{"id":33937,"date":"2013-10-31T07:30:24","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T07:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/?p=33937"},"modified":"2013-10-31T23:36:04","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T23:36:04","slug":"path-jewish-rockstar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/community\/path-jewish-rockstar\/","title":{"rendered":"The Path of a Jewish Rockstar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/files\/240224_10150320650359392_647781_o.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-post-33937 wp-image-33944\" alt=\"240224_10150320650359392_647781_o\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/files\/240224_10150320650359392_647781_o-300x200.jpeg\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/files\/240224_10150320650359392_647781_o-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/files\/240224_10150320650359392_647781_o-1024x685.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/files\/240224_10150320650359392_647781_o-550x368.jpeg 550w, https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/files\/240224_10150320650359392_647781_o.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>When record executives started calling, Ilan Eckhardt decided\u00a0he\u2019d rather move to Israel than become a rock star in Los\u00a0Angeles.\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019re so many people that end up pursuing a career, and\u00a0it blows up and they run out of steam and motivation, because\u00a0they weren\u2019t mature enough,\u201d the soft-spoken 19-year-old\u00a0Midwesterner explained. \u201cI wanted to make sure I was mature\u00a0enough and the perfect outlet was Israel. Nothing makes\u00a0someone more mature than a sense of purpose and meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019ve been watching Israel\u2019s popular musical reality\u00a0television show \u201cRising Star\u201d (\u201cHaKochav Ha\u2019Ba\u201d), it\u2019s obvious\u00a0why the music industry is so interested in him. Eckhardt sings\u00a0and plays several instruments, and with blonde hair and blue\u00a0eyes doesn\u2019t look like he\u2019d be out of place in an Abercrombie\u00a0&amp; Fitch catalog. Eckhardt easily cruised to the semi-finals\u00a0by crooning an up-tempo Jason Mraz ballad. What you\u00a0probably didn\u2019t know was that Eckhardt, who made aliyah last\u00a0year, honed his musical and singing chops while performing at\u00a0dozens of NCSY Shabbatons and other events throughout his\u00a0teen years.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NSGd58uv2wI\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was great practice for what I\u2019m doing now,\u201d he said by\u00a0phone from Israel. \u201cIt really opened me up to being able to\u00a0involve the audience, which is a big part of performing. NCSY\u00a0is all about the ruach [spirituality]\u2026 People don\u2019t realize how\u00a0powerful music can be.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For a child growing up in Milwaukee, WI, the Orthodox Union\u2019s\u00a0international youth movement also served another vital\u00a0role for Eckhardt, who attended his first Shabbaton as a fifth\u00a0grader.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for NCSY I wouldn\u2019t have felt such a strong need\u00a0to come to Israel,\u201d he said. \u201c I don\u2019t think I would have felt it as\u00a0necessary as it is to be involved with other Jewish people my\u00a0age.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Eckhardt, the son of an opera singer and a concert pianist,\u00a0learned how to play the piano from his grandmother, who lived\u00a0with the family.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe was a live-in teacher, which was awesome,\u201d he said.\u00a0Other instruments he picked up included violin, guitar and\u00a0saxophone. Since the local Jewish high school forbade listening to secular music, Eckhardt enrolled in Cooper Yeshiva High\u00a0School for Boys in Memphis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey gave me the freedom to express myself through my\u00a0music, which is what I needed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>In Memphis he met Rabbi Marc Lennon, the head of Memphis\u00a0NCSY, who introduced him to Jewish music. He also formed a\u00a0close relationship with Rabbi Micah Greenland, the director\u00a0of Midwest NCSY who currently serves as the organization\u2019s\u00a0interim international director.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIlan was an incredibly passionate and involved NCSYer in\u00a0the Midwest region throughout his high school years,\u201d Rabbi\u00a0Greenland said. \u201cHis talent and enthusiasm for music were\u00a0evident early on, as he sang and played instruments informally\u00a0at Shabbatons shortly after becoming active in NCSY. Later,\u00a0he took the initiative in putting together a teen band in NCSY,\u00a0leading a team of other musicians in bringing incredible\u00a0inspiration and energy to hundreds of other teens in Midwest\u00a0NCSY. Ilan fused his aptitude and flair for music with his love\u00a0for Torah and spirituality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After videos of Eckhardt appeared on YouTube, record labels\u00a0reached out to him. At first, he didn\u2019t believe the inquiries\u00a0were legitimate. He learned that they were but realized they\u00a0probably had him in mind for a pop music boy-band. (He\u00a0wasn\u2019t too off the mark: The headline of a recent profile of\u00a0Eckhardt in the Haaretz newspaper declared, \u201cIf One Direction\u00a0had an Orthodox Jewish Member, This is What He Would Look Like.\u201d\u00a0Don\u2019t be fooled by his good\u00a0looks though, Eckhardt is a serious musician whose tastes\u00a0ranges from pop to classical and jazz. He names as his favorite\u00a0musician the singer Jeff Buckley, who released just one album\u00a0before his untimely death.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe brought so much feeling into every song and that\u2019s\u00a0something even the best musicians don\u2019t even do,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u00a0really meant what he was playing and that\u2019s rare.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After high school, Eckhardt opted to attend Yeshivat Orayta\u00a0in the Old City of Jerusalem. He spent the year engrossed in\u00a0learning Torah, but made time for music. While busking on\u00a0Yafo Street he met his future competitors, two other semi-\u00a0finalists of \u201cRising Stars\u201d: Aryeh and Gil Gat, two chasidic\u00a0guitarists whose version of \u201cSong of Silence\u201d\u00a0\u00a0has gone viral.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YwWFA04sqEo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>By chance, one motza\u2019ei Shabbat, Eckhardt ended up near the\u00a0bar where \u201cRising Stars\u201d was doing a first-round of auditions.\u00a0Several months later he got the callback to appear on the show.\u00a0Eckhardt\u2019s performance aired last week.<\/p>\n<p>Eckhardt was eliminated from the competition on Tuesday\u00a0night, but win or lose, he\u2019d already made plans to enlist in\u00a0the Israel Defense Force next year. Wherever he ends up, he\u00a0credits the Orthodox Union\u2019s NCSY with helping him get there.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou meet other Jewish kids your age, which for kids in\u00a0small towns is something you need,\u201d he said about his NCSY\u00a0experience. \u201c When there aren\u2019t other Jewish kids it\u2019s really\u00a0easy to lose your Jewish identity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The unique and inspirational journey of Wisconsin native and Israeli music star,  Ilan Eckhardt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1008,"featured_media":29804,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Path of a Jewish Rockstar - OU Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/community\/path-jewish-rockstar\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Path of a Jewish Rockstar - OU Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The unique and inspirational journey of Wisconsin native and Israeli music star, Ilan Eckhardt.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/community\/path-jewish-rockstar\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"OU Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-10-31T07:30:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-10-31T23:36:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/files\/Picture-119.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"429\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"429\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Michael Orbach\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Michael Orbach\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/community\/path-jewish-rockstar\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.ou.org\/life\/community\/path-jewish-rockstar\/\",\"name\":\"The Path of a Jewish Rockstar - 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