W

hile he shies away from speaking about his achievements, Avrum Mordche Schwartz can mostly tell you how not to begin a musical career.

“I never thought about performing on stage. I started with singing grammen at the mitzvah tantz at weddings. For chassidim, it’s the most elevated part of the wedding. The seforim hakedoshim teach that this is an especially powerful and sublime time — representing the dance between Klal Yisrael and the Shechinah. And the truth is, it’s also the most moving part of the wedding, when all the guests have gone and only close family remains. These are very intimate moments, and so special for me as well. To take a chassan at one of the most elevated moments of his life and simply sing to him, to open his heart. This is what singing to Hashem means.”

But chassidic music consumers know Avrum Mordche as much more than a wedding grammer. “Lomir Machen Kiddush,” which he composed together with Sruli Lipschitz, and “Kadeish Urchatz” are some of his beloved singles, in addition to four albums of songs composed with Anshie Friedman.

Avrum Mordche was born in Williamsburg and studied in the Satmar cheder, although his parents are Tosher chassidim. He says that when he was little, his family traveled to Montreal at least five times a year to be with the previous Tosher Rebbe ztz”l. Later, he studied in the Nitra yeshivah, but he kept a broad affiliation: He was close to Tosh, Satmar, Nitra, and even Spinka.

“When I was a bochur in yeshivah, there was a yungerman named Malkiel Freedman who used to learn with a lot of the bochurim. He saw I was very musical, and we used to talk music together sometimes. It was Reb Malkiel who introduced me to some of Mona Rosenblum’s albums. The depth of the music was an eye-opener to me, and I listened to those albums over and over.”

Today Avrum Mordche has a connection with Rebbe Elozor Yitzchak Eizik of Spinka, but he still remembers his father, the Toldos Tzvi of Spinka, Rav Shmuel Tzvi (Hersheleh) Horowitz ztz”l, who passed away in 1997.

“Rebbe Hersheleh was a rebbe whose entire being was just pure love for every Jew. A Yid would come with a kvittel, pour out his heart, and that was it. The Rebbe would begin to cry with him. You felt a love greater than any word could convey.”

That’s one reason he so connected to the evocative song “Vurka,” written by Anshie Friedman — recording it as a single last year, accompanied by a meticulously produced clip. The song is about a Yid who receives devastating news from a doctor that his child may not survive. He rushes to the holy tzaddik of Vurka, weeping: “Rebbe, my son is sick and the doctors have given up. Please pray that he will live!” The Rebbe’s eyes close. After a long moment, he informs the father that all the gates of Heaven seem closed. But then, in a quiet, trembling voice, he tells his chassid: “I cannot help the child, but one thing I can do is to cry with you. I can feel your grief and suffering, and I won’t leave you alone. Your tears are my tears.”

The Rebbe cries, the chassid cries even more, and then leaves the house shattered and broken. But the moment he steps outside, the Rebbe receives a message from Heaven. He harnesses his horses and catches up with the chassid, telling him, “The gates of Heaven opened. Healing will come to your child, because our shared tears rose to the Kisei Hakavod.”

“The niggun was written by the incomparable Reb Anshie,” Avrum Mordche says, “but I connected to it, and I even added my own words, which were inspired by Rebbe Hershele. That’s just how he was. He cried with you.”

S

pinka didn’t only give him this niggun, it gave him a door to his newfound calling years back.

“I was newly married, and before the wedding of one of the Rebbe’s sons, there was a seudas ani’im — a feast for the poor — and I was chosen to get up on the table and sing grammen. So that was a really public performance. Someone in the crowd heard me, came over, and said: ‘I’m getting married soon, and you must sing at my wedding.’ That’s how it all began. Soon afterward, I started singing grammen at weddings, where I met a very popular one-man-band player named Burich Kaller, who shared some of his music secrets with me.”

But the best technical secrets can’t teach emotion, which is Reb Avrum Mordche’s trademark.

“I’ll give you my main tip,” he says. “Usually, when entertainers are being paid, there’s a primary desire to please, for the audience to love what you’re doing, to feel it’s worth their while. But when I go in, I’m not thinking about whether the audience feels like they’re getting their money’s worth. Instead, I’m thinking, Let’s see how we can lift up this audience. Really, the first step is lifting up myself. Then I close my eyes and focus.

