More than Bar Yochai

Lag B’omer is a day that every decent musician can get a local booking if he wants, yet as he’s done for the past three decades, Kirshenbaum is this year again deferring other lucrative offers in order to play in Meron. “I could never be mevater on Rabi Shimon,” he says.

This year an estimated half a million people are converging on Meron, and every bus and vehicle for miles around is under the strict jurisdiction of the Transportation Ministry. But Kirshenbaum remembers those days, maybe 40 years ago, when he could drive his car all the way up to the tziyun and bask in the music of world-renowned klezmer musician Moussa Berlin. Moussa, 78, still plays the first set at the beginning of the night, “but back then, he was the star of Meron. I dreamed that one day I’d be able to play alongside him.”

Back in the 1940s and ’50s, the righteous men of Eretz Yisrael would travel to Meron bringing with them refreshments — thermoses of tea, jugs of petel syrup, and boxes of biskvitim — for the crowd of worshippers who came to sing, dance, and pray on Rabi Shimon’s hilula.

“These were the people who carried on the tradition of Meron niggunim,” says Kirshenbaum. “People think the extent of Meron music is ‘Bar Yochai’ and ‘Amar Rabi Akiva,’ but it goes so much further, to the niggunim of the talmidim of the Baal Shem Tov, of the tzaddikim. The mekubal Asher Zelig Margolis brought his niggun, and others brought their special niggunim too. Back then the main player was a tzaddik nistar named Avraham Segal. He worked as a porter at the Haifa docks, and on Lag B’omer he would come to Meron with his clarinet — he played klezmer music like no one else in Israel.”

On Lag B’omer 1952, when Moussa Berlin — whose father was a Modzitzer chassid — was 14, he traveled from his home in Tel Aviv to Meron and was so taken by Avraham Segal’s music that he decided to teach himself clarinet. A few years later he was playing at Segal’s side, and in 1973 he succeeded Segal as lead clarinetist there.

Today Berlin — the king of klezmer who over the years has performed in venues around the world and has released dozens of albums — is still the undisputed senior figurer on the Meron bandstand, accompanied by other musicians who’ve been around for decades. There’s Reb Avraham Noach Bender on organ, David Tzvi Weinkrantz on accordion — he was a musician and composer playing backup for Shlomo Carlebach and others when Moussa Berlin recruited him for the small Meron orchestra — and clarinetist Binyamin Berzesky.

Berzesky, who’s in his 60s, remembers going to Meron with his grandfather, the famous Breslover chazzan Rav Yaakov Berzesky, and being enthralled with the musicians. When he was a teenager learning in the Lelover yeshivah, he got hold of a clarinet and taught himself to play the niggunim he’d picked up in Meron. One year on 7 Adar — the yahrtzeit of Moshe Rabbeinu and a traditional day of festivity in Meron — there was no clarinetist to be found, but someone there noticed Binyamin and said, “Look, there’s Yaakov Berzesky’s grandson — he knows how to play the clarinet!” From then on, he too became one of the Meron regulars.

Together with them is the gravelly, Yerushalmi “voice of Meron” — Reb Meir Blau, who’s been singing “Bar Yochai” for the last 50 years — the singer with the Badatz hechsher, with the voice of Meah Shearim. He might not be professionally trained, but his voice gets everyone up and dancing.

Overcrowded

As the years passed, it seemed like every bochur who knew how to hold a clarinet wanted a chance to play for Rabi Shimon. Of course, there were super talents like popular clarinetist Chilik Frank, who said that from the time he was a child going to Meron with his father, he would stand by the bandstand entranced, promising himself that one day he’d be up there too. When he was 18, he actualized his dream, playing alongside Moussa Berlin and Avremele Cheshin.

There were other talented players who took their rightful place as well; but there were also dozens, perhaps hundreds of others, who weren’t Chilik Frank, yet dreamed of their half-hour of fame playing for the dancing throngs. The small bandstand became packed with people waiting their turn to play — often discordantly, ruining the smoothness of the music as they tried to accompany the more professional musicians.

One year klezmer virtuoso Giora Feidman, who’s not religious, came to Meron on Lag B’omer to see what the music was all about, and he actually made a parody recording of it — with every note screechy and off-key.

Nachman Cohen, a Breslover chassid and professional keyboard player and accordionist whose band specializes in Meron-style klezmer music all year round, was 14 when he went up to the bandstand for the first time.

“I was dying to play, and at that time they would let everyone go up,” he says. “It was like a talent show. Anyone who could turn on an organ or knew what side of the clarinet was up was allowed to play. If you were good, they let you stay an extra five minutes. If you were really good, they let you play half an hour. I’m sure Rabi Shimon was enjoying all the energy that went into this makeshift music being played in his honor, but anyone with a musical ear would leave with a headache.”

That was 15 year ago. But a few years later, an organist named Yechiel Brichta decided to make seder. Brichta, an Amshinover chassid who today is menahel of Beitar’s Yiddish Breslov cheder, was still a bochur at the time, but took the initiative to finally make some changes.

“It became intolerable,” he says. “The stage was mobbed. Everyone pushing and shoving and trying for their turn at the microphone. They did give a little more kavod to the ‘old guard’ and let them play without pushing them off the stage, but the backup accompaniment was usually awful.”

So Brichta began to make lists and rosters, slowly weeding out the amateurs and creating schedules for the professionals. Everyone would be given a slot and every musician would be placed into a proper band, so that, for example, ten clarinetists wouldn’t be playing at once, but would be connected to a group playing at a fixed time. The new system took a few years to catch on and met with no small amount of resistance from all those klezmer wannabes, but today the Meron musicians — and the hundreds of thousands of celebrants who are treated to 24 hours of nonstop professional music — are grateful.

