// Purim Exclusive //
May 18, 2015 (original post 3/3/2015)
Roar, Lipa, Roar:
A Hasidic Pop Star Rocks Columbia
Leeza Hirt
May 18, 2015 (original post 3/3/2015)
Roar, Lipa, Roar:
A Hasidic Pop Star Rocks Columbia
Leeza Hirt
Lipa Schmeltzer raps, sings, and talks Purim in an exclusive interview. Video by Jenna Belhumeur, Columbia School of Journalism.
Lipa Schmeltzer: Hasidic Superstar
It was the third day of NSOP. Orientation groups from all four undergraduate schools were sprawled across campus, eating dinner together before heading to Dodge for a pep rally. A nervous first-year, I sat with my orientation group, trying my best to be personable while counting the minutes until the program was set to begin. Then someone caught my eye from across the lawn: a familiar looking man in a silver, paisley shirt and a sparkly large yarmulke, with black, curly earlocks and trendy, thick-framed glasses. He was surrounded by a group of students, and I could hear his booming, Yiddish accent from more than a few yards away. It was the Hasidic singer, Lipa Schmeltzer.
Having grown up in a Modern Orthodox community and attended Jewish day schools and summer camps, I had seen Lipa perform at many concerts and weddings. But I had only seen him in full Hasidic traditional garb. This time, he was not wearing the classic black and white getup — he was not even wearing a hat. He looked different than I had ever seen him, and he was entirely out of context sitting here on my new secular college campus.
Although I had heard rumors over the summer that Lipa, a well-known Hasidic wedding singer-turned-popstar, was planning on attending the Columbia School of General Studies, seeing him on campus caught me off guard. I suppose I was just not ready to believe the rumor. Lipa is a 36-year-old Hasid with four children. He enjoys a successful career in the Jewish entertainment business — what could have brought him to Columbia?
I walked over and introduced myself. I told him that I had heard him perform multiple times and that I am a big fan. A few of my friends followed me over and introduced themselves as fans as well. This made Lipa very excited, and he followed us around for the remainder of the evening; he sat with us at the pep rally and hung out with us on Low Steps afterward.
During that first encounter, I noticed that in spite of his unusual background, Lipa desperately wanted to be a regular student. Although he is 36 years old, when Lipa is at Columbia he acts like one of us. There’s something innocent and pure about his personality — one can tell from his wide-eyed demeanor that he is taking advantage of all that Columbia has to offer. He is genuinely excited about every aspect of being in school: from staying up late on the sixth floor of Butler Library (or in his secret study spot: the Music and Arts Library in Dodge) to becoming friends with his classmates.
Lipa lives 30 miles northwest of Manhattan, but he still gets to campus early every single morning and often stays late into night. He can be found in Café Nana in the Kraft Center, Butler Library, and in the GS student lounge, and he regularly attends Hillel events. In all, Lipa is an active — and altogether regular — member of this community. He’s even created a Whatsapp group with all of his newfound college friends, in which he regularly posts personal updates and videos, and he’s set up an alternate, personal Facebook account--aside from his official page which has over 8,000 likes — just for his new friends. Judging by his dedicated and frequent usage of social media, it’s clear that he is determined to have as normal of a college experience as possible.
Lipa does not shy away from talking about his time in the Ultra-Orthodox world, but he and I sat down for a formal interview. I wanted to hear what had brought him here, to Columbia. I wanted, in short, to hear his story. We talked about everything: from his childhood to his career to his relationship with his family to his decision to attend Columbia.
It was the third day of NSOP. Orientation groups from all four undergraduate schools were sprawled across campus, eating dinner together before heading to Dodge for a pep rally. A nervous first-year, I sat with my orientation group, trying my best to be personable while counting the minutes until the program was set to begin. Then someone caught my eye from across the lawn: a familiar looking man in a silver, paisley shirt and a sparkly large yarmulke, with black, curly earlocks and trendy, thick-framed glasses. He was surrounded by a group of students, and I could hear his booming, Yiddish accent from more than a few yards away. It was the Hasidic singer, Lipa Schmeltzer.
