Ari Zoldan’s music has taken him from simchah halls to hospital rooms, from roaring dance circles to near-silent moments of dveikus. Through it all, his goal has remained the same.

A bonfire crackles softly, its embers rising into the star-studded velvet sky before vanishing into the Motzei Shabbos Nachamu night. A warm amber glow flickers across the faces of the young men seated in a circle around it, their voices carrying timeless songs of yearning and devotion.

Then a cluster of voices lifts the niggun higher, pushing it up an octave. The whole circle rises with them, the sound swelling beyond the firelight and rolling into the open field, as though the night itself can no longer contain it.

These young men, bachurim from yeshivos near and far, barely knew one another before this moment. Now they sit shoulder to shoulder, connected at the soul. In the glow of fire and song, they have become brothers.

Among them sits Ari Zoldan, an increasingly popular singer whose schedule carries him from bar mitzvahs and weddings to intimate moments like this one. Guitar in hand, he sings and strums with the same intensity as everyone else. But look closely, and you’ll notice his eyes moving gently across the circle, reading the crowd.

He is leading the music, but he is also leading the moment.

Ari is not simply filled with his own hergeshim. With the instincts of someone who understands the art of music from within, he is sensing the emotion of the bachurim around him and guiding it, deftly and with care. He knows when to hold back, when to lift the tempo, when to let a niggun breathe, and when to carry the circle into its next crescendo. Slowly and skillfully, he draws out wave after wave of emotion through the unmatched power of song.

For the past decade, this is what Ari Zoldan has been doing: guiding crowds through soaring waves of simchah and hergesh, eliciting the full range of human emotion through nothing more than melody.

 

The weight of a melody

 

It may not be immediately obvious, but the ruchniyus power of song is difficult to overstate.

In the Bais Hamikdash, the daily korbanos were accompanied by music, with the Leviim’s shirah an indispensable part of the avodah. Dovid Hamelech’s Tehillim—the most intimate record of the neshamah speaking to its Creator—was written as song. And the neviim would prepare themselves to receive nevuah through song, because a neshamah surrounded by the noise of the ordinary world sometimes needs music to attune itself to something higher.

The Zohar says that before a neshamah descends into a physical body, it hears the songs of the malachim. Later, when a person hears a beautiful melody in this world, the neshamah recognizes something familiar within it. The song awakens a deep longing to return to the source of that kedushah.

But the same force that can lift a neshamah to the loftiest spiritual heights can also pull it downward. That is what makes music so powerful—and so dangerous. It also places Jewish singers and musicians in a position of enormous responsibility, and Ari Zoldan knows it.

“Music is transcendental; I’ve witnessed it directly,” he says. “It can bring a person to tremendous simchah, to dveikus, to a level of connection with Hashem that nothing else can replicate.”

But precisely because of that, he adds, music demands caution.

“If there is no power that can elevate someone like music,” Ari says, “then there is no power that can destroy someone like music, either. And that’s a responsibility I grapple with every time I pick up the mic.”

From shul to simchos

 

Ari Zoldan is a native of Boro Park, so although he doesn’t speak with a chassidish havarah, he absorbed it by osmosis. He was constantly singing and was often asked to daven for the amud, but it didn’t mean much more than that for him. It was a gift he had, something he enjoyed, nothing more.

That changed one ordinary Friday evening after Ari had finished davening Kabbalas Shabbos at a Boro Park shul. A chassidish chosson approached him and tapped him on the shoulder.

“I love the way you davened, Ari,” he said. “Would you be able to sing at my chuppah?”

Ari stared at him, momentarily stunned.

“I was just a regular bachur davening like everyone else,” he recalls, a wry grin spreading across his face. “And now I’m supposed to be singing at a wedding?”

Still, he agreed.

“Sure,” he replied. “I’d be happy to.”

By the time Shabbos was over, Ari had practically forgotten about the unusual request. But a week later, his phone rang. It was the chosson again.

“I really want you to sing at the chasunah,” he said, “but my father insists that you sing only with the chassidish havarah. Can you show him that you can do it?”

And so, Ari soon found himself at a farher of sorts: standing in a stranger’s home, belting out wedding songs in a chassidish havarah while the chosson’s father listened closely. When Ari finished, the father nodded. He approved.