“And you know, even when I’m singing in front of a chassan, it’s not just about him. I sing about how his life was up until this point. From here on, he has a choice — he can change and rise higher.”

For several years, Avrum Mordche was a sought-after grammer, but that’s as far as it went. Until he met another prominent figure in American chassidic music, Levi Falkowitz.

“Levi and I met at the same voice teacher. He claims he saw I had talent, and he asked that we collaborate. Usually, he sings at the wedding itself, then disappears during the mitzvah tanz. But he wanted to create a joint, emotional opening for the mitzvah tantz. We did this a few times, and eventually we became a team.”

At that time, Falkowitz was recording songs for his 2017 album, Toiv Lee. He wanted another expert by his side to guide him through the process — choosing songs, listening to the sound, being in charge of the mixing — and he asked Avrum Mordche to step in.

“I didn’t really know what a producer was, but that’s what I became. We chose songs together, refined rhythms. I intuitively felt what was a beautiful niggun and what wasn’t. I just understood it in my kishkes.”

Levi soon introduced Avrum Mordche to the Shira Choir, and suddenly, he found himself right in the heart of the industry.

The next stage was his collaboration with Anshel Friedman.

“When I was looking for songs for Levi’s album, I met producer Zevi Freed, who told me, ‘If you’re looking for songs in a new style, there’s one guy — Anshie Friedman. Go try him.’

“His songs were so different, so unique. I felt I had found what my soul craved. After years of everyone singing and speaking along the same lines, someone arrives from a completely different place, like songs of the angels.”

The spark ignited. Friedman recognized the talents of Levi Falkowitz’s producer, and suggested he compose an album for him. That became the 2019 album Krivim Elyonim.

“That album is really his,” Avrum Mordche says. “But for me, it opened new pathways.”

F

or all his connections to various chassidic courts, Avrum Mordche says he actually draws most of his emotional intensity from Breslov.

And how does a Satmar boy end up in Breslov?

It began one bein hazmanim when he was a bochur.

“My father arranged a chavrusa for me, and although he looked like a Satmar chassid, what neither of us knew was that he had already been drawn a bit toward Breslov,” Avrum Mordche relates. “During that time, I was personally in need of encouragement and connection, his heart was open, and that’s how we bonded. He introduced me to the teachings of Breslov, and it’s something that, once you’ve tasted it, there’s no turning back. You see, where I was born and raised, people didn’t talk like that. They didn’t reach these deep places. And suddenly, I was learning about real connection with Hashem on a deep, intimate, and personal level.”

Schwartz made his first trip to Uman before his wedding. It was a group trip for chassanim to pray at the holy sites around Eastern Europe before their marriages.

“Everyone was already on the bus, and I was still at Rebbe Nachman’s gravesite,” he recalls. “What I remember most is the effect it left on me. I felt like someone had pressed a restart button on me — as if something new had begun in my life. It’s not a secret that I’ve faced an emotional darkness at a certain point in my life, and within the darkness I found light. When I bring out this light, my listeners feel it, too.”

Avrum Mordche says that today, he prefers to look at all aspects of life through what he calls the Breslov lens.

“It’s the lens of humility and self-nullification,” he explains. “You learn without thinking you are wise. You realize it’s not about you. I’ll give you an example. Everyone knows the Breslov saying, ‘There is no despair in the world at all.’ But everyone thinks it’s a leniency: Yeah, you sinned, and yet there’s no reason to despair.

“The truth is, though, that this is really a great demand. Rebbe Nachman didn’t come to give you a soothing remedy. On the contrary, he obligates you. The moment after you committed the greatest sin, when you feel distant and estranged, he shouts at you to rise up, to tell yourself, ‘There is no despair in the world,’ and simply start over. To daven Minchah with kavanah and closeness the moment after you sinned is not leniency. It’s wow. It’s hard.”

Avrum Mordche says all this doesn’t just change the way you think, but the way you sing.

“All of a sudden, when you stand and sing, ‘Abba, Abba, Melech ha’olam,’ you can’t just belt out the words with a nice tune,” he says. “You can’t just shout ‘Abba’ without feeling it with all your heart. You start actually identifying with every note and word that comes out of your mouth.”