Ten professional bands are playing this year in Meron, and each of them has a slot, although certain times have been fixed for years. The “chazakah” players — the longtime musicians who’ve been part of the Lag B’omer landscape for decades — play after the main hadlakah, followed by Chaim Kirshenbaum, who always takes the 2 a.m. to haneitz slot; and Chilik Frank always plays from 7 to 10 a.m.

Still, maybe something special and spontaneous got lost along the way to the more organized system, admits Sruli Ginzburg, who this year is in charge of recruiting, scheduling, and vetting bands and musicians. “All week bochurim have been calling me because they want to play,” he says. “So I ask them, ‘Have you ever played professionally? Have you ever played with a band?’ and the answer is invariably, ‘Of course not, I’m still in yeshivah!’ So I say, ‘Call back when you have a little more experience.’ I feel bad — why say no? Why not give him a chance to play and make him feel great? But it’s not just one — there are hundreds of these boys, and no one wants the situation reverting back to the way it was.”

The Greatest Merit

Although a younger generation has come onto the Meron music scene, in a way these players are just an extension of their role models, the vintage Meron musicians.

“I’ve been coming to Meron since I was a kid,” says Nachman Cohen. “I would always make sure to be there at 4 a.m. in order to catch Chaim Kirshenbaum’s amazing music. And now for the last few years I’ve been playing backup for him, which is a huge zechut for me.”

Cohen plays during the day as well with his own band, together with fellow Breslovers and longtime jam-session friends Avraham Balti on clarinet, guitarist Nachman Helbitz, and drummer Shalom Steinberg. (“Why are so many Breslovers musicians?” he asks, and then answers his own question: “For the last 20 years people are going to Uman, and the Ukrainians sell the Jews cheap instruments. By the time I was a teenager, my father had brought me back two clarinets and an accordion.”)

“You’re up all night and you’re tired, but you just get swept away by the energy and your hands go on autopilot,” he says. And like the other bands that play in Meron, they forgo the lucrative Lag B’omer bookings for the merit of playing for Rabi Shimon’s hilula. Not every musician is drawn to it, but for those who are, it’s their most elevated event of their year.”

Steinberg too has long-standing roots in Meron. His older brother Chaim Steinberg, a Yerushalmi wedding drummer, has been in charge of both the sound system and the drums for the last 30 years, and it’s become a bit of a family business to go up the week before Lag B’omer to set up the system. Shlomo was just a kid, but would stand by the bandstand for hours watching his brother and the others, and, having done a little drumming himself, one year decided to join the crush of bochurim waiting for a turn to play.

“I didn’t think I was so great,” he says, “but I saw that the others who went before me were even worse. They were trying to play back-up for Meir Adler and he was really getting exasperated. Then I went up and started playing, and he said to me, ‘Hust mir geratevt [You saved me].’”

Meron on Lag B’omer is the one place where you can still hear authentic Jewish music, says Chaim Kirshenbaum, and somehow, the clarinet is an integral part of that. Some people even keep collections of recordings they made from years back. “Last year as I was making my way up the mountain,” says Kirshenbaum, “there was an American who recognized me. ‘Oh, Chaim, it’s you!’ he said excitedly. ‘Can you play that set you played in 1991?’

“People come from all over the world to bask in this music, and although it’s so different from the postmodern digital sound, there’s a certain longing, a certain bikush for it. What do kids today know? Push a button and you get harmony. Push another button and you get an amazing intro or finale. Today they try to impose pop and rock on Jewish music, but it doesn’t work on the essential level. It’s kilayim. This year I’m flying straight from Meron to England, and they begged me, ‘bring the music of Rabi Shimon with you.’

“I once played in Lizhensk to a goyishe audience as part of the Krakow Jewish Festival,” Kirshenbaum continues. “We played for two hours and they wouldn’t let us finish — they kept begging for encores. They recognized there was something special in the neshamah of this music. Maybe they couldn’t define it, but I’ll tell you what it is: When the beat, the boom-boom, is the dominant part of the music, it awakens the animalistic desires and makes the person want to feed his animal soul through unholy behaviors. But the clarinet, the violin, those are instruments of the spirit that cause the spiritual side to soar.”

No Expectations

Levi Yitzchak Meorer, a guitarist with the exclusive Menagnim band, is a relative newcomer to the Meron stage, although as a Breslover, he’s been coming to Meron as far back as he can remember. Menagnim played in Meron for the first time last year (bandleader Shalom Wagshall was making a chalakah for his son), and this year Meorer is back, playing together with Nachman Cohen’s group.

“It’s not always easy to come to Meron,” he admits. “There are so many meniyot — the crowds, the heat, the shlep with the buses and the shuttles. Sometimes you battle the crowds, get to the tziyun, go back, and then you’re back on the bus and you don’t feel anything. I used to feel depressed about that, but now I look at it differently — today I understand that it’s not about you and your spiritual mood, but about being with the tzaddik. People blame the crowds, the matzav, ‘I schlepped all this way and in the end there were too many people, too much noise, too messy’ — people come with many expectations that are often not fulfilled.

“But once I started to play, the whole feeling was different. When I play at a simchah, a lot of the mood depends on if I make the atmosphere. Here, the atmosphere makes you. We’re not ‘up there’ on the stage, we’re part of everyone, and every person who comes to Meron is one big connected soul.”

Nachman Cohen agrees. “Everyone is either dancing or saying Tehillim or davening for yeshuot, and you’re just the backdrop to all that. It’s not about you at all, not about your performance or your ego. You’re just a facilitator, and it’s a zechut to be up there providing the accompanying music to this intense crowd. It energizes me for the whole year.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 611)