A few months ago, I wrote a column about trends in music. I reached out to cantor and singer Yossi Schwartz to hear from him about trends at weddings. It turns out that he has a very interesting story on how he became a cantor which is worth a whole column in itself.
“Let’s talk again in a few months, maybe before the High Holidays, so I can bring out your story,” I told him. Yossi liked the idea. So recently we met again to talk about his life, how he became a chazzan, and also about chazzanut and the tefillot of the Yamim Nora’im.
Yossi’s story is truly inspiring. From a hyperactive kid who struggled in yeshiva and could barely sit and learn, he grew up to be a successful cantor and singer. It was not easy to schedule the call to do our interview – Yossi had just returned to the U.S. from performances in Europe. On a regular basis, he is busy teaching and performing, as well as raising a family with his wife.
Yossi was born in Seattle. His father was born and raised in America in a Modern Orthodox family. At age 17, he became more charedi, moved to Israel, learned in yeshiva, and at age 24 got semicha and became a rabbi. In Israel he met his wife, Yossi’s mom, and after the wedding they moved to America for a few years, where Yossi was born. When he was three years old, they moved back to Israel where Yossi grew up. He was sent to charedi yeshivot, and because of his hyperactivity, he struggled to get along.
Yossi grew up in a musical house. His mother played accordion and used to sing with the kids every Shabbat. His grandfather on his father’s side was a ba’al tefillah. His grandfather’s brother was a cantor and knew the big cantors.
As a kid, Yossi always liked to sing, whether at family weddings, in the synagogue, or just at home. When he was twelve his father brought home a chazzanut album for the first time – Ba–yamim Ha–hem Ba–zeman Hazeh – In Those Days at this Time by Mordechai Sobol. It was a symphonic album in which Sobol took the big cantors’ records – giants such as Yossele Rosenblatt, Moshe Koussevitzky, Zawel Kwartin, Moshe Ganchoff – cleaned the recording noises and added background music such as choir, symphonic orchestra, etc. to accompany the cantors. Yossi used to sit in his room and impersonate all the cantors one by one.
(After that first album, Sobol released a few more albums in the series. They call him “Sobol, the cantorial revival.” The albums are available on Apple music and Spotify. You can find them by searching “In Those Days at This Time by Mordechai Sobol.” Highly recommended – they’re beautiful.)
In addition to this album, Yossi grew up on classical chasidic music such as Avraham Fried, Shloime Daskal, Mordechai Ben David, etc. The family always had the albums at home and Yossi used to listen to them all the time.
When Yossi was 13, he wanted to study vocal pedagogy, so his father made a deal with him: If he would not get kicked out of yeshiva for one year, his father would send him to study vocal pedagogy. After all, there were 13 siblings in the family, and the lessons were very expensive. His father’s promise gave Yossi motivation and he succeeded in staying in yeshiva. Actually, not just for one year – he was able to remain in yeshiva for three more years! But after one year, as his father promised him, he was sent to study vocal pedagogy with Yonason Hill. Hill is the father of the singer Ari Hill, who sings “Abba” with Avraham Fried.
After 20 lessons, the money ran out, so Yossi continued to practice by himself.
He got deeper into the cantorial world. A friend in yeshiva was the son of the police rabbi in the north. The father used to take his son and Yossi to cantorial Shabbatot as well as concerts. Yossi was excited to see people holding papers in their hands with notes, able to read the notes and sing accordingly.
One day, a childhood family friend of his grandparents from Texas, who was also a violinist in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, came for a one-year visit to Israel when she was on sabbatical. She offered to teach Yossi to read notes. He used to go to her once a week for a period of time and she taught him basic theory. She gave him exercises to practice, and from there, he continued to train by himself.
At age 16, while in yeshiva, he started to perform. It started informally.
One Shabbat he heard that Cantor Ari Klein, z”l had come to perform in a synagogue in Jerusalem. It was an old, small synagogue on Tahkemoni St. inside the Talmud Torah HaMesorah, about 90 years old. A synagogue where Yossele Rosenblatt and other big cantors such as Mordechai Hershman used to daven. It may have been small, but it had a huge stage for the choir. And that Shabbat, Cantor Ari Klein, z”l, who was the chief cantor of Park East Synagogue and also the brother-in-law of Mordechai Ben David, was coming. So, Yossi went to hear him.
In order to enhance the experience, Yossi, who was still only 16, decided to gather a few guys on the spot and arrange a choir for Klein. He wanted the performance to be more interesting.
After that Shabbat, every time a cantor would come to the shul, they would call Yossi to come and arrange a choir. He brought friends from yeshiva as well as other people he knew from shows, and slowly he got into the chazzanut world.
Once, one of the cantors at the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem, Dov Heller, who used to daven on the weeks when there was no choir, invited Yossi to join him for a duet there. After that, he joined other cantors for duets as well. That’s how he started singing at the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem as well as at the Great Synagogue of Ramat Gan, which also has chazzanut.
Yossi continued to get into the cantorial world. He joined the choir of Shlomo Goldhour, the conductor of the legendary cantor Leib Glantz in a synagogue in Tel Aviv. The choir is called Shirat Israel and you can find their music on YouTube and elsewhere. I highly recommend it, by the way. The choir was founded by Shelomo Zalman Rivlin, who was a very famous cantor; cantors today still sing his work. His most famous song is perhaps “Heye Im Pipyot.”
