A. Weiss

The singer cradles the mic as the music thunders in the background. His voice soars through the crowded room, and the audience leans back in their chairs carried off by his magnificent tenor. He belts out hit after hit, making quips between each number, and leaves the audience amazed by his skill and talent.

Fast forward ten years, and the mic is still there, but the atmosphere and picture have shifted. The crowd is smaller, cozier, sitting in an informal circle. It can be hard to figure out who’s leading, since the one holding the guitar might just be borrowing it from its owner. The music is less splashy, simpler, with a wide variety of songs, and the conversations taking place between the songs are longer and more serious. The biggest difference? Everyone is singing. And when they leave, they’re not just humming the tunes they heard. The messages of the music has entered their hearts.

It’s the magic of a kumzitz.

Today, no siyum, simchas beis hasho’eiva, or sheva brachos is complete without someone to run a kumzitz. These kumzitz leaders don’t require much, showing up with their guitars and mics. All they need is a willing crowd. And if recent trends are any indication, the crowd is not just willing, but eager.

The kumzitz structured

The word kumzitz hints at informality, the image evoking an unstructured, spontaneous gathering of pure emotion. But while kumzitzes today contain the love and longing as in days of yore, they’re also scheduled and run professionally by the man with the guitar and the microphone. It’s the job of the kumzitz leader to balance both, to provide the professional music while attaining that level of connection we associate with informality.

It requires a unique skill set. It needs both the musical background and the ability to connect with the crowd on a personal level.

“I was one of those musical kids,” Ari Zoldan, wedding singer, kumzitz leader, and vocal coach reminisces. “The type who was always drumming at the counter. I started piano lessons at seven and went to voice lessons in my teens. At one point, I also picked up the guitar. But I had no plans to go into the industry.”

He sang at the chuppahs of a couple of friends but never saw himself as going further until a young man came over to him after davening. “I heard you davening for the amud. I want you to sing at my wedding.”

Ari brushed him off, but the boy put on pressure until he agreed. That one-time wedding was what launched his career in the music world. “An agent saw me there and contacted me, and soon I was part of the package for the hall.” He was doing weddings for a while when someone called him and asked him to do a kumzitz in Waterbury. “I went, I sang, I told story after story, and we all loved it.”

Today, Ari runs kumzitzes often, developing the profession into a fine art.

Moshe Katz, another well-known kumzitz leader, says his trajectory evolved differently. “Twenty years ago, there were no music lessons; guitar players weren’t common. I ended up teaching myself to play when I was 17. But I wasn’t a performer. The only time I would agree to do it was when someone asked me to come down to the hospital to sing.”

But years later, Moishy started giving guitar lessons, and his name slowly spread. He found himself asked to come down and play for parlor meetings and sheva brachos. Slowly, those sheva brachos morphed into kumzitzes, and soon Moishy was a name in the business. “It used to happen without being planned. At the end of the sheva brachos, the chosson would come over, take the mic, and sing a song or two, and everyone would crowd around, and a kumzitz would develop. Today, though, I’m hired specifically to run the kumzitz.”

Reading the crowd

Many wedding singers moonlight as kumzitz leaders, which is interesting, as a wedding seems to be the diametric opposite of a kumzitz. One is fast, pumping, get-the-crowd-dancing, while the other is slow and moving.

“Singing at a wedding gives me a high,” Ari remarks. “It’s adrenaline boosting. On the other hand, a kumzitz is grown men getting emotional from an inspiring song. It’s a whole different situation.”

But in both, the key point is for the singer to be able to read the crowd.

“The music is the conductor of the event,” Motti Feldman, long-time wedding singer and kumzitz leader says. “It creates the ambience, the feeling.”

Every crowd has its own nuance and makeup, and the singer’s job is to pick up on it. And when it comes to a kumzitz, this is crucial.

“Are they ba’alei batim, yeshivah guys, older, younger?” Ari will ask himself.

The younger group usually wants the freshest songs, while Pirchei and the Rabbi’s Sons get the over-50 crowd emotional. Ari warns singers not to come in pushing their agenda. “Don’t come in singing a song that’s totally against the group’s interest and culture.”

