A religious, 26-year-old Jewish music singer is intent on becoming a worldwide star - not for fortune, but for the salvation of the Jewish people.
By DAVID BRINNGad Elbaz 224-88(photo credit: Courtesy)
'My name is Shlomo, for those of you that don't know me," said the stocky chief of security at the Caesarea Amphitheater. He was speaking to a group of a dozen or so young ushers sitting in a corner of the majestic seafront structure on a sultry, late August afternoon.
The historic amphitheater, considered to be one of the country's prime showcase concert venues, is usually the home to the cream of the homegrown musical crop like Yehudit Ravitz and Shlomo Artzi, as well as to international attractions like Jethro Tull and Deep Purple. But not tonight.
"This is going to be a very, very special night," Shlomo told his rapt audience, "because tonight, for the first time in Caesarea, we have separate seating.
"Over here," he said, pointing to the left section, "is only for men. The middle section will be mixed, and over on the right is the women's section. Good luck to everyone," he concluded, calling on the ushers to be sensitive to the needs and sensibilities of the decidedly unusual crowd which would soon be filling the amphitheater.
He might also have wished good luck to the person who was the main attraction of the evening - Jewish pop music singer Gad Elbaz. A household name if your house is in certain neighborhoods in Jerusalem or Petah Tikva, but relatively under the radar in mainstream musical circles, the religiously observant Elbaz is attempting to break the mold formed by a society dictating that good-looking and God-fearing don't mix.
Possessing equal amounts of bravado, Elvis-style charisma, talent and vision, Elbaz is positioning himself as the "next big thing" in music. Backed by such disparate disciples as a Chabad real estate magnate, Christina Aguilera's Latin-music producer and just about anyone who has ever heard him sing or perform, the idea of Gad Elbaz Superstar is not so far-fetched.
But if you hear Elbaz tell it, fame and fortune aren't the ultimate goals for the 26-year-old Jewish Jim Morrison, they're only a residual side effect. What he's attempting is no less than the reconciliation of religious and non-religious Jews around the world.
Gad Elbaz is on a mission from God, and he wants Jews to come together - over him.
GAD ELBAZ never lived an average life. Born into a secular family headed by popular Mizrahi-style singer Benny Elbaz, Gad was immersed in music during his first few years growing up in Ramle and Bat Yam. By the age of four, he was already performing and recording with his father - their duet "Abba Otcha Ani Ohev" (Dad, I Love You) becoming a huge hit within the then-thriving "Central Bus Station" Mizrahi cassette market.
"I couldn't believe his voice - I knew that he was destined for greatness," says the elder Elbaz. "He has a voice from heaven."
Three years later, the Elbaz family destiny took a turn when Benny became observant, bringing the family along with him - which resulted in another Benny-Gad duet "Lo Kashe Lahzor B'tshuva" (It Isn't Hard to Become Observant).
However, Gad admits that for many years, it indeed was hard for him to fully immerse himself in the religious world. "When my father came to religion, I did too, but I didn't have an opinion about it," he tells The Jerusalem Post in fluent English a few days before the Caesarea show.
"We moved to Brooklyn for one year when I was 10, where I got religious schooling, and when we returned to Israel, I studied in yeshivot until I was 16. That's an age where you start asking questions, like 'Why do I follow this, because I'm told to believe it or because I believe it myself?' I looked for answers until I was 18, when I did my own tshuva. I came to the idea of living my life the way I wanted to live it."
That way, of course, included music. But Gad didn't feel he had to necessarily confine himself within the boundaries that the religious Sephardi world had traditionally placed on the types of music that were allowed to be played in homes, at weddings, bar mitzvas and concerts - a maverick move he attributes in part to spending that formative year in the US.
"I don't think being in New York necessarily affected me musically, because music character doesn't exist. Your character affects the music you make. I think my character developed after seeing a different point of view in my life, and I saw how the world worked," he says.
Getting exposed to the flourishing hip hop and r&b rhythms on 1990s MTV and the New York streets didn't hurt either, along with a growing attraction to the smooth pop of Whitney Houston, and later the Backstreet Boys. Combined with the Middle Eastern and religious music being played at home, the resulting stew of influences could have been either one big mess - or in Gad's case, a natural, effortless blend.