Having grown up in a Modern Orthodox community and attended Jewish day schools and summer camps, I had seen Lipa perform at many concerts and weddings. But I had only seen him in full Hasidic traditional garb. This time, he was not wearing the classic black and white getup — he was not even wearing a hat. He looked different than I had ever seen him, and he was entirely out of context sitting here on my new secular college campus.
Although I had heard rumors over the summer that Lipa, a well-known Hasidic wedding singer-turned-popstar, was planning on attending the Columbia School of General Studies, seeing him on campus caught me off guard. I suppose I was just not ready to believe the rumor. Lipa is a 36-year-old Hasid with four children. He enjoys a successful career in the Jewish entertainment business — what could have brought him to Columbia?
I walked over and introduced myself. I told him that I had heard him perform multiple times and that I am a big fan. A few of my friends followed me over and introduced themselves as fans as well. This made Lipa very excited, and he followed us around for the remainder of the evening; he sat with us at the pep rally and hung out with us on Low Steps afterward.
During that first encounter, I noticed that in spite of his unusual background, Lipa desperately wanted to be a regular student. Although he is 36 years old, when Lipa is at Columbia he acts like one of us. There’s something innocent and pure about his personality — one can tell from his wide-eyed demeanor that he is taking advantage of all that Columbia has to offer. He is genuinely excited about every aspect of being in school: from staying up late on the sixth floor of Butler Library (or in his secret study spot: the Music and Arts Library in Dodge) to becoming friends with his classmates.
Lipa lives 30 miles northwest of Manhattan, but he still gets to campus early every single morning and often stays late into night. He can be found in Café Nana in the Kraft Center, Butler Library, and in the GS student lounge, and he regularly attends Hillel events. In all, Lipa is an active — and altogether regular — member of this community. He’s even created a Whatsapp group with all of his newfound college friends, in which he regularly posts personal updates and videos, and he’s set up an alternate, personal Facebook account--aside from his official page which has over 8,000 likes — just for his new friends. Judging by his dedicated and frequent usage of social media, it’s clear that he is determined to have as normal of a college experience as possible.
Lipa does not shy away from talking about his time in the Ultra-Orthodox world, but he and I sat down for a formal interview. I wanted to hear what had brought him here, to Columbia. I wanted, in short, to hear his story. We talked about everything: from his childhood to his career to his relationship with his family to his decision to attend Columbia.
Leeza's first encounter with Lipa, during NSOP.
Lipa and Leeza at a Hillel event at the start of Spring 2015 in the Kraft Center.
Lipa Schmeltzer: Wedding Singer
The eleventh of 12 children, Lipa was born in 1979 to a family of Skverer Chassidim, a Hasidic sect that originated in Skvyra, Ukraine, but resettled to Brooklyn after World War II. In 1954, the Skverer Rebbe, Yaakov Yosef Twersky, bought a 130-acre dairy farm in Rockland County, NY, and used it to essentially create a modern day shtetl, or a Jewish village modeled after those of Eastern Europe. He recruited his followers to leave Brooklyn, to leave behind the secular city and to join him in Upstate New York, where they could live a completely insular lifestyle devoid of secularity. They called the town “New Skver” after the name of their town in Ukraine, but a translation error caused it to be written as New Square, the name by which most identify it today. As of the 2010 census, New Square has a total population of 6,944 people, all of whom belong to the Yiddish-speaking Skverer sect of Hasidim. The Rebbe (now Yaakov Yosef’s son David) is the main authority in the town. There is only one synagogue, one girls’ school, and one boys’ school. If anyone tries to deviate from the Rebbe’s authority, they are completely excommunicated from the community.
“I grew up thinking that the Rebbe would be my lawyer to Hakadosh Barush Hu [God] on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur,” Lipa said. “One day, my father wanted to buy a car. So he went to the Rebbe to ask permission — he would never make any decision before consulting with the Rebbe. The Rebbe responded, ‘Why would you possibly want that?’ My father took that as a hint and just didn’t buy the car. This is just one story that shows the deep fear and admiration that my father and everyone in New Square has for the Rebbe.”
