Lipa Schmeltzer: "I want to move to Israel"

Lipa Schmeltzer, the chassidic singer who lives in the United States, is sharing a growing desire to move to Eretz Yisroel. In remarks he gave to the Pargod groups following his visit to Israel over Sukkos, he said that with every trip the yearning grows stronger and the thought that perhaps one day he will make his home here becomes more real.

"Every time I come here I feel more and more the longing and the desire to come here much more often and maybe even to live here one day, I've been talking about this for years already," Schmeltzer said. The singer added that he is aware of the difficulty involved in moving the centre of his life from America to Israel: "Obviously it's not simple to make such a change in the middle of life, but from year to year this feeling only gets stronger."

Schmeltzer, known as one of the leading chassidic singers in the world, blends traditional chassidic music with modern styles and is especially active in the chareidi music world. Recently he released a new single called "Shabbat Ramp" in honor of US President Donald Trump's declaration of a "National Shabbat."

At the end of davening on Hoshana Rabbah, Schmeltzer shared a moving story about the power of Jewish music. He told of meeting a woman who ran after him in the street and asked to tell him how one of his songs completely changed her life. The woman said she grew up on his songs and listened to them from a young age, but later in life went off the derech and even planned to marry a non-Jew. At the last moment she happened to come across one of his songs on Spotify, and the song touched her heart and was the first step on her path back to Yiddishkeit. Today she is married to a Jew.