"My music brings in all kinds of elements geared to bring people together - pop, world music, Mizrahi, hip hop," he says. "I knew from the beginning I wasn't going to be singing 'ay-ay-ay.'"
By the time he was 16, Gad had released his first solo album. But it wasn't until his 2005 album Meanings, which sold nearly 100,000 copies, with its catchy, rhythmic Jewish music set to a disco beat, and Gad's powerful velvety voice - cantorial at one turn, boy band pop at another - that he began crossing over between his core observant audience and a secular crowd attracted by the music.
But it wasn't just for the music. Gad is also a heavenly hunk. With a rippled torso and dance move hip swivels that could rival Ricky Martin's, Elbaz might have looked like he was living la vida loca, but he was really dancing and singing with a message that the wild life had nothing on life according to Halacha.
Almost overnight, he became the target of teen idol worship from an unlikely source - young religious girls, many of them from families who, like Gad, had returned to religion and were educating their children in the Shas educational system. Pinup close-ups of Gad in his black kippa began springing up on bedroom walls from Rosh Ha'ayin to Rosh Pina. After all, while no slouch in the looks department, Aryeh Deri is no match for Gad Elbaz.
That one-foot-in, one-foot-out tightrope walk between the religious and secular worlds proved to be problematic for some religious and political leaders affiliated with Shas, resulting in a 2006 Beersheba show being temporarily canceled by the city's chief rabbi, Yehuda Deri (Aryeh's brother), who issued a statement saying Elbaz's music was "not in the spirit of Torah."
Following a series of discussions, however, the show was rescheduled, but the temporary cancellation reflected a growing concern among the religious establishment that Gad-mania didn't perhaps go hand in hand with leading a religious life, an opinion dismissed by Elbaz.
"At that time, the rabbis involved didn't understand my intention. Rabbi Deri thought the show in question wouldn't have separate seating, but it did. Today, even the big rabbis know of my intentions, and realize it's my way of fighting this war. Nobody's against what I'm doing today," says Gad.
The "war" Elbaz refers to is the battle he's waging against narrow-mindedness on both sides of the religious-secular spectrum in Israel and among Jews worldwide.
"There's so many communities that won't accept another, instead of realizing they're all just one piece of the big puzzle. Instead of preparing for the time of the messiah, they go ahead and fight and argue and refuse to live next to each other. I just don't get it," says Elbaz.
"My greatest fear, when I finally embraced religion, was that I was going to end up like that, that I wouldn't treat people, both religious and non-religious the way they should be treated - with love and respect. My ambition is to bring a non-religious audience closer to spirituality. I think they're very open and will embrace the message if given the opportunity."
THE TASK of insuring that Gad Elbaz gets the opportunity to spread his word to as many people as possible has fallen on the more than willing shoulders of Shlomo Fellig. A middle-aged Chabadnik from Miami who divides his time between Florida and a vacation apartment in Jerusalem, Fellig is a wealthy real-estate magnate. He explains that he knew there was something special about Elbaz the first time he heard him three years ago.
"I heard a song of his, and then we accidentally met in the US. I fell in love with his voice," says Fellig, while holding court in the backstage area of Caesarea ahead of the show.
"We started speaking about what he wants to do with his career, what his goals are. He told me he wants to bring Jews together through music. I, too, believe in unity and love for all Jews, and I hate the separation between the religious and non-religious. I made a decision to help him out. I guess you could call me a sponsor - I help with money, of course, but also I'm sort of a career adviser."
While Elbaz receives both spiritual and career guidance and rulings from his own rabbi, he also listens to Fellig, who suggested two years ago that the singer refocus his attention abroad, specifically the US, and promised to open doors there for him.
So, while Israel has seen very little of Elbaz over the last 18 months, Fellig has helped book successful concerts for Jewish audiences throughout the US, South America and Europe, overseen the recording of a handful of potential hit singles in English with Miami Latin-pop producer Rudy Perez and even organized Gad's singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a Florida Marlins baseball game in May.