Reading the crowd also involves sensing their mood. The excited crowd isn’t interested in something slow and sad, at least not in the beginning. “If I’m coming to visit a choleh, I won’t try to cheer everyone up.” Ari explains. “I’ll see where they’re holding and sing some songs about bitachon and ‘Ani Ma’amin.’”

“Be yourself,” Motti says when it comes to connecting with the crowd. He also advises not to get stuck on typical conventions and to try to read what the crowd is interested in. “In Williamsburg, they might want a Hebrew song, and in Five Towns, they may want ‘Sha’arei Shamayim.’ You don’t know unless you look at them.”

The teenage crowd in particular can be very challenging but conversely that much more rewarding.

“When I get there, I’m scrutinized more,” Ari says about his experiences with teenage audiences. “I have to show them that I know the hit that came out five minutes ago, that I’m in the know.”

They require more attention and more love, but the rewards are proportionate. “They really look up to these singers. Just giving a kid a mic can make his year. It really does something for his self-esteem. I’m always checking when I do an event for teens that I got everyone, that no one feels slighted.”

He asks for song suggestions, passes the mic around, and includes the boys in the experience.

The songs we sing

The latest hits or the oldies but goodies—which song does the crowd enjoy most?

Are they safer sticking with the classics everyone knows, or is it the newest songs that get everyone singing?

Moishy’s opinion is mixed. “The problem with hits is that they get overused. Eitan Katz once remarked that if a song is slow to take off, it just means that it will be played on shuffle for longer. If a song is sung too often, people get tired of it very quickly.”

However, he warns never to underestimate a song. “Sometimes I think a song is so uninteresting, and then I’m asked to sing it at a kumzitz, and the whole place sings it for an hour straight.”

But it can be hard to predict which song the crowd will go for. There’s no secret, no magic song that always gets the crowd going. Instead, it’s the time of year that often dictates which songs will unleash the emotions of the group. In the summer, “Habeit” will have the crowd singing, and at a simchas beis hasho’eivah, “Sukkahla” will be sung again and again. “If I start a song, and it’s not working for the crowd, then I’ll move right into the next song,” Moishy shares. “I won’t even finish. I’ll just find a place in the song where I can lead into the next one and work from there.”

Unlike the wedding singer who needs to know the fastest and latest hits, the kumzitz leader needs to have a grasp on a much wider range of songs.

“It’s the hardest part of my job,” Moishy says candidly. “Especially since there are a lot of Israeli songs with a long low part and a beautiful high part. I try to learn the low part, but I’m not always successful.”

However, if a song that he doesn’t know is requested, Moishy’s informal style makes it work. “I just call the guy who’s requesting it over, hand him the mic, and ask him to sing it.”

Once, in Camp Achim, Moishy announced that he was going to teach the campers a new song. “The song had literally just hit the market less than two weeks before, and they were all in camp. I knew there was no way they would know it. But then, as soon as I started singing, they all started laughing and singing along.”

It turned out that the composer, Rabbi Davis, was a staff member in the camp, and he had taught the song to the campers. It was a well-known camp song.

But generally, Moishy doesn’t try to teach the crowd new songs. “They want to hear what they know.”

In the regular run-of-the-mill daily grind, picking the perfect song is close to impossible.

“It can be humbling,” Ari admits. “Sometimes I start a song and no one goes for it, but the next song just works.”

The uninvolved crowd

It’s the performer’s worst nightmare. Seeing a group that isn’t interested, that can’t connect, is disheartening. For someone running a kumzitz, whose very nature requires the participation of everyone around them, a sleepy group is a death knell.

There’s something inherently vulnerable about singing with a crowd, and it’s a vulnerability that others are scared to reach.

“I keep trying,” Ari says about such a crowd. “I say stories and explain the songs. People need to feel safe, and I try to create that atmosphere. If it’s a group of bnei Torah, I start off with a shtickel Torah, create that feeling of connection between us. If I can see that the group thinks I’m too serious, then I start off with a joke.”

