Back to ‘El Avram'
Reliving the glory days of the storied Village nightspot, Watchung's Avram Grobard will bring his music to Clark
Sidebar: See the show
Avram Grobard drops some impressive names in discussing his career: "Yitzhak Rabin, Arik Sharon, Chaim Herzog, Israeli generals, members of the Knesset, Topol…. They all hung out there." "There" was the beloved El Avram, the popular Mediterranean-style nightclub on Sheridan Square in New York City that Grobard owned and performed in from 1967 to 1982.
He will bring the international flavor of El Avram to Clark on June 7 when he headlines a fund-raising concert at Temple Beth O'r/Beth Torah. Performing with him will be Broadway star and recording artist Holly Lipton and members of the group The Four Russkies.
Grobard's musical roots go back farther than El Avram. Born in Israel in 1938, he led a band while serving as a parachutist in the IDF. He came to the United States in 1961 to study television and electronics. Unable to find a well-paying job in the field, he began singing and playing the accordion with the famed Feenjon Group at its home on McDougal Street in the West Village — the self-described "first Israeli entertainer in a New York cafe."
In 1967, he bought the former El Chico, a Spanish nightclub for 30 years, renamed it El Avram, and expanded his show, entertaining patrons in myriad musical styles, including Israeli, Yemenite, Russian, Greek, and Sefardi. It was a hit with customers and critics alike; The New York Times called Grobard "a kind-faced man with merry eyes [who]…pilots the show, flipping into many languages, singing, drawing audience members into the center of the room with little effort and waving the show forward." 
Not to be outdone, the New York Post characterized him as "one of the most multi-talented entertainers around anywhere."
Besides attracting legions of fans and the above-mentioned roster of big names to the audience, El Avram also served as a matchmaker of sorts. As Grobard explained in a phone interview with NJJN, "One night at the club, I met an El Al stewardess who was wearing a T-shirt that said, ‘Marry me, fly free.' I liked that, so I did. Lilly and I have been married since 1978."
Theirs wasn't the only shidduch made at El Avram. "I hear lots of stories of how people met at the club," Grobard said. "It's really a nice feeling — helping people get together."
In addition to running El Avram, Grobard has performed in sites as diverse as The Village Gate and Carnegie Hall and made a number of recordings, with his eclectic mix of international music. Interestingly, his albums are all in the Smithsonian Institution's Smithsonian Global Sound archives, because the label under which they were released — the now defunct Monitor Records — was a pioneer in the field of ethnic music. Since the closing of El Avram — the result of "pressure from my wife," he admitted — he has kept busy performing at private functions and on what he terms "the Florida circuit." He also leads a group that sings a cappella at Shabbat functions.
When not in Florida, Grobard can be found at home in Watchung. He and Lilly are members of the Chabad Jewish Center in Basking Ridge. "I find the people very interesting and really like the spirit there," he said. They also spend a few months of the year in Tel Aviv, where they own an apartment.
The Grobard family clearly likes to spend time together. Grobard said, "When my son was a kid, he used to perform with me onstage. And when my daughter was getting her degree at Rutgers, my wife was as well. They both graduated three years ago."
For the June 7 concert, however, Grobard will appear sans famille. 
But the entertainers who will perform with him are all longtime collaborators. (In fact, it was Grobard who gave Lipton her start: She came to El Avram while still in high school and asked if she could sing in the show. He was impressed with her audition and gave her a job. She would later star on Broadway in Jesus Christ Superstar — stopping the show when she sang "I Don't Know How To Love Him" — and Nine.)
By the end of the evening at Beth O'r/Beth Torah, thanks to what Variety called his "instantaneous rapport with his audience," Grobard will have turned the entire audience into mishpacha.
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