"I know a lot of people in Miami," says Fellig matter-of-factly. "I gave Rudy [Perez] a CD of Gad's and I didn't tell him who he was."
Perez, a pivotal figure in the Latin-American music scene, is responsible for tens of millions in sales with his productions for Latin music stalwarts such as Jose Feliciano, Julio Iglesias and Placido Domingo, as well as producing Christina Aguilera's Spanish-language, multi-platinum Mi Reflejo.
"I heard his voice and I said I have to work with him," Perez said in a recent TV interview.
According to Fellig, when he disclosed to Perez that Elbaz was religious and wore a kippa, it didn't faze the producer. "He said that he's Christian, what does it matter?" recalls Fellig, who subsequently arranged a meeting in Florida for the two creative talents.
"I was in shock," says Elbaz. "He realized I was a religious singer, but he told me he had wanted to do something to spread goodness around, and he saw in me that I wasn't like most of the pop stars out there, that there was something very pure about what I was doing."
The Perez-Elbaz collaboration has resulted in the recording of a handful of songs in English, like the ballad "Fall Without You", a song in the George Michael-Justin Timberlake vein featuring decidedly non-Top 40 lyrics like "My strength is in my faith... You're only a prayer away."
Perez's company Bullseye Productions was also behind the control board for Elbaz's recently released album in Hebrew called Between the Drops. The 14 tracks run the gamut from adaptations of "Avinu Malkenu" and "Nigun Katan," a Chabad nigun, to a festive Brazilian-tinged rhythm workout "Fiesta."
"Now we have requests from different labels to start working on a new CD in English, and I've been performing for Jewish communities in the US, Europe, South America, South Africa and Ukraine. It's been amazing - I've won over audiences all over," says Elbaz, without a hint of bragging in his voice.
According to Fellig, the strategy is to take things very slowly and not make any missteps on Elbaz's burgeoning international career. "I don't want people to get too used to him. I want to keep him as a secret weapon," he says.
That's why Elbaz has refrained from signing with a major American label and will issue the English songs on the label Fellig has set up for him - POP-Y Records (standing for People of Peace - Yahad [together]).
"Rudy Perez recommended that he not go with a label at this time because of the whole Internet downloading issue. Big labels have no control over the music anymore," says Fellig. "It's not the best way at this time - the world has changed. Today if you sign with a label, it's nothing, and sometimes it's even worse. The way is to create your own label, the way Gad has done. All the big singers have their own labels."
In any event, despite lumping Elbaz in with the "big singers," Fellig is decidedly ambivalent about turning him into a just another successful secular singer.
"Gad could break through to a mainstream American audience tomorrow, but that's not his aim," he says. "He's bringing a message to the world. He will have a non-religious, non-Jewish audience, but that's not his goal. His goal is to unite Jews. The side effect of all this will be that he'll have a lot of non-Jewish fans. On his Myspace Facebook pages, he has over 100,000 fans, many of them not Jewish, who are asking about Judaism. It's amazing."
CREATING THE perception that Elbaz is a "big singer" is high on Fellig's agenda for Israel. That's why he chose to stage his first major concert in the country in more than 18 months in Caesarea, despite the uncertainty over whether he still commands an audience here.
Fellig invested $150,000 to rent the amphitheater, hire a film crew to produce a DVD of the show and pay for all the surrounding extras that are required to put on a top-flight concert. And to up the ante, Elbaz recruited some of the country's more popular mainstream singers, like Shlomo Gronich, Shlomi Shabbat and Harel Moyal - and Benny Elbaz, to share the stage with him in a show of religious-secular strength.
"Tonight is more a preview of reminding Israel that there is something like Gad Elbaz. The world knows already, but now Israel is going to have to accept him, and his message of unity," says Fellig. "People are not expecting to see the professional extravaganza that's happening tonight. They're thinking it's going to be a little haredi concert. It's first class, that's what Gad wanted and Gad got it."