There are hundreds of students in New Square's Hasidic boys’ school. Each class has around 30 students, and they all sit around the same table. But that is where the similarities to Lit Hum end. In the classroom, they speak Yiddish and learn only Judaic subjects but for a single short class in math or English. Lipa admits that he was never a good student, constantly spacing out in class, unable to focus: “Music always kept me alive. I was always humming, drumming, and writing lyrics during classes. That, coupled with day dreaming, kept me going.”
Even now, Lipa attributes his difficulty paying attention in his college classes to his negative experience in elementary school. Despite having clear attention difficulties, Lipa did not receive help from teachers, but was instead shunned as a shvache (weak) kid. Today, his mind subconsciously shuts off when he enters a classroom, a habit he is working hard to fix. Many years later — when he is so far removed from that tiny, Yiddish classroom — his negatives experiences still color his intellectual journey.
Throughout our discussions, Lipa keeps qualifying his statements with phrases like, “I say whatever I feel. This is what God wants me to say now,” and “I’m gonna tell you the truth.” I get the sense that he is saying these things more for his own conscience than for me to hear; it is almost therapeutic for him to get them out. New Square is not a particularly open community — the truth there belongs to the Rebbe exclusively. Here at Columbia, where there are as many truths as voices, Lipa is capitalizing on the intellectual openness.
At 19, Lipa already felt “like an old man.” He had moved around a lot during high school, as not a single Hasidic yeshiva knew how to deal with him. He felt tired, lonely and rejected. He wanted to get married. “Really, I think I wanted a car and a streimel (a fur hat) — two items only married men are allowed to have.” He met his wife 20 minutes before the wedding, as all Skverer couples do. “I didn’t fall in love with her before the wedding. That would be impossible! We did not even know each other! It took time before we really got to know each other, and now I can say that she is the love of my life.”
This model of courtship is worlds away from the way relationships work on this campus. When Lipa found out that I was dating someone, he offered to perform (for free!) at our wedding, even though my boyfriend and I were 19 years old, had at the time only been dating for a month, and were not even close to planning a wedding. He then qualified his offer: “I hope it’s appropriate to say these things — in my community I don’t get experience in these areas.” Clearly, casual dating is a completely foreign concept to him.
As a young married man, Lipa needed to find a way to support his new family, so he started delivering meat for the butcher. He was paid five or six dollars an hour, hardly enough to live on. If he wasn’t going to make enough money working jobs he did not enjoy, he figured he might as well do something he both loved and excelled at. Thus began his career as a singer — he began singing at weddings and even recorded a CD.
But before the release of Lipa’s first CD, the rabbinical court in New Square, the legislative arm of the Rebbe, forced him to publish a statement in the local Yiddish newspaper acknowledging that his CD was not kosher and discouraging others from buying it. In other words, Lipa was forced to discourage his community — his prime clientele — from buying his CD. This was hardly a profitable venture. But Lipa had no other choice: he and his young family faced excommunication. This was over a decade ago, but to this day, Lipa is still incredulous about the whole affair. “What did they even think was not kosher about my music? I sang all Jewish songs! They said it was the hip-hop and rock beats in my music. But this was even before I purposely started adding that stuff.” Despite his doubts, Lipa was not prepared to challenge the authority of the Rebbe and he agreed to publish a statement excoriating his own CD: “I was so brainwashed that I could not imagine life outside of New Square. I thought that if I moved out, my life would end.” Even though his dreams were technically within the confines of the Orthodox world, his aspirations were too ambitious for the approval of his neighbors in New Square. Perhaps this has to do with how the supreme authority ultimately belongs not to God, who would ostensibly take no issue with Jewish singers, but to the Rebbe.
