Singing the Struggle: How a New Generation is Redefining Avodas Hashem

This past summer, my daughters came home from camp singing a song I had never heard before. This was not unusual; children often come home from camp with new melodies that stitch themselves into the soundtrack of family life.  What was different this time, however, was what they were singing. The words stopped me in my tracks.

For obvious Halachic reasons of Kol Isha, I had never listened to Mimi Pearlman’s song, “Karov Hashem.” But as my daughters sang it softly around the house, I listened closely to the words, and, I was struck by how raw, exposed, and emotionally honest the words were:

I’m far from who I want to be

Still working through what no one sees

And I wish I could take back the wrong things I did

’Cause how could You love all the parts of regret

I was struck by the fact that there was no spiritual bravado here. She was not pretending that growth is easy or that regret disappears with time. The song dares to articulate a question many feel but rarely say out loud: How could Hashem love me when I am carrying so much regret? And yet the chorus insists on closeness, Karov Hashem, not despite the struggle, but within it.

Hearing those words opened my eyes to something larger that has been quietly and clearly unfolding.

We are witnessing the emergence of a new generation of young Jewish singers and songwriters, many of them teenagers or in their early twenties, writing Jewish music in English, expressing deeply authentic Jewish souls.  What began (in my memory, at least) with “Tatty My King” and other heartfelt songs from the Waterbury Yeshiva has grown into artists like Boca Raton’s own Gabe Baumann, among many others, creating music that feels less like performance and more like sharing honest spiritual introspection and perhaps hoping to start a deep conversation.

The common denominator among these young singers is not just musical talent.  It is emotional and religious courage.  Their songs speak openly about the challenges of serving Hashem.  They sing about feeling distant even when doing “the right things,” about setbacks, brokenness, and the frustration of unanswered tefillah. The songs are about yearning for closeness while acknowledging how elusive it can feel, themes that generations before them might have experienced just as deeply, but rarely articulated so plainly, and certainly not in English, and certainly not in song.

In truth, this kind of spiritual honesty is not new at all. Long before contemporary Jewish music, Dovid Hamelech gave us Tehillim, songs of longing, fear, doubt, hope, confidence, and despair, often woven together in the same chapter. Dovid Hamelech teaches us that there is no part of the human emotional experience that is unworthy of being brought before Hashem.. He cried out, questioned, pleaded, and sometimes felt abandoned, yet never stopped turning toward Hashem. In many ways, these young singers are walking in his footsteps.  They are using song as a vehicle for raw, unfiltered conversation with God.

Centuries later, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov would take that same emotional honesty and insist that it was not a weakness to be managed, but the very foundation of Avodas Hashem. The very acknowledgment of failure, distance, or brokenness is itself an act of faith, because it assumes that repair is possible.

In Likutei Moharan II:48, Rebbe Nachman writes:

וּבֶאֱמֶת כָּל הַהִתְרַחֲקוּת הוּא רַק כֻּלּוֹ הִתְקָרְבוּת In reality, all distancing is nothing but being brought near.

וְאִם אַתָּה רָחוֹק מְאֹד מְאֹד מִמֶּנּוּ יִתְבָּרַךְ, וְנִדְמֶה לְךָ, שֶׁאַתָּה פּוֹגֵם בְּכָל שָׁעָה מַמָּשׁ נֶגְדּוֹ יִתְבָּרַךְ, עִם כָּל זֶה כְּנֶגֶד זֶה תֵּדַע, שֶׁאִישׁ כָּזֶה שֶׁהוּא מְגֻשָּׁם כָּל־כָּךְ, כָּל תְּנוּעָה וּתְנוּעָה שֶׁהוּא מְנַתֵּק עַצְמוֹ מְעַט מְעַט מִן גַּשְׁמִיּוּתוֹ וּפוֹנֶה לְהַשֵּׁם יִתְבָּרַךְ הִיא גְּדוֹלָה וִיקָרָה מְאֹד מְאֹד, וַאֲפִלּוּ נְקֻדָּה קְטַנָּה מְאֹד

“And if you are very, very distant from God, and it seems to you that you are literally always sinning against Him, even with all this, know that, on the contrary, each and every movement which such a materialistic person makes to detach himself just a bit from his materialism and turn to God, is extremely great and precious.”

Elsewhere, Rebbe Nachman explains that a lev nishbar, a broken heart, is especially precious before Hashem. Not the brokenness we hide, but the brokenness we authentically bring into our relationship with God. These young singers are not directly quoting Rebbe Nachman, but they are articulating his Torah.

In our generation, that same voice is emerging again.  Gavriel Pelcovitz’s “Broken Heart” (written by Chayala Neuhaus) takes this honesty even further, giving voice to the experience Rebbe Nachman describes: the sanctity of trying, even when words themselves begin to fail.

What happens when the words gets lost inside

When the silent tears keep falling and thoughts run dry

If I sit and hold a siddur and it′s the best that I can do

If don't have the words can I still try to talk to You

I′ve been trying since the day I learned to read

But some days I just can't ask for what I need

And what if I'm afraid that You′re not proud of what You see

If I don′t have the words, can I still feel You talk to me

Gabe Baumann’s song “Beautiful Broken” articulates a similar truth, but with a gentler reassurance:

Everyone has flawsWe all have our faultsThat doesn’t make us weakDon’t mean we don’t deserve to be lovedAnd we’re humanSo humanPerfectly broken

And later:

But even when I fall

You don’t turn away

The message is simple, but radical in its implications: that spiritual honesty, even in the midst of struggle, is not only accepted by Hashem, it is embraced. Brokenness, tears, doubt, longing are not obstacles and they don’t disqualify us from Hashem’s love.  It may, in fact, be the very place where that love meets us. 

Perhaps that is why their music resonates so deeply. For many young Jews today, the challenge is not lack of information or lack of opportunity. It is the disconnect between the external structure of religious life and the internal emotional experience of it. There is a hunger for sincerity and for a religious experience that makes room for struggle, complexity, and imperfection. These songs normalize the spiritual ups and downs that so many quietly experience. These young artists are reminding us that serving Hashem is not meant to be sanitized. It is meant to be lived, felt and wrestled with.

If we listen carefully, not just to the melodies, but to what they are teaching, we may find that this new generation is offering us a quiet but powerful invitation: to deepen our own Avodas Hashem by being more real, more vulnerable, and more honest in our relationship with God.

Sometimes, the most important voices are the ones singing truths we were afraid to say out loud, and by listening to them, we are reminded that our own honesty, vulnerability, and yearning can bring us closer to Hashem than any perfection ever could.