“Well, I always enjoyed writing parodies; I would take the popular country and pop tunes and lyrics of the day and rewrite them with a different, Jewish twist or message. I also had some original, serious songs, like “Who Knows One” and “Little Kinderlach.” I would play those songs to the kids at various NCSY kumzitz’s around the USA, and they became very popular.

“At the time, there were very few professional Jewish music groups, and the Rabbi’s Sons were immensely popular, so Shmelkie and I decided to do it our way and put out a record. We formed a group and called it the Or Chodosh. Our parents lent us the money to get started, and within months, we had a best-selling album. At the time, the way to ‘make it’ in Jewish music was by being featured on the old Art Raymond Show on WEVD radio, and once he started to play our music, we had concert requests from all over.”

So what happened to the group that gave us some perennial hits, like “Shmelkie’s Niggun,” “Bilvavi,” “Oh the World” (written by Country Yossi) and “Eileh Vorechev?” “Reb Shlomo called in Shmelkie and told him that he didn’t want him to perform on stage. In hindsight, I guess Rebbi discerned that Shmelkie was rosh yeshivah material and didn’t want him distracted with nareshkeit,” Yossi surmises. “Of course, Shmelkie listened and never performed. Rebbi didn’t tell that to the rest of us (no compliment there), so Yussie Lieber, Nachum Deutsch, and myself proceeded to give concerts across the country.”

Yossi and the Or Chodosh group produced a few more albums featuring Yossi’s songs. The compositions of Reb Shmuel, who ultimately became a Rebbi in the yeshivah, were released in the first “Regesh” album several years later. “For a bochur, the concerts and albums were pocket money; I was able to buy a car and repay my parents for their original loan,” Yossi recounts.

Once we’re on the subject of his car, Yossi remembers a great story with me. “Since I was one of the few bochurim in yeshivah who had a car, the Rebbi would often give me the privilege of driving him to Bielegeisen’s seforim store — which he loved to visit weekly. So once I was driving him up the Rockaway Turnpike in my ancient Chevy, and I got pulled over by a policeman. I was shocked; the beat-up car couldn’t possibly have exceeded the speed limit.

“I rolled down the window and the cop indicated the trail of white smoke that was following my car. ‘You’re getting a ticket because your vehicle is smoking,’ he informed me gravely.

“I looked right at him and said, ‘Officer, this car is old enough to smoke.’

“Reb Shlomo was laughing all the way to Brooklyn.

“Many years later, I was living in Flatbush and didn’t have too much of a connection with Reb Shlomo, but I heard that his Rebbetzin had passed away, so I went to be menachem avel. I entered the crowded house, and there sat my Rebbi, next to Rav Aharon Schechter and other illustrious personalities. When he saw me, he leaned over close to Reb Aharon and asked, ‘Do you know what this bochur once said to a cop?’

The Formula That Worked

Country Yossi’s original band may no longer be a household name, but most of New York’s frum residents are intimately familiar with his name and face, emblazoned across a monthly advertising magazine that they all bring home. The magazine, whose costs are covered by the many advertisements that comprise the bulk of its pages, also offers a friendly take on the latest trends and phenomena in the community, with lively debate in the language of the people. The farthest possible thing from an intellectual journal, it is a light and fun advertising medium that has been accepted by the community for the entertainment it offers.

How did the magazine start? Yossi remembers his original formula: “We were looking for a way to entertain people, but still offer some substance. I actually brought the first issue to Reb Shlomo and he gave me a warm brachah. We were specifically not trying to cater to intellectuals, but rather just to offer the masses something readable, yet different.”

Country Yossi shares a philosophy. “People are so beaten down by real life that they simply need an escape, they need to smile, to laugh. We always saw that as our mandate.”

It seems to have worked. As fast as they could print magazines, people would snap them up, and the publication is now in its twenty-first year. “You know, Rabbi Eli Teitelbaum, ztz” l, was a strong and steady supporter of the magazine, and would frequently write articles for us when he had an opinion he wanted to voice, which was often.

“He would say, ‘Perhaps there are more prestigious publications, but I have this ‘thing’; I like my articles to be read!’

Taking advantage of my access to the publisher, I ask several questions. Are the very amusing letters to the editor real? “Absolutely,” he insists.

I ask how a magazine that is distributed widely, from Boro Park to Staten Island to Williamsburg to Crown Heights, can ever hope to satisfy the hashkafic sensibilities of its readership. He is candid about it. “There were some issues that we had to deal with over the years, such as featuring sheitel advertisements with women’s faces. As our tzibbur has grown increasingly sensitive, we have worked hard not to offend anyone.”

Now for the question that’s been bothering people for years: he’s just a kid from East New York; how did he become “Country Yossi”? He laughs. “Well, one of my earlier ventures was a series of best-selling CDs, DVDs, books, and a board game. Some of the songs on the albums are classic country songs that are given a Jewish lyrical twist, so that’s how I got the name ‘Country Yossi.’

Yossi adds something: “Oh, and I go to the country every summer, too.”

As other country-goers will know, prime entertainment on Thursday nights in the Catskills is Country Yossi’s radio show, where listeners are treated to a trademark potpourri of music, conversation, and halachah quizzes, complete with prizes. So many calls come in at once that the phone company had to intervene and request that Country Yossi limit his callers by borough. The volume was simply too high.

