Rabbi Shragi Gestetner was born to make music.
He started composing when he was 12. He sold his first song at 18. His debut album, Shragee, pulsates with the joy of a man who has found his calling. The year after it came out, Tablet called Gestetner one of the “rising talents of the current generation” of Hasidic music.
“His voice was the sound of music,” said Gershy Moskowits, the producer who discovered him. “It sounded like a violin playing.”
But when Gestetner died at Mt. Meron on Thursday at the age of 33, he had already left his music career behind. Dozens of songwriting credits and a solo album had given him a taste of celebrity, but the work playing weddings and fundraising dinners up and down the Eastern Seaboard occupied his nights and weekends. So several years ago, with four children at the time, he walked away from the music scene to pursue life as a family man.