When Avremel was 20 years old, in 1980, he wrote the Rebbe a letter to let him know he was putting out an album of Jewish music titled No Jew Will Be Left Behind, a line he had heard from the Rebbe. He asked the Rebbe for a brachah.

“The Rebbe never told me to sing,” Fried explained. “It was my dream to take the positive messages that I had heard from him and put them to song. It was important to me to expose the world to the messages that the Rebbe was sharing with us.”

The Rebbe responded to the letter, which Avremel found humbling, since he had taken time from his busy schedule to do so. In his reply, the Rebbe stressed that the albums should be printed with a warning not to play them on Shabbos or Yom Tov.

“From that moment on,” Avremel continued, “I continued notifying him every step of the way. I got into the habit of updating the Rebbe after every concert. There were a few other instructions through the years — the most famous of which was that I should give tzedakah both before and after every concert, which I still do.

“The bottom line was that the Rebbe gave me the time of day, which was so important to me.”

B

ut the crowning moment for Avremel — the moment that Dedi Graucher might have put his finger on — came at the end of Simchas Torah in 1988. In those halcyon days, after a Yom Tov farbrengen in 770 Eastern Parkway, the Rebbe would make a special gesture to all his shluchim, the brave souls appointed to outposts around the globe to bring Torah to faraway Jews.

The Rebbe would make Havdalah, and then the thousands of attendees would file past him to receive a little wine from the kos shel brachah. But the Rebbe reserved a special gift for the shluchim: a bottle of vodka to bring back to their distant congregations.

Avremel was still a bochur at that Havdalah on Motzaei Simchas Torah. He received a little wine from the Rebbe and had started moving on. But suddenly, he became aware that the Rebbe was extending a bottle of vodka toward him.

“For the longest second, I looked into the Rebbe’s eyes, as if asking, ‘Rebbe, is this for me? Are you sure? It’s not a mistake?’ But no, it wasn’t a mistake. He really was giving me a bottle of vodka as if I was one of his shluchim.”

That moment was captured on video, and Avraham Fried still finds inspiration in it. “To this day, whenever I feel like I need a reminder of my role in life, I look back at the video. It was like the Rebbe was telling me, ‘Everything you need to succeed is there in the bottle — koach, brachah, and hatzlachah. Keep doing what you’re doing because Klal Yisrael needs to be uplifted — and there’s no better way than through music.’

“I’m humbled that people are still calling me, when there is so much talent out there. It must be the Rebbe’s brachah still at work.”

Reb Avraham Fried ended the interview in a way that made me laugh. Bear in mind, this was months ago, at a very different time of the year. He gave me a brachah for success in finishing the book.

“Reb Nachman, I want to wish you a kesivah v’chasimah tovah,” he said, using “kesivah” to reference the book I was writing.

It was a great line, but I would expect no less from the Rebbe’s shaliach.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1081)