By Julie Rosner
He’s a Parkland resident now, but filmmaker and singer Menachem Weinstein was born and raised in Stamford Hill, London, into an ultra-orthodox Jewish family. He, along with students like himself, went to segregated schools and never received a full English education.
Weinstein, 29, was a creative kid. By the age of 13 he became curious and wondered what the rest of the world was like. “We didn’t have television or internet. We had a shielded life. I would see non-Jewish people walking down the street and wonder what their life was like. It was like an outside world,” Weinstein said.
When he turned 14, Weinstein rebelled and started buying his own jeans and acting up in class. “I didn’t know what was out there, but I wanted to explore and find out. It was always a question.” According to Menachem, he would question everything and give his teachers a hard time.
During those rebellious years, Menachem believes they were tough, but magical. “It put a lot of stress on my family and our relationship. I met so many new friends and new types of music. I really started to educate myself. And I learned about history,” Weinstein said. Eventually, as he reached the age of 18, things started to spiral.
Menachem did not have any direction or education. “It came to a point where I lost all my friends, started to get addicted to drugs. I came to a real point where I had to make some serious life choices,” Weinstein said.
Through it all, the only pathway that he found helpful to figure it all out was music. “I started to write down my thoughts and feelings, transferred them into poems and then music,” Weinstein remarked.
Despite his actions during his rebellious years, Menachem’s mother was supportive of his music. “My mother thought my creative outlet was healthy for me and would help me along the line. She spotted something in me before anyone else and pushed me to go forward,” Weinstein said.
From that point on, at the age of 19, Menachem entered a Jewish competition worldwide. He had to submit a video, which followed with an online voting process. After the votes were in, Menachem was flown to New York to perform in front of 3,000 people. From this experience, he started to take his music more seriously. “Being thrown in the deep end so early on helped me transition my life…I decided I wanted to do something with my life. No more drugs. I wanted to be productive,” Menachem said.
Unfortunately, with no education, it was hard to launch a career. Menachem went back to his community and started filming and recording a music video. He had no idea what he was doing. He borrowed his friend’s camera and used YouTube tutorial videos to figure it out. At the same time, he was shaping up his life and getting clean. He worked with at-risk teens organizing programs
to help take them off the street.
As time progressed, Menachem left the youth work and got serious with video production. He created commercials for a few travel companies. After he made some money, Menachem purchased his own camera. He landed a gig producing a music video for $25,000 for Jewish artists in Northern California.
“They flew me out to California for a massive shoot and I had a crew of 20 people working underneath me…The morning of filming I woke up and I felt like a fraud. I had no education and somehow, they were all waiting for me to get ready and start running this film set. I was freaked out. I took a few deep breaths and played the part. I faked it until I made it,” Weinstein said.
From that point on, Menachem got more and more job offers and moved to New York, where he opened up a successful media company called Munch Media. It became one of the top Jewish media production companies in Brooklyn. He performed in the United Kingdom, Amsterdam, New York, New Jersey, and Belgium. “Music was always a passion project,” Menachem said.
Today, Menachem is married and living in Parkland, Florida with his wife and 2-year-old son, Danny. “My wife was the person who was able to lead me into a much healthier place and help me unleash my potential,” Weinstein said.
In March, he accepted an offer to be a director of marketing for a tech company in Miami. Weinstein recently released a music video called “Highway” where he sings about the struggles to fi nd light in the darkness and finding the one person who changes everything for the positive. “I dedicated my new song to the special people who showed me love and guided me towards a path of creativity, productivity, and opened a doorway for me to see my religion and community in a new light,” Weinstein said.
“My whole life has been a winding road. Everyone’s life is a highway,” Weinstein said. “I have had ditches and turns, but for the first time in my life, moving to Parkland, I sit and think, this is it. This is where I can grow old and grow my family.”