The wedding went just as Ari expected it to—some excited nerves, for sure, but no major hiccups. It was fun, but that first job was meant to be the last one too—a one-time opportunity to bring his musical gifts into a setting he had never seriously imagined for himself.

What Ari had not realized was that the wedding hall manager had been listening closely. Night after night, he watched singers and friends of chassanim sing. Some were polished, others unpolished but well-meaning, and most of them forgettable. But this new, unfamiliar voice caught his attention. Before long, he began sending people Ari’s way, recommending him as a fresh talent who could bring something special to their simchah.

“I didn’t set out to become a singer, even after that first gig,” Ari says. “It was pure hashgachah. One opportunity led to another, and then another. I was just along for the ride.”

A decade later, Ari lives in the thriving and rapidly growing Pine Lake Park kehillah in Manchester, where the bachur who once sang at a chuppah almost by accident has become a sought-after name on the Jewish music scene. Booked on a near-constant basis, his soaring tenor now carries him across the tri-state area and well beyond, bringing simchah and warmth to crowds who have no idea how unexpectedly it all began.

 

The craft behind the gift

 

The most critical skill for a singer is not vocal range, song selection, or stage presence. It is something more subtle, Ari says: the ability to read a room.

“The most important thing is to understand who you’re singing for,” he says. “You come in, and the first thing you need to know is what kind of crowd it is. Is it yeshivish? Modern? Chassidish? Heimish? Because if you don’t know who you’re singing to, then you’re really singing to yourself. You won’t be able to connect with them.”

No two settings, he continues, call for the same kind of music.

At a wedding or bar mitzvah, the chassan and kallah or bar mitzvah bachur become the clear center of gravity. The singer’s role is to pour energy toward that center, creating a current that draws the entire room inward.

A kumzitz sits on the opposite end of the spectrum. There, the singer isn’t directing the crowd toward a single focal point. He is building a connection between himself and each person in the circle, and between every person seated around it. The experience is closer, more intimate, and far more vulnerable.

“At a kumzitz, there has to be much more attunement to the crowd,” Ari says. “Which songs you choose, whether you say a story, how you build the moment—all of that has to come from what the crowd is ready for.”

That is why he begins a kumzitz softly. He doesn’t rush the crowd into intensity because it simply wouldn’t work. He eases them in, allowing the mood to settle and the circle to open up before moving toward songs with greater depth and energy.

“You can’t pull out the most heartrending songs right away,” he says. “You go in slowly, with some of the oldies, and then, when the crowd is ready to let out their emotions a little more, you bring in the heavy hitters.”

But weddings, kumzitzes, and every other event overlap in one critical way: they all demand constant sensitivity to the room. Ari watches the crowd, listens to its energy, and adjusts. When that energy begins to sag, as it does at some point at nearly every event, there is no universal solution. Sometimes the crowd needs a burst of tempo. Sometimes it needs something more familiar to them. Sometimes it needs a song with more warmth, more depth, or more emotional pull. Whatever the moment calls for, the man with the microphone is responsible for finding it.

Knowing what the crowd needs—and when it needs it—is the craft. It is also the achrayus.

“The music can make or break the entire event,” Zoldan says. “Even picking the wrong song can lead the room in a different direction. It’s a bigger responsibility than I first imagined.”

 

From many becomes one

 

One of the most striking dynamics Ari witnesses from his place at the center of a kumzitz circle is what happens when a crowd surrenders itself not only to the music, but to one another.

“When you sing with other people, you’re connecting in a very real, unbelievably powerful way,” he says.

He points to the concept of tefillas rabbim—the idea that the tefillah of a tzibbur carries a weight that private prayer does not; that the Ribbono Shel Olam does not turn away the collective voice of Klal Yisrael.

“One person singing by himself can be very beautiful,” Ari says. “But when people sing together, something else happens. There’s a connection, an achdus, an energy in the room that rises beyond any one person. It becomes something greater than the sum of its parts. That’s what makes a kumzitz so powerful, and it’s only something you can experience by being a part of it.”

Separate voices, each with their own tone and texture, are not perfectly matched. That is precisely the point, Ari explains. The warmth comes from the joining itself—from the fragile, human blend of voices becoming something larger than any single polished performance could ever produce.

A kumzitz does not merely create music; it generates achdus. And achdus has always been Klal Yisrael’s most unstoppable force.

