Benny Finds His Magic

Photos: Naftoli Goldgrab

I

t wasn’t the music that made me a fan, though Benny Friedman can sing. It was something he wrote, several years ago, for this magazine. We were doing a project about camp memories, asking various prominent readers to reflect on what it was that made summer camp special for them.

There were the usual answers about talents and abilities not accessed during the school year, fond memories of trips and ball games. Benny went deeper, saying a vort. He wrote about the opportunity camp presents to show children that even with the crazy T-shirts — and crazy T-shirts are a good thing — the tallis kattan is sacred, that even on sleepless color-war nights — and sleepless nights are great — zeman krias Shema is sacrosanct.

The answer moved me, and it helped me understand the appeal of his music.

The music industry of 2019 is blessed with many superstars, genres, and styles. There’s no end of great voices, many with great marketing teams around them. They’re not so much great artists as they are great brands: Nike, Apple, and Coca Cola dancing on stage, clapping in all the right places, thanking Hashem and their wives in between sets.