When Motty Steinmetz starts to sing, you feel your heart break. It isn't just his beautiful vocal styling or unusual range. It's the genuine emotion behind every word
Photos:Yaakov Liderman
How did Motty Steinmetz, the musical phenomenon whose hits “Eitz Chaim,” “V’Yiyu Rachamecha,” “V’Sei’areiv,” and more can be heard at every simchah, transition from what he describes as that “very average childhood” to starring at sold-out concerts on some of the biggest stages around the world?
In his own words, he traces the journey….
When I was a kid growing up in Kiryat Vizhnitz in Bnei Brak, I loved to sing — but never considered myself exceptionally talented. My first musical memory goes back to second grade, when I heard a Purim song at my cousin’s bar mitzvah that I liked. The next day at school I sang the song in class along with the rebbi. I didn’t think that my singing was anything special — but the other kids seemed to perk up when they heard me. When their bar mitzvahs rolled around, those same classmates invited me to sing solo on their special nights. I started to realize that my ordinary voice might not be so ordinary after all.
When I was 14, my grandfather moved from Antwerp to Israel. For the next two years, I spent my days in yeshivah and my nights at my grandfather’s bedside. He was a living, breathing musical archive and he taught me his entire repertoire of old Vizhnitz melodies. The truth is that nobody sings those songs anymore — but I know them and I think that having them inside me makes a difference for the songs I do sing.
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