At dusk, after rehearsing his song with Elbaz, the versatile musical veteran Gronich sits on a hillside rock outside the dressing rooms munching on a sandwich, recalling how the two came together to record four songs for Gronich's latest album, Journey to the Source, in which he combines his familiar world music with Jewish themes.
"When I was recording the album, I was sitting in the studio, and suddenly I remembered that two years ago I had been watching TV with my wife, and we saw this amazing singer. When he began to sing, we literally got goose bumps. We said to each other that we hadn't heard a singer like that in years," says Gronich.
"So, I decided to call him and ask him if he was willing to come and sing on the album. He was so humble and gracious. 'Shlomo, is that really you? It would be my privilege to sing with you,' he said. When he came to the studio, and we went into the control room, we made magic. God gave Gad a gift - an incredible, colorful voice with unlimited range."
He adds that he's also attracted to Elbaz's attempts to close the gap between the religious and secular in Israeli society.
"I know that helping to bridge the religious-secular gap is an important goal for him, and I think that he's succeeding in his own way. His name is getting more well known in mainstream circles. And it's helping me too. Religious people are seeing my name connected to his and beginning to listen. And that's one of my goals too."
According to Elbaz's manager, lanky, kippa-wearing Shlomi Cohen, 23, the artists appearing with Elbaz are doing so out of genuine desire to perform with him, not just for a paycheck.
"All of the artists we approached have great respect for Gad, they know that everything he does is pure and true, and from heaven," said Cohen.
However, Elbaz's fixation on providing the bridge between religious and secular has some people - like his father Benny - cautioning him against expecting to achieve long-lasting results.
"That's the most difficult thing that Gad is trying to do - bring the sides together," says Benny, who has been an outspoken Shas activist for years, penning the song "Hu Zakai" (He's Innocent), when former Shas chairman Aryeh Deri was convicted in 2000.
"I told him, 'Gad, you're going to have many disappointments. You're going to get a lot of slaps in the face - from both the Right and the Left. Many have tried and failed.' But I also told him, with song, you can overcome anything - war, conflict."
"This is something that only God knows," offers Fellig in answer to whether Elbaz can succeed in bringing sides together through music. "But he can sure try. If you keep on trying, it will come - that's one of the psukim from the Lubavitcher Rebbe," says Fellig, sounding suspiciously like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams. "If it doesn't work, it means you didn't try hard enough. So if he keeps on trying, he will bridge the gap, not with everyone maybe, but every Jew counts, so it's a start."
THERE'S NOTHING quite as daunting as staring out at a sea of empty seats, particularly if you're hoping that those seats will be filled in only a couple of hours with paying fans coming to hear you sing.
But if Gad Elbaz is nervous, he doesn't show it as he strides out to rehearse on the stage, which is already filled with musicians, equipment and photographers. With tzitzit casually hanging down from under his black dress shirt, Elbaz exudes a combination of confidence and serenity as he offers glad hands, hugs and pats on the back to everyone in sight.
Only when sits down at the electric piano at center stage to rehearse a song with his father does he show a sense of anxiety.
"What kind of piano is this? This belongs at a wedding in Bat Yam. Couldn't you get a Steinway?" he mutters to nobody in particular. He regains his naturally even disposition when his four-year-old son, Binyamin, dressed in a suit and tie, bounds on stage to join his father and grandfather.
Elbaz's wife Moran, 23, used to be one of his fans ("One of the quiet ones," she says). And she's still a fan, attending all of his shows, but she's also much more - a collaborator. The two met after Moran organized an Elbaz concert near Holon, where the couple now live, and she gathered up enough courage to approach him about turning some of the spiritual lyrics she was writing into songs. They were married right after she turned 17, and their second child is on the way. She now writes most of the lyrics for the original material Elbaz sings, a partnership Gad revels in.
"I was born into this world for her, and she was born for me. Without her, I was floundering and barely doing any music," he says.
His largely religious crew and staff mingle freely with the totally secular-looking backup band that includes a four-piece horn section, proof that at least on a small scale, his vision of living together is working. It's a touch of symbolism picked up by Fellig.