Ironically, Lipa turned this frustration with the constraints of his community into more progressive music. He started implementing rock and hip-hop in his music precisely because he was accused of already having done so. “I really didn’t do anything modern at the beginning of my career, but since I was accused of it I actually made the transition.” He began listening to “goyishe” (non-Jewish) music when he was a deliveryman and would listen to the radio in his truck, but it took him some time before he started incorporating non-Jewish influences into his music. His music started to sound less traditionally Hasidic and more like Hebrew and Yiddish versions of Billboard Top 100 hits. His choreography also gradually evolved into hip-hop, and he has even begun to rap. His wardrobe (as evidenced by his getup during NSOP) has evolved from full-on Hasidic to Hasidic-popstar hybrid. He has substituted his streimel with a fedora and black and white with flashy colors. But the Lipa of today is the product of a decade-long transformation. Looking at him now, it’s easy to forget that at the start of his career, Lipa looked like a regular Hasid — even if, on the inside, he was anything but.
All Lipa ever wanted to do was to sing for the Rebbe. “It was my ultimate dream; my goal in life.” Finally, years into his career, Lipa was invited to perform at the sheva brachos [post-wedding celebration] of one of the Rebbe’s children. But activists pushed for his cancellation at the last minute because he was not righteous enough: an entertainer has no place at the Rebbe’s sheva brachos. The irony here is palpable: the only people allowed to entertain are those who are not entertainers. This pattern — of Lipa being invited and subsequently disinvited to perform for the Rebbe — repeated itself frequently. The Rebbe always found a reason to disinvite Lipa, often at the last minute.
The eleventh of 12 children, Lipa was born in 1979 to a family of Skverer Chassidim, a Hasidic sect that originated in Skvyra, Ukraine, but resettled to Brooklyn after World War II. In 1954, the Skverer Rebbe, Yaakov Yosef Twersky, bought a 130-acre dairy farm in Rockland County, NY, and used it to essentially create a modern day shtetl, or a Jewish village modeled after those of Eastern Europe. He recruited his followers to leave Brooklyn, to leave behind the secular city and to join him in Upstate New York, where they could live a completely insular lifestyle devoid of secularity. They called the town “New Skver” after the name of their town in Ukraine, but a translation error caused it to be written as New Square, the name by which most identify it today. As of the 2010 census, New Square has a total population of 6,944 people, all of whom belong to the Yiddish-speaking Skverer sect of Hasidim. The Rebbe (now Yaakov Yosef’s son David) is the main authority in the town. There is only one synagogue, one girls’ school, and one boys’ school. If anyone tries to deviate from the Rebbe’s authority, they are completely excommunicated from the community.
“I grew up thinking that the Rebbe would be my lawyer to Hakadosh Barush Hu [God] on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur,” Lipa said. “One day, my father wanted to buy a car. So he went to the Rebbe to ask permission — he would never make any decision before consulting with the Rebbe. The Rebbe responded, ‘Why would you possibly want that?’ My father took that as a hint and just didn’t buy the car. This is just one story that shows the deep fear and admiration that my father and everyone in New Square has for the Rebbe.”
There are hundreds of students in New Square's Hasidic boys’ school. Each class has around 30 students, and they all sit around the same table. But that is where the similarities to Lit Hum end. In the classroom, they speak Yiddish and learn only Judaic subjects but for a single short class in math or English. Lipa admits that he was never a good student, constantly spacing out in class, unable to focus: “Music always kept me alive. I was always humming, drumming, and writing lyrics during classes. That, coupled with day dreaming, kept me going.”
Even now, Lipa attributes his difficulty paying attention in his college classes to his negative experience in elementary school. Despite having clear attention difficulties, Lipa did not receive help from teachers, but was instead shunned as a shvache (weak) kid. Today, his mind subconsciously shuts off when he enters a classroom, a habit he is working hard to fix. Many years later — when he is so far removed from that tiny, Yiddish classroom — his negatives experiences still color his intellectual journey.
Throughout our discussions, Lipa keeps qualifying his statements with phrases like, “I say whatever I feel. This is what God wants me to say now,” and “I’m gonna tell you the truth.” I get the sense that he is saying these things more for his own conscience than for me to hear; it is almost therapeutic for him to get them out. New Square is not a particularly open community — the truth there belongs to the Rebbe exclusively. Here at Columbia, where there are as many truths as voices, Lipa is capitalizing on the intellectual openness.