But who the group is doesn’t make a difference. Once their hearts are reached, they won’t want to stop. Music has the power to cross those boundaries. “I did a simchas beis hasho’eivah recently for a huge mix of people. I started at 7:30, and we just kept going,” Ari relates.

The hours flew by, and at 1:30, someone brought Ari a bucket of ice water to soak his swollen fingers. “They wanted to keep going, but I just couldn’t anymore.”

When the crowd seems dead, Motti recommends not trying to force it. “Just keep playing, and eventually, the crowd will relax and warm up.”

Moishy’s goal when he walks in is to get everyone involved. “I want them all to be singing and dancing in their seats.” When they aren’t, he doesn’t get flustered. “I’m not a performer. I just start singing and hope they all join in. Stories help a lot. I pass around the guitar and become one of the crowd.”

To Moishy, his role model in the field was his friend, Chatzi Katz, a”h. “When he would sing, the whole room would get swept up with it because he sang from his neshamah. That’s the ideal way to get the crowd.”

Moishy points out that there’s a difference between a kumzitz for a simchas beis hasho’eivah and one for a siyum or simchah. “At a simchas beis hasho’eivah, they’re less connected, they’re embarrassed to open up and sing.” However, the participants at a siyum are already emotional. They’re part of the simchah and all the effort and memories it took to reach this moment come out in the music.

“But truthfully,” he finishes. “Hashem is good to me. Every kumzitz is siyata d’Shmaya.”

The secret of the music

Once, people were content to just listen to the music, to attend a simchah or concert without becoming a part of the music. Today, though, the rising popularity of the kumzitz testifies to a new reality. It’s not enough to be entertained. We want to connect.

And music has always been the key to open people’s hearts. “I think that today we recognize the power of music,” Ari says. “We don’t take it at face value.”

“A kumzitz is a place where people connect to Hashem,” Motti explains. “You can see on their faces that they’re yearning for this connection.”

Music has always been the vehicle to open people’s hearts, but in this generation, its potency is even stronger.

“Rav Aharon Chodosh was asked what will be the mussar movement in today’s day and age,” Moishy relates. “He responded that it would be music. When I sing, I explain what the words mean so they can know the song and connect with it.”

A nice niggun always inspires people, but filling in the background and understanding it takes the connection to unprecedented heights. When the one running the kumzitz can give insight to the beautiful song, the music itself can touch people’s hearts.

It’s the combination of the music, the stories, the divrei Torah, and the atmosphere that gives today’s kumzitzes their unique power.

Kumzitz leaders relate stories of seeing hashgachah when it comes to reaching the crowd.

“At one kumzitz, I told a story about when Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski’s daughter was on her deathbed,” Moishy says. “At one point, she slipped into a coma, and he left the room and started writing a teshuvah to an agunah. He ended up missing the yetzias neshamah.”

When asked why, Rav Chaim Ozer responded, “When my daughter was awake, she needed me. But there was an agunah who was waiting for a response, and if I didn’t get to it before my daughter left this world, she would have to wait the entire week of shivah. I didn’t want her to have to wait.”

It was a touching story, but Moishy had no idea why he felt the need to share it until the rav of the shul where the kumzitz took place approached him when it was over. “You have no idea what this story did for me!”

The rav shared that his mother was in the hospital, very sick. “I was back and forth if I should come, but I felt that my ba’alei batim needed me.”

He came, still feeling torn, and Moishy’s story was the reassurance he needed.

The avodas hakodesh

After October 7, a yeshivah reached out to Moishy. They were hosting a hachnasas Sefer Torah but didn’t feel it was right to have live music at that time.

“Instead, I came with my guitar, and we had hundreds of people going strong. There was something very eidel, very pure about it. Everyone was singing because they felt they had to, and we all left uplifted.”

The feedback kumzitz leaders receive after a heartfelt kumzitz is proof of its power.

“I recently did a kumzitz, and afterward someone thanked me, telling me it’s avodas hakodesh,” Ari says. “I never thought of it that way, but the truth is that it really is.”