David Babinet: Finding Beautiful Melodies In Torah-Observant Life

00:03 Speaker 1 I'm Gary Wolk and this is Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable, and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and a community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. That's David Babinet singing an aria from Rossini's famous comic opera, The Barber of Seville. At one time, Babinet climbed the steep ladder of opera success. But there was another ladder he wanted to climb. That created a difficult choice between professional opera and Torah observance. Fortunately for Babinet, he met a Chabad emissary who respected his search for Jewish identity and his great talent. David Babinet was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut by what he describes as hippie parents. As traffic whizzes by an open window of his Brooklyn apartment, Babinet describes his family's approach to Judaism when he was young.

01:39 Speaker 2 We had Hanukkah candles. At least one night of Hanukkah we lit the menorah. We didn't have a Seder every year, and we ki- when we did the Seder, we kind of did it our way, you know? We kind of made it up as we went a little bit.

01:52 Speaker 1 That didn't bother David, at least not at the time.

01:55 Speaker 2 No, I d- I d- I didn't really feel, like, a great sense of I'm missing my Jewish heritage. I didn't feel that at all.

02:05 Speaker 1 After Babinet's freshman year of high school, he and his family moved to Boulder, Colorado. The adventuresome teen immediately took to skiing and rock climbing in the nearby mountains. But on one climbing expedition, he fell and broke his ankle. As he recovered, he had the time to ponder a very important question.

02:25 Speaker 2 What was, like, the real adventure I was after?

02:27 Speaker 1 David had a fear of speaking and performing in front of people.

02:31 Speaker 2 And I thought how adventurous it would be if I could get involved in theater.

02:37 Speaker 1 So he took a theater class and performed in high school musicals. He began voice lessons with a woman who had sung opera in Denmark. He learned the classical method, began to appreciate opera, and learned an important lesson from his teacher.

02:52 Speaker 2 She said, "You're very good. You're very talented. But, you know, to really do anything you have to be very dedicated and committed."

02:58 Speaker 1 Babinet took that message to heart. Babinet earned an undergraduate degree in music at the University of Colorado, and entered the master's opera program at the University of Cincinnati, singing in several operas a year, including in Italy and New York. He began to rise through the highly competitive ranks of the opera world, landing in Portland, Oregon and Chicago before becoming a resident artist at the Los Angeles Opera.

03:30 Speaker 2 I was there for three years and got to work with s- huge stars, like, the biggest opera singers you could imagine.

03:36 Speaker 1 By the early 2000s, Babinet was singing with Kiri Te Kanawa, Anna Netrebko, Samuel Ramey, and Placido Domingo. Babinet is careful to point out that most of his roles were supporting ones, and that he hadn't yet made it as an opera singer. But he adopted a certain mindset.

03:55 Speaker 2 If you have an opportunity to do that professionally, if people actually pay you to do it, that's a great privilege, and as long as that privilege lasts, I intend to ride it out.

04:04 Speaker 1 But it was at this point that the curtain began to slowly come down on Babinet's operatic ambitions. Or more accurately, it's where the curtain came up on his quest for Yiddishkeit. It began in 2004 when he traveled to Israel for the first time to sing in a production of Giuseppe Verdi's comic opera Falstaff in Tel Aviv. On the way into the country...

04:31 Speaker 2 Obviously the security is very tough, and they were asking me all these questions. "Are you Jewish?" And I was like, "Of course I'm... Yeah, I'm, I'm Jewish."

04:38 Speaker 1 The questioning frustrated David, but that feeling soon led to a different one.

04:43 Speaker 2 So I literally had no idea what it meant to be Jewish. Like, I was just genuinely really curious. What does it mean to be Jewish?

04:54 Speaker 1 David sang the role of Ford in Falstaff, and was well-received in Israel that summer. On one of his days off, he decided to travel to indulge his love of the outdoors. He flew to Eilat and crossed the border into Egypt. He scuba dived in the Red Sea and explored the Sinai wilderness. On his way back into Israel, the border guards were again very tough on him.

05:18 Speaker 2 It looks suspicious, like, you're coming to Israel, then you're going to Egypt, and then you're going back into Israel. It looks dangerous.

05:25 Speaker 1 The guards again asked if he was Jewish.

05:28 Speaker 2 It aroused something.

05:36 Speaker 1 When Babinet returned to the States, his next gig was singing in a Bay Area production of The Marriage of Figaro. He bought a book, Judaism for Dummies, and began lighting Shabbos candles. He attended a few Bay Area synagogues, but didn't feel any had the kind of hominess he was looking for. He returned home to Los Angeles.

05:58 Speaker 2 So I looked in the phone book, back when we had phone books, and, um- Just looked for, like, synagogue, and I saw something that said Chabad Jewish Center. I called up the number, and I hear, like, this kind of very feisty rabbi sound, like from Brooklyn, sounding like, "Hey, how are you?"

06:20 Speaker 1 The number he called was that of Chabad of Glendale and the Foothill communities. The rabbi he spoke with was Simcha Backman.

06:30 Speaker 2 He sounded very Jewish, and, um, I was like, "Well, what kind of Judaism are you guys practicing? Is it, like, Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox?" He said, "We're friendly. Why don't you just come and meet us? We're friendly. L'chaim." I went to their house for Shabbos, and his kids were adorable. You know, his fami- his whole family was very beautiful and very nice and, uh, very friendly. That was the most impactful thing, just seeing a Jewish family in practice, you know?

07:06 Speaker 1 Babinay told Backman about his singing, so the rabbi gave him a CD of famed cantor, Yossele Rosenblatt. Babinay started thinking differently about singing. Babinay also began studying Torah with Rabbi Backman. He was rapidly learning and putting his knowledge into Jewish practice.