At 19, Lipa already felt “like an old man.” He had moved around a lot during high school, as not a single Hasidic yeshiva knew how to deal with him. He felt tired, lonely and rejected. He wanted to get married. “Really, I think I wanted a car and a streimel (a fur hat) — two items only married men are allowed to have.” He met his wife 20 minutes before the wedding, as all Skverer couples do. “I didn’t fall in love with her before the wedding. That would be impossible! We did not even know each other! It took time before we really got to know each other, and now I can say that she is the love of my life.”
This model of courtship is worlds away from the way relationships work on this campus. When Lipa found out that I was dating someone, he offered to perform (for free!) at our wedding, even though my boyfriend and I were 19 years old, had at the time only been dating for a month, and were not even close to planning a wedding. He then qualified his offer: “I hope it’s appropriate to say these things — in my community I don’t get experience in these areas.” Clearly, casual dating is a completely foreign concept to him.
As a young married man, Lipa needed to find a way to support his new family, so he started delivering meat for the butcher. He was paid five or six dollars an hour, hardly enough to live on. If he wasn’t going to make enough money working jobs he did not enjoy, he figured he might as well do something he both loved and excelled at. Thus began his career as a singer — he began singing at weddings and even recorded a CD.
But before the release of Lipa’s first CD, the rabbinical court in New Square, the legislative arm of the Rebbe, forced him to publish a statement in the local Yiddish newspaper acknowledging that his CD was not kosher and discouraging others from buying it. In other words, Lipa was forced to discourage his community — his prime clientele — from buying his CD. This was hardly a profitable venture. But Lipa had no other choice: he and his young family faced excommunication. This was over a decade ago, but to this day, Lipa is still incredulous about the whole affair. “What did they even think was not kosher about my music? I sang all Jewish songs! They said it was the hip-hop and rock beats in my music. But this was even before I purposely started adding that stuff.” Despite his doubts, Lipa was not prepared to challenge the authority of the Rebbe and he agreed to publish a statement excoriating his own CD: “I was so brainwashed that I could not imagine life outside of New Square. I thought that if I moved out, my life would end.” Even though his dreams were technically within the confines of the Orthodox world, his aspirations were too ambitious for the approval of his neighbors in New Square. Perhaps this has to do with how the supreme authority ultimately belongs not to God, who would ostensibly take no issue with Jewish singers, but to the Rebbe.
Ironically, Lipa turned this frustration with the constraints of his community into more progressive music. He started implementing rock and hip-hop in his music precisely because he was accused of already having done so. “I really didn’t do anything modern at the beginning of my career, but since I was accused of it I actually made the transition.” He began listening to “goyishe” (non-Jewish) music when he was a deliveryman and would listen to the radio in his truck, but it took him some time before he started incorporating non-Jewish influences into his music. His music started to sound less traditionally Hasidic and more like Hebrew and Yiddish versions of Billboard Top 100 hits. His choreography also gradually evolved into hip-hop, and he has even begun to rap. His wardrobe (as evidenced by his getup during NSOP) has evolved from full-on Hasidic to Hasidic-popstar hybrid. He has substituted his streimel with a fedora and black and white with flashy colors. But the Lipa of today is the product of a decade-long transformation. Looking at him now, it’s easy to forget that at the start of his career, Lipa looked like a regular Hasid — even if, on the inside, he was anything but.
All Lipa ever wanted to do was to sing for the Rebbe. “It was my ultimate dream; my goal in life.” Finally, years into his career, Lipa was invited to perform at the sheva brachos [post-wedding celebration] of one of the Rebbe’s children. But activists pushed for his cancellation at the last minute because he was not righteous enough: an entertainer has no place at the Rebbe’s sheva brachos. The irony here is palpable: the only people allowed to entertain are those who are not entertainers. This pattern — of Lipa being invited and subsequently disinvited to perform for the Rebbe — repeated itself frequently. The Rebbe always found a reason to disinvite Lipa, often at the last minute.
Lipa and Dean Peter Awn of the School of General Studies, after performing at the Chabad Hannukah candle lighting ceremony. Dec. 2014.
Lipa is clearly trying to be a normal student. Here he is at a Hannukah party in a Columbia dorm!
