TikTok’s latest music craze has nothing to do with pop stars or the world’s top 40 hits. Instead, surfers are obsessed with an ultra-Orthodox song from 2007 by the Miami Flower Choir that is known in almost every ultra-Orthodox home. The non-Jewish surfers sing and dance orthodox pop in Hebrew.
The Miami Flower Choir alumni said they are still trying to “wrap their heads” around their newfound viral fame. The performance of the 15-year-old song “Jerusalem cities around her” has been viewed on the TikTok platform more than 10 million times.
The song was performed by four soloists – David Hershkowitz, Benjamin Abramowitz, Yoshi Bender and Akiva Abramowitz – who quickly became sensations in their own right on stage. The new fame was funny and completely unexpected for the singers from the original song. “We’ve never been recognized like this before. It’s fascinating,” Abramowitz told NBC. “The fact that everyone in the world loves it even though they don’t understand the language, I’m trying to get my head around that.”
Abramowitz, 24, and Reshkowitz, 27, both joined the choir around age 9 and left at age 14. They said they weren’t on TikTok before the viral video “took off” and instead learned how popular it had become from friends and family who messaged them that they were TikTok celebrities.
K-pop is over. We’re listening to Orthodox Pop from now on. pic.twitter.com/U3hprBon8i
— Microplastics Enjoyer (@EclecticHams) September 6, 2022
The non-Jewish surfers enjoy the songs
“I haven’t seen that video of mine in probably 10 years, so it was really funny to see it,” Hershkowitz said. The video was posted on August 21st, but it only started to gain popularity over the past week. As of Wednesday, more than 10,000 videos have used the “Jerusalem” song in different variations.
The Miami Children’s Choir was founded in 1977 by Yerachmiel Bigon in Miami Beach, Florida. It later moved to New York City, but kept its original name. Bigon’s son, Hanania Bigon, set up the Miami Boys Choir account on TikTok just over two months ago. “I told him: ‘Dad, we have to get on Tiktok. There is a chance, no one knows for sure, but there is a chance that something crazy could happen,’ and he agreed, he gave me hundreds of clips to publish,” Hanania told the American media in grief.
Currently, members of the 2007 choir have no concrete plans to reunite, they said. But several of them, who said they had not been in touch for many years, formed a joint group and said they were interested in getting together – perhaps to make new music. Hershkowitz said there is another beauty in making the nostalgic video viral: “To see it being received positively, with very little anti-Semitic comments being posted, there is so much hate out there and so much negativity, and so many differences in the world,” Hershkowitz said. “And to see people coming together and loving something that is positive and pro-Israel and pro-Judaism, I think it was so nice, and it really amazed me.”
And not only Jews love the song, millions of non-Jewish teenagers from all kinds of backgrounds publicized their enthusiasm for the Miami Choir children and their presence on stage, they designed shirts, invented dances and imitated the singers.
The British Jewish newspaper Jewish Time.news caught up with two of the lead singers and found out how they are enjoying their viral moment. Benjamin Abramovich, now a medical student in New York, told the newspaper that the viral success of the video was: “Amazing.” He said: “The fact that people appreciate and encourage it, I can’t wrap my head around it. The choir’s target audience is really a very specific niche, not even the entire Orthodox community, it’s a niche even within the Orthodox community, it was not known around the world.” .
He also said, “People didn’t go to concerts at all or hear all the songs, this particular Jerusalem song that went viral, most of my friends probably never heard of it, and now with the creation of a TikTok account, it seems like everyone in the world listens to it and appreciates it. The people who love the This, these are people who don’t even understand the language, they now have some kind of interaction or relationship with Jewish culture, in general. So I think it’s really amazing to see.”
His older brother Akiva, who was also a singer in the band, is studying to become a lawyer, he did not expect to become a viral star even outside the Jewish world. He said: “I’m still amazed by the fact that people are exposed to it and enjoy it so much, because our audience every time has always been Orthodox Jews, the kind of music really wasn’t popular for non-Orthodox people even in terms of other Jews. It surprised me and still surprises me, I I still see how all the time people just get excited.”
He also said, “It just shows you that even if you’re only popular in the Orthodox world, it doesn’t mean you’re not talented, it’s just that other people aren’t exposed to you in the same way.”