A long-simmering and deeply contentious issue in the chareidi world burst into the open during a live Israeli radio broadcast, as noted maggid meisharim Rav Menachem Stein delivered sharp and emotional remarks about what he described as the unbearable state of wedding music today.
Rav Stein addressed the topic during his program Sichat HaYom on Kol Chai Radio. To add a professional and musical perspective, the renowned composer and musician Rav Chaim Banet joined the broadcast, leading to an extended, wide-ranging, and highly charged discussion. Listeners also called in, offering firsthand accounts from the “ground level” of wedding halls.
Opening the program the week of Shabbos Shirah, Rav Stein framed the conversation in stark terms. “This is the time when Klal Yisroel celebrates the power of niggun,” he said. “And yet this year, it has become a time for a painful reckoning in the world of weddings.” He asked pointedly when Jewish weddings had transformed from elevated celebrations of the heart into “deafening discotheques,” and whether authentic Jewish simcha had been lost along the way.
One of the most striking moments of the broadcast came from a deeply personal story shared by a caller identified as Daniel, an accomplished yeshiva bochur who described undergoing a severe spiritual crisis during his years in yeshiva gedolah. “I felt like a sealed wall, an iron barrier between me and the Gemara,” he said. At the time, Daniel was heavily immersed in modern, contemporary music for many hours a day, without realizing the connection between that habit and his spiritual decline.
The turning point came at a friend’s wedding, where the band played in an older, traditional style, using sacred niggunim with restrained, measured rhythms. “The next day,” Daniel recalled, “I felt as if a new soul had been planted within me. I dove into the Gemara like someone dying of thirst in the desert.” Rav Stein noted that the story echoed the well-known words of Rav Yissachar Meir zt”l, who would avoid loud weddings and famously said, “How can one attend such a wedding? The neshamos that come down from Gan Eden flee because of the foreign melodies.”
Rav Chaim Banet, the veteran composer who has been involved in chassidic music for more than fifty years, spoke with visible pain about the changes he has witnessed. “I played at weddings for decades,” he said. “Once, the heart was happy. Today, a friend told me: ‘It seems only the feet are happy — the heart is no longer there.’” Rav Chaim recounted a conversation with a secular musician who plays both in Tel Aviv clubs and at weddings in Bnei Brak. “He told me in shock: ‘Rav Chaim, there’s no difference. It’s the same discotheque.’”
Rav Chaim also recalled a gathering convened decades ago by Rav Yigal Rosen, who warned musicians about the spiritual erosion that lay ahead. “The tragedy,” Rav Chaim said, “is that a generation has grown up that no longer knows what good music is. This music has destroyed the inner world of feeling.”
Another caller, Avraham, shared a powerful contrast he had experienced just days earlier. He attended a wedding of a prominent rabbinic family but found the volume and trance-style music unbearable. “I had to step outside; I couldn’t tolerate the decibels,” he said. Wandering into an adjacent hall, he discovered a different wedding altogether — a live orchestra with a choir, gentle melodies, and songs of earlier generations. “The entire hall was dancing. You could talk. There was real simcha,” he said. “I went home carrying the joy of a wedding I wasn’t even invited to.”
Throughout the broadcast, participants offered practical suggestions for restoring dignity and spiritual depth to wedding music. Some emphasized the responsibility of the families making the simcha, arguing that those paying for the music must clearly define expectations in advance rather than surrendering to pressure from outside “event coordinators.” Others urged musicians themselves to take a stand and refuse to play foreign or destructive rhythms, even when requested by the crowd. Several speakers stressed that music is only a symptom, and that deeper chinuch is needed to rebuild a sense of kedusha and refined emotion within the yeshiva world.
In concluding the discussion, Rav Stein returned to a broader perspective. Citing the teachings of the Vilna Gaon and his talmidim, he noted that Moshe Rabbeinu brought down ten distinct forms of song from Har Sinai, later used in the Beis Hamikdash to awaken teshuvah and dveikus. “If a person would hear those precise niggunim,” he said, “his soul would depart from sheer attachment to Hashem.”
As Shabbos Shirah approached, the message of the program was clear and urgent. The choice, Rav Stein said, lies with the community itself: the “boom-boom of the jungle,” or song that pierces the heavens. Rav Chaim summed it up simply and starkly: “This touches our very souls — literally our souls.”
{Matzav.com}