At age 28, and after years of humiliation and rejection, Lipa decided to leave New Square. He had become increasingly disenchanted with the Rebbe and with the community’s utter obsession with and subservience to him. Lipa felt that although they outwardly led lives devoted to the Torah and the strictest possible interpretation of the Halakha, it was all a façade for a corrupt society centered on a single individual. “Months of the same cycle of invitation and rejection by the Rebbe were the straw that broke the camel’s back. I left New Square with my family and moved to Airmont," a more open-minded, diverse town in Rockland County right outside of Monsey.
Lipa thought his persecution at the hands of a religious authority would end when he left New Square. But the worst was yet to come. In 2008, Lipa was scheduled to perform with several other Jewish entertainers in a concert called “The Big Event” at Madison Square Garden. It was to be one of the biggest Jewish concerts of the year; but 33 rabbis jointly issued a statement banning all of their followers from attending the event. The Rabbis accused the performers of profanity and idolatry and of taking their style from the goyim. Yet again, Lipa found himself at the forefront of a very public battle between religiosity and secularity, between 21st century trends and traditional norms. But this time, Lipa could not just leave his town. He risked being ostracized not just from from the small sect of Skverer Hasidim in New Square, but from the broader Ultra-Orthodox community.
After much deliberation, Lipa decided not to perform in the show. Terribly humiliated and depressed, he stayed out of the public eye for almost a year following the debacle. He stopped singing publicly, and instead focused on introspection and personal healing. It was then that Lipa decided to start going to therapy: “I had a wonderful Modern Orthodox therapist who taught me not to confuse Jews with Judaism. He helped me tremendously with my spiritual healing. After the ‘Big Event’ scandal, I started to feel very bitter about everything, including all of Judaism, and he taught me to take a different approach.” Lipa’s eyes light up as he talks about this time of his life. “This was the beginning of a new era. I became a lot more open. I started to wear blue shirts during the week instead of just white. I might have lost a lot of fans and money, but I gained a new Lipa.”
Lipa’s family was undoubtedly affected by all of the drama surrounding his career. Talking about this puts Lipa on the verge of tears; he can barely speak without choking up. “My siblings would say that my wife and I had one of the top 10 shalom bayises [peaceful marriages] in all of New Square. In reality, I don’t know how true that actually was. Everything was connected. The controversy affected my family. My wife wanted to support me, but it was hard. And even still, she backed me all of these years. I love my wife, and she is beautiful. I realize that now more than ever.”
Lipa Schmeltzer: College Student
The “new Lipa” decided that he wanted to get a college education, and he decided to attend community college with his wife. As he described so poignantly earlier, they are committed to starting every new stage in life together. “It was something that was important to both of us — that we felt we missed out on,” he said. He tried to enroll in Rockland Community College, but was told that he needed a GED in order to apply. So he called his yeshiva high school to ask for a diploma. They gave him a diploma and he brought it back to the college, but he was told that the diploma was worthless. Refusing to give up, Lipa spent two years taking courses at the local public school until he finally got his GED before finally enrolling in Rockland.
College was a culture shock to Lipa, but in the best possible sense. “I was, like, the only Jew there, but I was so loved. I questioned everything and then landed from that too. Going to college is not just about getting a job for me. This is a whole new story in the making! Education just fills a certain void for me — my life is balanced now.” This philosophy, though common among liberal arts students, directly contradicts the approach to education with which Lipa was raised. His whole life, Lipa was taught that there was no room to study anything apart from the Torah and skills necessary for earning money. The “new Lipa” shuns this vocationally focused mindset and pursues an education for education’s sake.
Upon earning his Associate's Degree, Lipa decided to apply to Bachelor's Degree programs. “I applied to Columbia but changed my mind about it a million times. I also applied to other schools that I knew I would be able to finish very quickly. But at the end of the day, I decided to challenge myself and to come here.”
Columbia is certainly not easy for Lipa. Although he was born and raised in America, he is more comfortable reading in Yiddish than English. He is taking it slowly; last semester he took only two courses, remedial English and acting, in order to focus on improving his English skills and transitioning to college. Despite all of his difficulty, Lipa is definitely happy here. “I am absolutely loving Columbia. My whole life changed when I got here.”
