Fried Denies Shift in Music

By COLlive reporter

Jewish music superstar Avraham Fried, who has been to countless countries in his 30 year career, said that his favorite place to preform is the Holy Land.

“In Eretz Yisrael, I have a lot of work and success and I have no words to explain it, but I’m sure it’s part of the Rebbe’s blessing,” he said in an interview with our sister site COL.org.il.

The 52 year-old Brooklyn resident says that “so much work in such a small country is simply unnatural.”

During his recent tour in Israel, Fried ventured out to the larger Israeli public collaborating with non-religious Israeli musicians.

His 2002 single “Aleh Katan Sheli,” which was recorded in Israel, became one of his greatest hits and was sung by participants of the March of the Living at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camps.

“Aleh Katan had immense success and I saw the thirst of the Israeli audience – not necessarily the religious and charedi. Before they hear ‘Tanya’ and ‘Aderaba’, we need Israeli songs.”

Asked if he saw any problem with non-Chassidic music, he said: “Jewish people compose these songs. Whoever does not want to hear them – it is their right. I even respect that.”

But Fried emphasized his commitment to his traditional music, including the Chassidic albums he has released in recent years.

“No way,” was his answer to the suggestion that he might have abandoned Chassidic music.

“I am very soon ending work on an upcoming Chassidic album. Another one or two songs need to be recorded and we’re done. Be’ezras Hashem, I think it will be released after Tishrei.”

Like many in the Jewish world, Fried said he was heartbroken over the deaths of Boro Park boy Leiby Kletzky and Rabbi Elazar Abuchatzeira, both of whom were murdered by fellow Jews.

“I feel that we must scream,” he says. “Hashem wanted to shake us up but I don’t understand why it had to be done through such tragedies. After what we have seen we cannot sit by and say “oy.” That’s not enough.

“Look at the Arabs who went out to the streets and demanded change. They didn’t care to die. We should learn from them to go to the streets and say, ‘Father in heaven, enough! We want the Geula.”