Goldhour recognized the talent and the potential, and for four years he taught Yossi musical theory. Yossi started to perform with him.
After high school, Yossi moved to a more modern yeshiva, and the rosh yeshiva also recognized his potential and told him he should go learn music and cantorial studies professionally. Yossi told the rosh yeshiva that he didn’t have the money for this, and the rosh yeshiva offered to take care of the payment. Twice a week, he sent Yossi to study with Maestro Elli Jaffe. The rosh yeshiva paid for everything. At age 17, Yossi started to learn chazzanut professionally. Jaffe used to pick him up from the yeshiva and bring him all the way to the cantorial school, and on the way, they would study Torah together, reviewing what Yossi had learned in yeshiva.
By the end of the first year, he had already performed in a big concert. Since he was supposed to sing a musical work by Cantor Moshe Stern, he took four classes with Stern himself. Stern was already over 70 and didn’t teach anymore. But since Yossi was supposed to sing his musical work, he made an exception and taught him just for the show. On the day of the concert, during the show, for some reason the microphone suddenly turned off. Yossi was very stressed. From the audience, Stern recognized that Yossi was in distress. Stern looked at Yossi and started to sing with him from the audience. He really did a duet with him from the audience! This gave Yossi confidence and helped him complete the musical program, and at the end he got a standing ovation.
At 19, Yossi had already performed with the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra in a big show at the Jerusalem Theatre under the conducting of Elli Jaffe. He also joined the choir of the Jerusalem Great Synagogue.
One day that year, he was supposed to sing in another show at Yeshurun Central Synagogue in Jerusalem when at the last minute the conductor got hurt and requested that Yossi replace him. Without any rehearsal, he got on stage and conducted three musical works. At the end he again got a standing ovation. Following this show, he decided to open an orchestra. He collected students who studied with him and they began to perform under the name “Rina U’Tefillah.” They performed at cantorial Shabbatot in Israel and at other events. After a few months, a producer came to Yossi and asked to sign him for five years.
Yossi and his group decided to rebrand their orchestra and changed the name to Paamonim. Yossi was the conductor. For about four years, they did around 200 cantorial Shabbatot and about 30 concerts. He used to perform with all the big cantors and travel to perform in other countries, and in parallel he also worked in sales. At some point, he left his job in sales and started to teach music and cantorial studies. He also continued to study. He focused on conducting, teaching, arrangement, and processing.
He then joined the Skylake Synagogue in Miami as the chief cantor, a position he has continued to serve in during the High Holidays for the past 12 years. Meanwhile, he still conducts and performs chazzanut. (You can see him conducting on his YouTube channel.)
After Covid, Yossi moved to the U.S. and got an offer to be the musical manager of the school at Park East Synagogue. Besides the High Holidays (when he’s in Miami), he arranges and conducts all the musical events of Park East Synagogue.
He also created a solo show called From Krakow to Broadway, where he sings in five languages: Hebrew, English, Spanish, Yiddish, and Italian. He performs with only a pianist. Following the show, he started getting requests to sing at weddings.
I asked Yossi how he is getting ready for the Yamim Nora’im. He says that in the past, he needed a lot of preparation. Today he no longer does. Instead, 24 hours before the holiday, he opens the machzor and goes over the tefillot and the piyyutim. In addition, when Elul comes, he gets updates about new tunes and hears new ideas from friends, and if there’s something interesting, he adopts it.
However, he makes sure to do vocal preparations before the holidays. A few days in advance, he makes sure to eat well, sleep well, and not strain his voice. And he tries not to get a cold! Getting a cold is the greatest enemy of the cantor. One year he had a cold during the holidays, but says he somehow managed to do it.
In general, he says, the preparation takes place throughout the year. He works on a regular basis on vocal pedagogy, learning and practicing.
What is his favorite tefillah? Kol Nidrei and Maariv of Yom Kippur, he tells me. He explains why: Many Jews who sometimes even barely know Hebrew come to the synagogue for Kol Nidrei, sitting, praying, and crying. Kol Nidrei is the moment of the year when the cantor can influence the congregants. People who during the rest of the year do not attend synagogue, some of them even far from Judaism – this is the moment when he has the opportunity as a cantor to influence them on a spiritual level. To bring them closer. To strengthen their Jewish identity. To ignite the spark and keep it alive. To leave them with something in their memory.
One of my favorite piyyutim on Maariv of Yom Kippur is “Ki Hine Ka’chomer.” I ask Yossi what tune he is doing for this piyyut. Most of the time he does the familiar tune, which is from the “Blue Book” of British cantors. Sometimes he does the Chabad tune. In general, some of the tunes for the High Holidays come from non-Jewish music. He shares that, in fact, the chasidic Admorim were the first to dress non-Jewish tunes on the tefillot. By using non-Jewish tunes for the words of the tefillah, they sanctified or “converted” the tunes. The idea is that a niggun, a tune, is an inspiration for the words. And therefore, you can dress the tune on the words.
Over the years, Yossi has formed his cantorial identity. During the High Holiday services, he brings his personal dimension, which is a mix of all he has learned, to his tefillot. He tries to match himself to the crowd – on one hand to give the crowd what it likes, but on the other to keep the tradition. Therefore, for example, he will start “Unetane Tokef” in the tune of “Beit Hashita,” which is more modern, but for “U’kebakarat Roee,” he’ll change to the more traditional tune of Yossele Rosenblatt.
You can follow Yossi Schwartz and his music on his Instagram and YouTube channel.
