“You realize you made it, Portman, right? Like, you’ve arrived?”
The music wasn’t great and now the singing would be bad too, Shuey Portman thought with dismay.
This was the thing with Rabbi Wasser, Shuey sometimes felt: The Rosh Yeshivah made decisions without understanding the whole picture.
Rabbi Wasser wasn’t musical, and he knew it, yet he was making demands on Shuey that didn’t make much sense from a musical perspective.
The idea had seemed great at first — a single featuring Shuey and the bochurim — but now it had turned into a big headache. The song they’d chosen, “Aromimcha,” had a current feel, Shuey thought. He’d composed it back then during his singing days, but it hadn’t made it onto any album. Now Shuey was excited about the chance to get it out there. Korman and Zeldman, who were sort of running the project, were excited about it too — it was a catchy-enough song — and Shuey had allowed himself to open doors in his memory that he hadn’t touched in years.
This one’s in print. Some of our best stories live in the magazine — subscribe to get Mishpacha every week.