Maybe another one of his secrets is that Avrum Mordche doesn’t listen to contemporary music. So how does he keep up with what’s happening in the music world?

“When I hear that a new album by MBD, Avraham Fried, or another important artist, is out, I listen once, see if there’s something I like, and that’s it. I don’t sit and listen extensively. It’s not that important to me. I’m not a wedding and dancing singer. I sing at the chuppah, at the mitzvah tanz. I come at the most elevated moments. There is less turnover and fewer trends there.

“In general, I only listen to older albums. Moshe Goldman. Chabad niggunim played on the piano, without words. And some Carlebach here and there. I feel that if, thirty years after his passing, people are still drawing light from his music, then there must have been a point of truth there.”

“Is not listening to contemporary music a principle?” I ask.

“Unfortunately,” he says, “the new chassidic music can pretty much be summed up in one word: Noise. Exploding noise in your ears. I don’t like noise. I love melody. That’s why I must listen to the songs of the past.”

But don’t be misled: Anyone familiar with Schwartz’s albums knows they are fully contemporary.

“I guess you could say I have one foot in the past and one foot in the future. I want the music to be professional and current, but I refuse to let it be noisy.”

His tips for how to make good music today?

“Study Torah, connect to tzaddikim, and immerse in the mikveh every day. But more than anything, it’s a gift from Shamayim. I think that my own music resonates because of what I went through in my younger years. There was so much emotion inside me that I had nowhere to put it. Now it bursts outward. People might not know what they’re hearing, but they’re hearing the strength of tzaddikim. I’m like the shofar, but it’s the words of the tzaddikim that are blowing into me. All the teachings I’ve internalized come out through the music.

“And what is that message? That there is a Creator in the world. He has a plan for you. He never forgets you, not even for a moment, not even when it seems you’ve reached the darkest point — because that’s the moment when you gain immeasurable wealth.”

I can’t resist asking: “Does the white scarf you always wear, your trademark levush, have some hidden meaning in all this?”

“Nah,” he says. “I was in Uman a few years ago. It was a freezing winter, and I walked down Pushkina Street looking for a scarf to keep warm. It was white, but I didn’t care about the color. I was cold and I took whatever the guy was selling. Later I packed it and brought it back to America.

“I really don’t like coats — they restrict me when I’m driving and are just uncomfortable. The scarf is a good solution — it keeps me totally warm. And so it became my ‘coat’ in America. And then somehow, without my noticing, it became a brand. I once walked into the beis medrash and a friend scolded me: ‘Where’s the white scarf?’ I realized it was something different and I actually liked the uniqueness. Slowly, it became part of me. People invite me and insist, ‘There’s no way you’re coming to the mitzvah tanz without the scarf.’”

W

hen it comes to writing lyrics, Avrum Mordche says it’s always about something he’s learned.

“When I finish studying something, I think about it and write down the ideas,” he relates. “I have more than 400 of these notes, organized by category: lectures, chassidus, points I heard. When an idea comes to me, I write it down, then refine it. When I’m on a plane or any other time with an open mind, I sit down to refine it, improve it, rhyme it, and it stays with me for a long time until I feel it’s ready to be released.

“It’s because I don’t connect to ‘slogan music,’ things like ‘Thank You, Hashem,’ ‘Hashem always loves me,’ that kind of thing. You see people singing it but there’s no awakening. It’s just words, external. Without intention, it’s dead. The trick is to write eternal truths that touch deep inside the soul, in the language of 2025.”

He might not admit it outright, but Avrum Mordche Schwartz’s fiery heart has paved a path for many of the “disconnected” among us — those who’ve kept the outer appearance but feel hollow inside. He even has a special minyan for them on Rosh Hashanah in Uman.

“It seems you can understand what’s in their hearts,” I say.

“I don’t understand anything,” he insists. “But unlike you, I don’t calculate it. I don’t know how they find me. In the first year I ran the minyan, it was a risk. Today all types join us, but at first it began with young men who didn’t even want to daven. They are very sensitive and know how to recognize truth, so I try to give a few drops.”

“Just a few drops?”

“Well, if you see someone receiving an IV drip in a hospital, drop by drop, you understand. If it’s the real thing, one drop is enough. If someone gives you one drop of truth, it can transform your whole being.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1091)