Inside the Box

My longtime friend Robbie Lederman recently reminded me of how he once drove down to Baltimore with the Simcha Machine. Simcha Machine? Well, if you’re asking, you’re probably too young to remember Professor Green’s happiness-inducing creation.

It began in 1982, when Mirel Simcha and Nechama Bakst of Detroit wrote an adorable album called Professor Green and the Simcha Machine, about how a certain Professor Green builds a “simcha machine” in order to bring added joy to the Yamim Tovim. The record, a Suki and Ding production with vocals by Dov Levine — one of his first recordings — turned out to be a huge success. Everyone was talking about the Simcha Machine when, one day, I get a phone call from Rabbi Baruch Klar, who’s still running the Chabad Center in Morristown, NJ. He told me that some of the bochurim in yeshivah decided to actually build a Simcha Machine, and he was requesting permission for them to use it for a performance in Morristown. Their Simcha Machine looked pretty much like the picture on the album — red with green feet on the bottom, about five feet high, made out of wood, with someone standing inside and lip-syncing the songs. I gladly gave my permission.

A few months later, I was invited to do a Torah Island concert in Brooklyn College on Chol Hamoed Pesach. The concert would feature Uncle Moishy, Yanky Strudle, 613 Torah Avenue and the Simcha Machine. I told them yes — and then I remembered that I actually had the ability to get hold of a real live Simcha Machine. I called up Rabbi Klar and told him that it would be awesome if they’d kept their Simcha Machine, and if so, would I be able to borrow it? Indeed, they’d kept it and gladly agreed to give it to me. The concert was a huge success — and Robbie was the one who went into the Simcha Machine to animate it.

After that, I started getting calls from different places to do Torah Island concerts. My first out-of-town concert was in Baltimore, but I had to figure out a way to transport the Simcha Machine to Baltimore. So I rented a U-Haul truck, and Robbie, along with two others, drove down to Baltimore with the Simcha Machine in tow. About an hour out of Baltimore, Robbie looks into his rear view mirror, and notices two police vehicles following them. After a minute or two, their sirens go off. So they dutifully pull over. Believe it or not, three police officers surround their car and, with their hands on their weapons, ask Robbie, “What do you guys have in the back of this truck?” Obviously, Robbie says, “The Simcha Machine.”