 

Blood, sweat, and tears

 

Of all the stories Ari remembers from a decade of performing, one comes back to him most readily. It happened at a kumzitz where he was playing guitar himself, without a band, without backup. It was just his voice, his fingers, and the crowd.

Almost from the first song, the room took on a life of its own. “The oilam was so into it,” he recalls. “The energy was just carrying itself. Song after song. I must have been playing for three or four hours straight without a break.”

Somewhere deep into the night, his fingers began to go numb against the strings. He kept playing.

The man who had organized the kumzitz and hired Ari to lead it noticed the strain on his hand. He quietly left the room, and a few moments later, returned with a bag of ice. Between songs, he pressed it against Ari’s fingers, just long enough to bring down the swelling and allow him to continue.

“And we went way into the night,” Ari says. “The dveikus was just so strong, we couldn’t stop.”

When the kumzitz finally ended, the organizer was in tears. “He said to me, ‘Ari, you brought me to a place a shiur could never bring me to. The connection, the dveikus—you brought me to a whole different level.’”

 

Beyond the melodies

 

Today, Ari’s investment in the power of the human voice extends far beyond the kumzitz circle and the wedding hall.

In recent years, he has developed and launched Vocal Pro, a comprehensive course in proper vocal technique that has drawn a strikingly diverse range of students. Fellow singers come to sharpen their craft. Chazzanim come as well, especially in the months before the Yamim Noraim, when the demands placed on a chazzan’s voice reach their annual peak and the cost of being underprepared becomes painfully clear.

But Vocal Pro is not only for professionals. Laypeople come to sharpen their voices before singing at a relative’s simchah, or simply because they enjoy singing and want to do it right. But it goes much further than that. Many people arrive after years—sometimes decades—of unwittingly using their voices in ways that weaken rather than support them. Some come with chronic hoarseness, others with strained, raspy voices. Many arrive with the uneasy recognition that the voice they had once used naturally has become an unreliable instrument.

Under Ari’s instruction, they often discover that the damage is rarely permanent. The voice, when properly understood and properly used, still contains strength, range, and resilience that can be recovered.

The transformation is not only technical. A chazzan who learns to breathe correctly, support a phrase from the diaphragm rather than the throat, and project without strain does not simply sound better. He davens differently, with a steadiness in the voice, confidence in the delivery, and a presence the shul can sense.

And a regular person who reclaims a voice he had dismissed as a casualty of age or overuse walks away with more than improved technique. He carries a renewed confidence with him into any room where he opens his mouth and allows himself to be heard.

“It uplifts people,” Zoldan says simply. “It gives them confidence. And hopefully it adds something meaningful to their lives.”

 

When the songs end

 

For Ari, music is never only about the song being sung in the moment. It is about what the song leaves behind.

Whether it’s a wedding hall filled with dancing, a bar mitzvah bursting with energy, a kumzitz glowing deep into the night, or a patient’s bedside, his goal remains the same: to give people something that lifts them, steadies them, and stays with them.

In the end, it’s what he believes music is meant to do. It is meant to enter a room and leave people different than they were before. Sometimes that means adding simchah to the happiest night of a person’s life. Sometimes it means giving a crowd of bachurim a taste of achdus around a fire. Sometimes it means helping a chazzan find his voice again. And sometimes it means offering a final melody to a neshamah on the cusp of once again hearing the malachim’s songs.

“I always hope people walk away inspired,” Ari says. “That it helps them in their avodas Hashem, to be more b’simchah, to be more connected to one another, more connected to Hashem. What more than that could I ever hope for?”

 

Ari’s Top Kumzitz Hits

 

No two kumzitzes are exactly alike. Each carry their own spark and energy and each require their own adjustments. But certain songs consistently strike a chord. These are Ari Zoldan’s go-to songs when leading a kumzitz, blending classics with contemporary melodies:

• “Hashiveinu” by Chanan ben Ari
• “One More Dance” by Yonatan Razel and Shulem Lemmer
• “Shaarei Shamayim” by Naftali Kempeh
• “Ki Karov” by Eitan Katz
• “Nachamu” by Shlomo Carlebach
• “Don’t Leave Me on My Own” by Zusha
• “Avinu Malkeinu”
• “Chamol”
• “Machnisei Rachamim”