The Miami Boys Choir has gone viral on TikTok. A video version of the song “Yerushalayim” has racked up millions of views, as the non-Jewish world discovers Orthodox pop with all its energy and innocent “oys” and dance moves. In other words, TikTok is falling in love with ruach.
These “Jewish choirboys are the only thing keeping me afloat,” one enamored user wrote.
He is not alone.
@miamiboyschoir 🗣🗣🗣🗣 after more than 40 years of performance excellence, here were 4 soloists who helped usher in big changes for the Miami Boys Choir – the beginning of the Gen-Z generation of Miami Boys Choir fans and supporters. MBC Worldwide (2008-2012) #voice #solo #acting #israel #ישראל #מוסיקה #music #jewish ♬ original sound – Yerachmiel Begun and MBC
Thousands of TikTok users are recording their own personal responses to a catchy Hebrew song that is a verse from Tehilim, or the Psalms. Many describe themselves as “obsessed” with the song and the singers. Dance moves and admiring comments abound; The TikTok video of a young woman commenting on the choir has amassed 378,000 views and counting.
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Meanwhile, those who grew up in the Orthodox world listening to this music have taken to social media to document how amazed and amused they are by this wildly unexpected trend.
However, on TikTok, no one seems too concerned about the meaning of the Hebrew words; it’s all about “how into it is” and how addicted users are to the song, which will no doubt get into your brain while the app plays the 40 second clip unless you stop it. People just can’t seem to stop watching Yoshi Bender, C. Abromowitz, David Herskowitz, and Binyomin Abramowitz.
Meet MBC fans
A “stan” is a super fan, and on TikTok, the four boys each have their own ardent fans. A popular form of video is “I rate the Miami Boys Choir” with different kids in slots 1, 2, 3 and 4, with TikTok users explaining their rationale. The comments on these videos are wild, as hundreds of thousands of people debate the singing ability, dance moves, expressions, charisma, and stage presence of four yeshiva youths singing about God and Jerusalem. .
The term stan, now often used as a verb, is “a reference to Eminem’s song Stan,” according to Urban Dictionary. That song is about an overly obsessed fan (named Stan) who writes letters to Eminem and ends up throwing his pregnant wife off a bridge because Eminem didn’t write back.
Here is a beautiful video with the answer, “we support”, to the Miami Boys Choir.
This TikTok user called Binyomin “potentially Michael Jackson in disguise.”
But where does the song come from?
So what is the song exactly? It is Psalm 125:2. In the 1985 Jewish Publication Society translation, it reads: “Jerusalem, the hills encircle her / and the LORD enfolds his people / now and forever.” The opening hand movements in the song are the children imitating how the hills surround the city of Jerusalem.
You can read the original Hebrew and the translations in Sefaria.
But if TikTok is your thing, this video from NotaRabbi Yet explains Hebrew.
The pronunciation is not Israeli, but rather Yiddish-inflected Hebrew, or what you hear in Ashkenazi yeshiva circles in New York. Leh’amo is pronounced lee’amo and meh’ata is pronounced mee’ata. The climax of the song is: “oy Yerushalayim oy Yershalayim”.
The “oy” is of course not part of the Hebrew psalm.
As more and more people watch the 40-second clip from 2008, Miami Boys Choir has been responding to TikTok users through comments on the app and has been uploading more clips. Yerachmiel Begun, the adult who has guided the boys in singing for decades and who can be seen in some videos, has been answering fan queries in TikTok comments.
Newly obsessed fans, who appear to be in their late teens and early 20s, are vigorously digging through the archives, like this young Binyomin superfan: “WE STAN BINYOMIN WHAT A LEGEND”, and records her cat enjoying her singing from 2008.
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Yoshi also has his fans, like this one.
It is quite amazing to see the cat jumping to the beat of “Ben David avdecha yavoh vyigaleynu”, in other words, a Moshiach song. And some academics on Twitter have raised concerns about what people are chanting and the possible theological or political implications.
But does anyone on TikTok care what it means?
Many videos show people becoming more and more animated when David or Binyomin sings, in the part of the Yerushalayim song that goes higher. This version of someone acting and dancing to the song, although he admits he has no idea what it means, is quite charming.
Another user claims that Binyomin is underrated; he also dances as the song progresses.
A blast from the past
For those who grew up singing in yeshiva choirs, the structure of the melody is familiar; it starts slow and contemplative, in a lower register, and then goes high. Both David and Binyomin bring a lot of ruach and rock out with “Yerushalayim”.
Naturally.
Other aspects of this blast from the past are also familiar: the benches on which the singers stand and the ubiquitous fog machines. But it is also clear that in 2008, no one imagined that video evidence could live forever, with an audience of millions rather than just the religious Jewish community.
These tweens live in a world before social media. They couldn’t imagine that at some point in the future, people who are probably not yeshiva graduates would use a 40-second clip to try and guess the personalities of the children.
Go down the rabbit hole of TikTok and you will find many fans who have no idea what the Hebrew is saying and are very wrong in their guesses.
You’ll also find those who seem to know the Hebrew words and have recognized the Miami Boys Choir since childhood, like this boy who says he loved MBC before strollers.
Where are you now?
So what happened to these guys? Everybody wants to know. In the past few hours, TikTok went wild when one of the stars of 2008, David Herskovitz, made his own videos of himself in response, like the adult he is now. Here he is, filmed in bed, watching his pre-teen self go viral. At the time of writing this article, he had over 260,000 views.
He also corrected the pronunciation of his last name, which was misspelled in the video.
As the trend of Miami Boys Choir obsession continues, a new trend of Jewish TikTokers explaining the video’s effect on them has taken hold. A young woman says that she was “staunchly atheist”, but she now feels really connected to Judaism thanks to this video. She says that her whole life would have changed if she had seen this group when she was 9 years old.
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“I feel so proud to be Jewish right now. Should I go to the shul? It’s almost Rosh Hashanah,” he says. Twitter user Mordechai Burg comments: “I didn’t have a viral Miami Boys Choir Tik Tok video that stirred Jewish soul and restored Jewish pride on my 2022 bingo card.”
Perhaps TikTok is just another way the Lord is “engulfing his people.”
Source: stljewishlight.org