Why would someone call the show? Country Yossi smiles his trademark smile and drawls, “Freeeeee. People love free stuff, and we give away lots of it.”

He tries to inject the show with meaning, and has developed a program where the trivia questions are all about hilchos Shabbos. The proficiency of the callers can result in better prizes. “Just like in the magazine, we always try to be entertaining, but we are looking to give something more, to add some depth and value.”

In the Kids’ Department

The younger generation might be more familiar with Country Yossi as the harried host tending to two loveable creatures who manage to inject their banter with Torah lessons. The funny thing is that Country Yossi never planned to produce albums for kids. His children’s albums, known as the “Shteeble-Hoppers” and the “Kivi and Tuki” series, developed through “pure siyata d’Shmaya,” as Country Yossi puts it. Oh — and they also have their roots in the country.

“Once, when I was up in the Catskills, I met an old friend, Heshy Walfish, whom I knew from the time when he had been in the Messenger’s Orchestra and I had been in the Or Chodosh,” Yossi recalls. “We had both become more or less ordinary citizens; he was running a computer leasing company and I was doing my ‘advertising thing,’ and we got to reminiscing about the old times.

‘Are you still writing songs?’ he asked. I told him that I had written a couple of English parodies, taking popular songs and rewording them with a more Jewish message, but that I had never really played these songs for anyone. Heshy, who is super-talented, loves music, loves arranging, and his eyes lit up. ‘Let me hear them,’ he said.

“We got together, and he took my stuff into his studio. He emerged with some beautiful arrangements and we co-produced Country Yossi and the Shteeble-Hoppers. The success of that first album astonished us, but it emboldened us to keep going as well. We now have fourteen and counting.”

Were there copyright issues involved in using popular songs? I wonder.

“Well, initially I tried to contact the composers, but I had no luck. We were small potatoes; obviously, the big names in country music weren’t returning the phone calls of some frum guy in Brooklyn. But I subsequently learned that there is no copyright infringement in using a parody of a popular tune and reworking it for religious purposes.”

The original Shteeble-Hoppers albums spawned a more kid-friendly version, “The Adventures of Kivi and Tuki.” Between the two series, hundreds of thousands of albums have been sold.

Internalizing the Message

Magazine publisher, band leader, children’s entertainer, radio host … is this where you saw yourself going? I ask Country Yossi. He laughs and replies, “I have a master’s degree in psychology from Long Island University, so professionally, this is not where I was headed, but, baruch Hashem. It’s been an enjoyable ride so far — halevai veiter!”

I cannot let our conversation end without one more story about Reb Shlomo, and I ask Country Yossi to accommodate me. He grows contemplative again and tells me that he will share one about the Rebbetzin.

“There was a song that I wrote when I was in Sh’or Yoshuv; it was on the Or Chodosh album, called ‘I Am a Sheep.’ The lyrics were moving and thoughtful.”

I am a sheep

And I follow my master

Through mountains of stone

And meadows of grass

I eat when he feeds me

And sleep when he lets me

For I am a sheep

And I follow my master

I am a slave

And I work for my master

In broiling, hot summer

And numbing, cold winter

I run to his summons

And run from his presence

For I am a slave

And I work for my master

I am a child

And I honor my father

In moments of pain

And hours of shame

I tremble and fear him

But love him and heed him

For I am a child

And I honor my father

I am so blind

And am led by a fire

Through black nights and days

On paths made of paper

I go where it guides me

It follows beside me

For I am so blind

And am led by a fire

I am a sheep, I am a slave,

I am a child, I am so blind

I am a pebble flung in the ocean

Brimming with wonder, filled with devotion

Weak as the lamb, strong as the leopard

For I am a sheep …

And the L-rd is my Shepherd

“I was once in Rebbi’s home, and the Rebbetzin, a”h, a remarkable woman in her own right, called me over. ‘Yossi,’ she said, ‘I must have the lyrics to I Am a Sheep written up for me so I can study them.’ I sat down and wrote all the words down on a paper for her.

“The next time I was in the house, she again called me over. ‘Yossi, I lost the paper; can I trouble you to rewrite the words for me?’ So for a second time I committed the lyrics to paper and left them with her.

“The next time that I was in the house, she again asked me for a copy of the words so that she could teach it to her students, and the following time she asked me to write them for a friend.

“I couldn’t understand at the time why she couldn’t just copy them herself, but as I grew older, I understood very well. She wanted me to write them. She knew that while I had written the lyrics, I hadn’t yet become one with the message, and that I could benefit from the reminder that ‘I am a sheep and the L-rd is my shepherd.’ She hoped that by continuously writing them, they would have an effect on me as well.”

The story is a magnificent one, and it nicely synopsizes that chinuch method of this giant couple, the Freifelds. Like all Country Yossi’s tunes, the refrain of I Am a Sheep will be on constant replay in my head for the rest of the day, but it only serves to drive home the underlying message.

There is much depth to this man and his music, an awareness that beneath the jokes and one-liners, we are all sheep and the L-rd is our Master.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 304)