Mishpacha Traces Fried’s Roots

“Onstage he’s Avraham Fried, one of the Jewish world’s most popular singers. Offstage, though, he’s Avremel Friedman — a Yid who knows that he has been given this gift for a purpose,” writes Yisroel Besser in a profile piece in the Pesach issue of Mishpacha Magazine.

The mega Yom Tov issue is once again a showcase of the magazine’s defining elements- people, places, ideas, graphics and quality photography.

This year, the bonus supplement features iconic Jewish photos, their origins and background details- and the stories they tell.

Here is a one part of Besser’s article:

When I visit Reb Avraham, who is a Lubavitcher chassid and lives in Crown Heights, he opens the door with a smile and leads me inside. The décor is elegant, the rooms spacious — a typical Jewish home. The surprise, for me, is the pictures. In addition to several pictures of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and various family portraits, there is a large picture of a chassidishe Yid, a Galicianer Jew with wise eyes and dressed in a shtreimel and beketshe. Incongruous in a Chabad home, I comment.

Not in this one, it turns out.

Many chassidic courts are known for their music. In addition to Modzitz, there are Bobov, with its rich, mellow waltzes and rousing marches, and Chabad, with its soulful, yearning tunes that have themselves become Chassidus.

What happens when Bobov and Chabad converge? The answer to that question begins in Krynica, or Krenitz, a vacation spot in Galicia that was frequented by many of the preWorld War II gedolim. The resort town had a year-round community as well. Rav Meir Yisroel Isser Friedman was the rav of Krenitz, a staunch chassid of Sanz. The Krynitzer Rav wrote prolifically, leaving seforim in both halachah and drush.

He had a son, a personable young man named Yaakov Moshe Friedman, who was known as Yankel. Yankel Friedman grew up in the shadow of the Bobover Rebbe, Rabbi Ben Zion Halberstam, known as the Kedushas Tzion, whom the family was privileged to host — along with many other rebbes — in Krenitz.

The onset of the war forced the Friedman family into exile, first into Siberia, then into Tashkent, in Uzbekistan. The teenage Yankel worked a double shift to spare his father, the rav, from having to work on Shabbos. In Tashkent, the Bobover family was first introduced to the lifesaving work of Chabad chassidim, who provided both spiritual and physical nourishment to other Yidden, with great sacrifice.

Sacrifice appealed to Reb Yankel. When the war ended, he arranged passage for his father and siblings to America, but he and his young wife accepted an invitation to assist the legendary Dr. Jacob Griffel with Hatzolah work in Prague.

Reb Yankel threw himself into the task of creating new documentation for many stranded survivors, using his natural people and organizational skills for this higher calling. The Communist takeover in 1948 made his work difficult —he sustained arrest and torture — but he did manage to transfer an entire orphanage of Jewish children to Vienna, where suitable arrangements were made for each child to travel to Eretz Yisrael.

It was only in 1950 that he felt able to leave, arriving in Brooklyn with his wife and three children. He settled in Crown Heights, where the Bobover Rebbe had a shtiebel on St. Marks Place, and got a job working in the administration of the United Lubavitcher Yeshiva. It was a job he would hold for 40 years — a natural fit for a man with his organizational skills, work ethic, and innate love for other Yidden.

Reb Avraham smiles as he adds a personal recollection.

“My father would go to the bank each morning for the yeshivah, and a minhag evolved in which he would use those visits to help others — cashing their checks, guaranteeing small loans, helping with paperwork. There were lots
of survivors who needed help with the basics, and his patience and willingness to assist put so many of them back on their feet. The tellers would joke that the line for Rabbi Friedman was the longest in the bank.”

The Friedman children — eventually, 6 boys and 4 girls — were sent to the Lubavitcher educational institutions. They are prominent Minneapolis shliach, author and lecturer Rabbi Manis Friedman, two other brothers are shluchim: Reb Benzion Friedman in Overland Park, Kansas, and Reb Eliyahu Friedman in Tzfas.

There are two more brothers, Yossi Friedman and Shlomo Friedman, of Kehos Publishing Soceity and Lubavitch Youth Organization, respectively. His two sisters, Feige Green in Florida and Ita Marcus in California, are also engaged in spreading Yiddishkeit. Avraham is the youngest is the youngest.

“My father had a wonderful relationship with the Rebbe, even if he wasn’t a formal Lubavitcher chassid. Whenever my father would go speak with the Rebbe, he would approach with a huge smile, a radiant face. He said that the Rebbe saw enough sadness, he deserved to see simchah. The Rebbe commented that he really appreciated that.”

The children — each and every one of them — became Lubavitcher chassidim.

“My father gave the Rebbe his children. He was proud of the path we took, though looking back, it couldn’t have been easy when 20 minutes into the Shabbos day seudah, we all hurried off to get good places for the afternoon farbrengen.

“The zeideh, the Krynitzer Rav, lived in Boro Park and he took a stronger view of his eineklach’s “defection,” Reb Avraham recalls.

“When my siblings moved to distant communities on shlichus, the zeideh quipped, ‘Shlichus iz vi a bezzem, it’s like a broom; it cleans, but it leaves the broom a bit dirtier.’ He didn’t understand the concept of leaving a heimeshe kehillah to draw others closer.”

And so it’s the luminous images of these distinguished Jews — the Krynitzer Rav and his son, Reb Yankel — that grace the Friedman home. “The heilege zeideh,” Reb Avraham says wistfully, “we revered him.”

In addition to regular conversation, the family stays connected through music. “When we get together for a simchah, that’s what we do. We sing — the zeideh’s niggunim, the Tatteh’s niggunim, the Rebbe’s niggunim.…”

Often, the extended Friedman family goes up to visit the Bubby on Friday nights, and when they are together, they sing. Besides her son, Mrs. Miriam Friedman counts many other musicians among her children and grandchildren.

There is Benny Friedman, a son of Reb Manis, as well as Shmuli and Bentzi Marcus of 8th Day, the sons of Avremel’s sister Ita. (Their classic “Babenyu … Krenitz is calling your name’ is a tribute to this beloved grandmother.)

The full article in Mishpacha Magazine goes on to tell how Fried began singing, his father’s worries about his son’s choice of career, the bracha from the Rebbe and more. Get it now on newsstands everywhere.