Like many students at Columbia, Lipa maintains a part-time job, though his might be a little more glamorous than others. Lipa continues to work in the entertainment business and performs at the occasional wedding and large concert, but he does not work nearly as often as he did in the early days of his career. "I’m still Lipa Schmeltzer, even though I go to school and hang out in Hillel. … I don’t need to do a wedding every single night anymore. I can do a few weddings a month and charge a lot more money."
Here at Columbia he is entertaining the possibility of changing careers altogether and is considering pursuing a career in social work or therapy, hoping to help people with backgrounds like his own. In fact, this is something that he has already begun doing in his community of Airmont, He founded a synagogue in his community, which serves those who have left the Hasidic community and are searching for meaning. It is called the Airmont Shul, but most people just call it “Lipa’s shul.” Although he does not have rabbinical ordination, Lipa serves as a religious guide for his congregants. He preaches a Judaism that is welcoming and engaged with the outside world. He records twice-weekly short messages on that week’s Torah portion, which are usually connected to a theme of religious authenticity. He urges those who listen to him to forget about all of the “shtick” of the Hasidic world and to focus on what is really important; to stop obsessing over legalistic stringencies and to instead work on being better people. As a communal figure, Lipa is the ultimate opposite of the Rebbe. Instead of leading through intimidation and power, Lipa leads through openness and love. Lipa Schmeltzer might be a world famous singer, but to label him strictly as such is to massively underestimate all that he is and that he does: Lipa Schmeltzer is not just a singer, but a leader.
This semester, Lipa is enrolled in Music Humanities, a staple of Columbia’s Core Curriculum in which students study the history and development of Western music. The course requires its students to attend, and write about an Opera, and so, this past week, Lipa made his way to Lincoln Center, to see — and hear — his first Opera. Lincoln Center is a world away from New Square, but to Lipa music is music, and he’ll take any chance he can to hear a new genre or style. From New Square to Airmont, Rockland to Columbia, Madison Square Garden to Lincoln Center, music has taken Lipa not just out of his world but across many worlds, and if you ask him, a first-year at Columbia University, his journey is just beginning.
Lipa thought his persecution at the hands of a religious authority would end when he left New Square. But the worst was yet to come. In 2008, Lipa was scheduled to perform with several other Jewish entertainers in a concert called “The Big Event” at Madison Square Garden. It was to be one of the biggest Jewish concerts of the year; but 33 rabbis jointly issued a statement banning all of their followers from attending the event. The Rabbis accused the performers of profanity and idolatry and of taking their style from the goyim. Yet again, Lipa found himself at the forefront of a very public battle between religiosity and secularity, between 21st century trends and traditional norms. But this time, Lipa could not just leave his town. He risked being ostracized not just from from the small sect of Skverer Hasidim in New Square, but from the broader Ultra-Orthodox community.
After much deliberation, Lipa decided not to perform in the show. Terribly humiliated and depressed, he stayed out of the public eye for almost a year following the debacle. He stopped singing publicly, and instead focused on introspection and personal healing. It was then that Lipa decided to start going to therapy: “I had a wonderful Modern Orthodox therapist who taught me not to confuse Jews with Judaism. He helped me tremendously with my spiritual healing. After the ‘Big Event’ scandal, I started to feel very bitter about everything, including all of Judaism, and he taught me to take a different approach.” Lipa’s eyes light up as he talks about this time of his life. “This was the beginning of a new era. I became a lot more open. I started to wear blue shirts during the week instead of just white. I might have lost a lot of fans and money, but I gained a new Lipa.”
Lipa’s family was undoubtedly affected by all of the drama surrounding his career. Talking about this puts Lipa on the verge of tears; he can barely speak without choking up. “My siblings would say that my wife and I had one of the top 10 shalom bayises [peaceful marriages] in all of New Square. In reality, I don’t know how true that actually was. Everything was connected. The controversy affected my family. My wife wanted to support me, but it was hard. And even still, she backed me all of these years. I love my wife, and she is beautiful. I realize that now more than ever.”
