Second Stage

Places like Chicago and Detroit, Los Angeles and Miami, might have had five or six concerts annually, not to mention the concert scene in the New York area. But over the last 20 years or so, the concert concept has become less popular — not because cities aren’t interested in sponsoring them, but because the costs have become prohibitive. The performers, sound systems, video walls, extravagant lighting — it all became too much for smaller communities to afford.

One city, however, has been doing a major concert for 50 years straight. The city is Baltimore, and the organization that’s been sponsoring those concerts all these years is NCSY, an organization under the Orthodox Union whose mission is to inspire Jewish teens to build a strong connection to their Jewish roots.

Fifty years ago, a chassidish kollel yungerman with a dynamic personality yet zero kiruv experience named Rabbi Yitzy Lowenbraun (Reb Itchie) a”h took over the fledgling Atlantic Seaboard region of NCSY and made it one of the most innovative and successful kiruv operations in the country. It was Reb Itchie who organized that first concert. It took place in the large Beth Tfiloh shul, which was able to accommodate 1,600 people. The performer was singer/musician Stanley Miller; the following year, it was a new music sensation named Mordechai Ben David, followed a year later by the London School of Jewish Song. Since then, almost every popular Jewish performer has had an opportunity to perform on the NCSY stage.

Over the years, performers at what is officially known as the Isaac H. Taylor Jewish Music Festival (Dr. Taylor has sponsored the concert since the beginning, assisted first by Bonnie Pollack and then by Lauren Gluck) have included Avraham Fried, Miami Boys Choir, Diaspora Yeshiva Band, Yoel Sharabi, Dedi, Ohad, Yaakov Shwekey, Abie Rotenberg, and more recently, Benny Friedman, Simcha Leiner and Mordechai Shapiro.