them. Would the Halelu Choir like to sing with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra at the Jerusalem Theatre?

“We would like to have 50 singers in this choir,” Chazzan Simon Cohen told Melamed. “Which choir would you like to sing with?”

“There are better choirs out there,” Kinnory explains. “But we have something you can’t get from studying theater or voice — our choir gives off vibes of achdus. Worrying about one another, sharing in each other’s simchahs, supporting one another through difficult times — you hear it in our singing. That’s the feedback we get.”

So the choir’s answer was: We’d like to sing with our members alone.

And it seems to have been the right decision.

“What a kiddush Hashem you made,” Eli Jaffe told them at the curtain’s close. “You stand there — true chareidim with a tzurah — and show that you can be religious and at the same time give true music to the world.”

“There are other choirs that may have more professional singers,” Melamed says, “but many of the members are not religious, and so the words mean nothing to them. Plus, they don’t really know the people they’re singing with. I believe our connection to both is what people feel.”

The Perfect Sound

Halelu continued to improve, and some members even joined Naftali Herstick’s Tel Aviv Cantorial Institute. The choir took another step forward with the addition of a new member last year — Netanel Neuman, son of famed Israeli singer and later English chazzan Shalom Neuman. Netanel, a natural bass singer who had studied music for ten years and who has made his home in RBS, quickly took that spot on the roster, and then did more.

A superior sight reader, composer, and an arranger, Neuman began transcribing the choir’s pieces, while the group began focusing on notes and the new, more complicated five-part harmonies. With his help, the choir built up its repertoire, going from practicing single songs to conquering numerous new pieces in a short amount of time.

“Our chazzan, Avreimi Kirschenbaum, and members Shmaya Reichman and Avreimi Cohen introduced the choir to the arrangements of Raymond Goldstein. They are truly beautiful, complicated pieces,” says Neuman.

Then came a Shabbos with chazzan Yaakov Motzen, followed by a cantorial-studded, sold-out Pesach performance at the Waldorf Astoria.

Follow the Music

This Shabbos Shirah will be even bigger than the last. With corporate sponsor Yesodot Tzur Builders on board, a sports center will be completely transformed into a proper shul and over a thousand people are expected. They will walk in from Beit Shemesh’s Sheinfeld neighborhood, cross over from the kiryah chareidit, and even spend Shabbos in Beit Shemesh from Jerusalem and other cities.

The following week, the choir will take their sound and message across the ocean, to two different shuls in London, ending with a gala Motzaei Shabbos concert together with world-renowned chazzanim.

“Yuval is on a mission that fills a serious need in the community,” says Rabbi Seltzer. “The shul and choir are really intertwined. The shul provides achdus in the neighborhood and the choir fosters and spreads that achdus beyond. This Shabbos Shirah you’ll see shtreimels, spodiks and kippah serugahs. Some will have walked over an hour to get there, all united by this musical thing that’s going on. If you’re there, you won’t just be hearing music — you’ll be hearing achdus.”  —

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 647)

Hear the choir here!