Lipa Schmeltzer: College Student
The “new Lipa” decided that he wanted to get a college education, and he decided to attend community college with his wife. As he described so poignantly earlier, they are committed to starting every new stage in life together. “It was something that was important to both of us — that we felt we missed out on,” he said. He tried to enroll in Rockland Community College, but was told that he needed a GED in order to apply. So he called his yeshiva high school to ask for a diploma. They gave him a diploma and he brought it back to the college, but he was told that the diploma was worthless. Refusing to give up, Lipa spent two years taking courses at the local public school until he finally got his GED before finally enrolling in Rockland.
College was a culture shock to Lipa, but in the best possible sense. “I was, like, the only Jew there, but I was so loved. I questioned everything and then landed from that too. Going to college is not just about getting a job for me. This is a whole new story in the making! Education just fills a certain void for me — my life is balanced now.” This philosophy, though common among liberal arts students, directly contradicts the approach to education with which Lipa was raised. His whole life, Lipa was taught that there was no room to study anything apart from the Torah and skills necessary for earning money. The “new Lipa” shuns this vocationally focused mindset and pursues an education for education’s sake.
Upon earning his Associate's Degree, Lipa decided to apply to Bachelor's Degree programs. “I applied to Columbia but changed my mind about it a million times. I also applied to other schools that I knew I would be able to finish very quickly. But at the end of the day, I decided to challenge myself and to come here.”
Columbia is certainly not easy for Lipa. Although he was born and raised in America, he is more comfortable reading in Yiddish than English. He is taking it slowly; last semester he took only two courses, remedial English and acting, in order to focus on improving his English skills and transitioning to college. Despite all of his difficulty, Lipa is definitely happy here. “I am absolutely loving Columbia. My whole life changed when I got here.”
Like many students at Columbia, Lipa maintains a part-time job, though his might be a little more glamorous than others. Lipa continues to work in the entertainment business and performs at the occasional wedding and large concert, but he does not work nearly as often as he did in the early days of his career. "I’m still Lipa Schmeltzer, even though I go to school and hang out in Hillel. … I don’t need to do a wedding every single night anymore. I can do a few weddings a month and charge a lot more money."
Here at Columbia he is entertaining the possibility of changing careers altogether and is considering pursuing a career in social work or therapy, hoping to help people with backgrounds like his own. In fact, this is something that he has already begun doing in his community of Airmont, He founded a synagogue in his community, which serves those who have left the Hasidic community and are searching for meaning. It is called the Airmont Shul, but most people just call it “Lipa’s shul.” Although he does not have rabbinical ordination, Lipa serves as a religious guide for his congregants. He preaches a Judaism that is welcoming and engaged with the outside world. He records twice-weekly short messages on that week’s Torah portion, which are usually connected to a theme of religious authenticity. He urges those who listen to him to forget about all of the “shtick” of the Hasidic world and to focus on what is really important; to stop obsessing over legalistic stringencies and to instead work on being better people. As a communal figure, Lipa is the ultimate opposite of the Rebbe. Instead of leading through intimidation and power, Lipa leads through openness and love. Lipa Schmeltzer might be a world famous singer, but to label him strictly as such is to massively underestimate all that he is and that he does: Lipa Schmeltzer is not just a singer, but a leader.
This semester, Lipa is enrolled in Music Humanities, a staple of Columbia’s Core Curriculum in which students study the history and development of Western music. The course requires its students to attend, and write about an Opera, and so, this past week, Lipa made his way to Lincoln Center, to see — and hear — his first Opera. Lincoln Center is a world away from New Square, but to Lipa music is music, and he’ll take any chance he can to hear a new genre or style. From New Square to Airmont, Rockland to Columbia, Madison Square Garden to Lincoln Center, music has taken Lipa not just out of his world but across many worlds, and if you ask him, a first-year at Columbia University, his journey is just beginning.
// LEEZA HIRT is a first-year in Columbia College. She can be reached at lh2717@columbia.edu. Photos courtesy of Lipa Schmeltzer and Leeza Hirt.