07:36 Speaker 2 I think I went pretty fast, but they told me, like, you know, if you do things too fast, you might regret it. It should be really coming from you, coming from your own understanding.

07:47 Speaker 1 David was going regularly to the Backmans' for Shabbos.

07:51 Speaker 2 So I started to try to, like, do things to keep Shabbos a little better, including walking several miles from where I lived to Rabbi Backman's house. I think it was, like, maybe four miles or something.

08:02 Speaker 1 Actually, it was more like 10 miles. Sometimes he had rehearsals on Saturday. Some of his colleagues began to notice that he was walking rather than driving to those. His favorite piano accompanist knew he was Jewish and asked him...

08:17 Speaker 2 "Did I see you walking to the opera?" He said, "You're not becoming Orthodox, are you?"

08:30 Speaker 1 David wasn't exactly sure what he was or was becoming, but he began feeling conflicted on the days he left the Backmans' before Shabbos was over.

08:40 Speaker 2 I, I felt disappointed that I couldn't stay. You know, I couldn't stay and observe Shabbos and, you know, just stay in such a nice environment. Not that I didn't like being in rehearsals. Rehearsals are great, too. You know, opera is a wonderful thing, but I just didn't want to leave.

08:53 Speaker 1 He began staying longer and longer. He wore a yarmulke everywhere he went.

08:58 Speaker 2 And people in the opera circles, they were like, "Who's this crazy guy?" Like, there's no religious Jews in the opera.

09:06 Speaker 1 In March 2005, David traveled to Crown Heights, where he experienced an uplifting Purim celebration. That summer, David went to Israel a second time.

09:18 Speaker 2 I visited the holy sites, spent Shabbos with a lot of families. Got a much more Jewish experience. I visited the, uh, great synagogue in Jerusalem and saw the great hazzan, Naftali Hertz Tik, a great hazzan, really beautiful voice, and it touched me very deeply.

09:34 Speaker 1 David returned to Crown Heights. He says the pretext was to audition for operatic roles in New York, but the real reason was to attend yeshiva. He was more conflicted than ever.

09:47 Speaker 2 I was talking to my mom at one point, and I was saying, like, "I d- all I feel like doing is learning Torah. Like, I'm not even, like, that into singing anymore." And she told me, you know, "You've put so much into opera, you know, and this career. Like, it's really a shame to throw it away. Just make sure you don't do anything too quickly and not something you might regret later."

10:10 Speaker 1 But David approached his Torah studies with new energy.

10:14 Speaker 2 And it's like that dedication which I had for opera, I transferred it. I put it into the yeshiva.

10:21 Speaker 1 But he was still auditioning for singing roles.

10:23 Speaker 2 I went to one audition wearing a yarmulke and wearing my tzitzis hanging out, and I'm thinking, "Oh, they're just gonna think I'm a complete freak, but I don't care." And I sang, like, one or two songs, and I told the guy I was singing for, "I think my trajectory is changing. I don't think I'm so interested in singing opera anymore."

10:44 Speaker 1 David became more interested in cantorial music and in learning Hasidic melodies called Nigunim. He talked to his voice teacher, who he thought would try to dissuade him from abandoning opera, but-

10:59 Speaker 2 She was, like, very honest. She was like, "It's not a great life." And she's like, "I don't blame you at all."

11:05 Speaker 1 After serious soul-searching, the curtain came down on David Babinay's formal opera career in 2005. He was married in 2008 and needed a new way to make a living to support his growing family. He had learned to brew beer. Now he expanded his repertoire to making hard cider and wine. Babinay worked for a winery and began to tend a bar. He made a living at that for years, but a few years ago, he was again bitten by the singing bug.

11:39 Speaker 2 It all came back, like, my love for music, and I felt like... I'm trying to think of a good Jewish word for, like, a shmendrik. I felt like a shmendrik for just throwing it away. I realized you have to sing. You are a singer. You have such a special gift. This is part of your special mission.

11:59 Speaker 1 A few years ago, David Babinay began performing in a one-man show. in which he tells his life story in spoken word and in song.

12:08 Speaker 2 Uh, well, you know, I usually start off with an opera, like a little opera set. And the Largo al factotum from The Barber of Seville is a well-known. You know, everybody knows that. Sometimes I get them all involved and I make them sing along with me.

12:36 Speaker 1 He'd sing Yiddish numbers. He'd sometimes even throw in a cantorial song or Broadway show tune. Drawing on his experience with fine beverages, he would also serve kosher mixed drinks and wines. He sang cantorial music at shuls around the country. He says that Yiddishkeit, family life, mixology, and the rediscovery of his special talent for singing allowed him to find his whole self. Now, the music made way for and actually supported his Jewishness, rather than the other way around.

13:16 Speaker 2 I think it's, it's special. It's, it's really fun to tell my story. Like, I really feel like I can just be myself. You know, it's like most people wouldn't say like, "I'm gonna go on stage and be myself," but this is really myself. You know?

13:30 Speaker 1 The one-man show has been on hold since the onset of COVID, but he hopes to resume that soon. In the meantime, Babinet gives voice lessons, tends bar, and holds kosher wine tastings in New York and New Jersey.

13:52 Speaker 2 And I'm doing a lot of exciting things. Thank God. Baruch Hashem.

14:00 Speaker 1 David Babinet says meeting Rabbi Simcha Backman of Chabad of Glendale and spending time with his family was the catalyst for everything he now has.

14:10 Speaker 2 I just saw how beautiful that was, their whole family doing Torah and mitzvahs, and I feel like very grateful that I have a Jewish home with beautiful children and my wife, and we observe Torah, the mitzvahs, and we- we're very passionate about our Jewishness. It's not in the periphery. It goes through everything.

14:35 Speaker 1 I'm Gary Wollek. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast at L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. This is a Lubavitch International podcast.