"The fact there's religious and non-religious musicians and crew, and the fact that he pulled singers that are not religious but have religious souls together for one show I think is a major accomplishment by itself," he says, motioning toward the mix of people onstage. "Tonight we have over 150 people working together to put on this religious show. Shlomo Gronich came to me and said, 'You've already done what you wanted to do.'"
Fellig is nervously pacing the stage, waiting for the gates to open, while Elbaz and Shlomi Shabbat try to work out the verses to their duet on "Fiesta."
"We're hoping it's full. I think they'll be fine. I think it will be a very nice night tonight. We presold 1,500 tickets up until today. But religious people don't use credit cards, so I think you'll have a lot of people coming tonight at the last minute. I think it will be full," he adds, as if trying to convince himself.
With the gates about to open, security chief Shlomo disperses his ushers to their stations, and the crowd begins straggling in. The division between the sections goes pretty smoothly, with the men's section being populated mostly with young yeshiva students in white shirts, black pants and black kippot. The mixed section in the middle is an amalgam of Israeli society, where men in muscle T-shirts and slicked-back hair, and women in tank tops, high heels and lots of jewelry mingle with modern Orthodox couples and families. And then there are the teenage girls in the right section, almost all wearing skirts and looking more anticipatory than the rest of the concert-goers.
"I love his message of prayer," says Hila, 16, from Petah Tikva.
"And you like watching him dance, too," teases her friend Hodaya, sitting next to her.
In the mixed section, Ran and Orly, a middle-aged secular-looking couple from Zichron Ya'acov, say they've been fans of Elbaz since his days as a child singer.
"I just think his voice and his material are amazing. He could be singing the telephone book and I'd like it," says Orly.
Even though the amphitheater is filling up, there are still some holes that won't look good on the DVD, so when the announcement that fans can come down from the bleachers onto the floor seats is made, many of those who had been sitting in the men or women only sections, hustle down to the better seats, suggesting that a bird's-eye view of Elbaz is sometimes worth compromising religious principles for.
Finally, the lights dim, the band takes the stage and starts playing some introductory music as the crowd starts cheering and clapping, and a smoke machine fills the stage area with a puffy cloud. Just off the side of the stage, Benny Elbaz gives his son a blessing.
"Go out and make Caesarea holy!" he says with his hands on his son's head.
As the opening music begins building up, the Elbazes start clapping along with the beat, then someone hands Gad a microphone, and from offstage, his powerful, evocative baritone fills the amphitheater with a wordless nigun, further raising the crowd's excitement.
As Gad walks onto the stage, a dozen symmetrically placed cylinders all across the edge repeatedly shoot flames of fire up into the sky, signaling the arrival of the star. It's an over-the-top Elvis moment, but in the context of Elbaz's relation to his audience and the lofty role he hopes to take on in the future, it fits the moment perfectly.
Elbaz breaks into the first song, and his magnetism is undeniable. He's got it all - the looks, the style and the voice - to move both bodies and souls. After the second song, he bends down, picks up a bottle of water, and as he lifts it to his lips, says a blessing into the microphone, then turns the mike to the crowd for a raucous "amen."
The show goes off without a hitch, with Elbaz graciously making room for the roster of guests. When he sings "Fall Without You" in English, you could practically see Rudy Perez back in Miami nodding and smiling.
Offstage, Benny Elbaz is beaming. "Am I proud? Who's not proud of his own son?" he says. "Rudy Perez said to me personally that Gad needs to be the next big thing in the US. Once someone like that says it, who am I - the little guy - to say anything?"
For Benny, and for Shlomo Fellig, who's religiously trying to spread the word about Gad Elbaz, the final decision on whether he will succeed is not in their hands.
"I think only God in heaven can make these things happen, not Rudy Perez and not anyone else," says Benny Elbaz.
"He's going to be big because his message is pure - he sings from the soul," adds Fellig, feeling relieved at the respectable turnout. "To be a success, you need a great singer, you need people behind you who believe in you, and you need to believe in something. And Gad has all three."n
Gad Elbaz in Caesarea will be broadcast on Channel 24 on September 18 at 9 p.m.
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