‘The Voice’ says goodbye to its fiddler contestant

With the start of the duet battles that determine which singers will remain on reality music show “The Voice,” fiddler Ariella Zeitlin-Hoffman was sent home Wednesday night, following an uninspiring “Here Comes the Sun” duet with Fadi Zreik, the Arabic-, Hebrew- and English-speaking Palestinian medical student who studies in Germany.

“It’s a battle of coexistence,” quipped mentor Aviv Geffen, who set up the duet battle among two of his chosen contestants.

It wasn’t a successful duet, agreed the four judges, who commented that while Zreif doesn’t have the professional potential of Zeitlin-Hoffman, it wasn’t the right song for her.

While Geffen remarked that it’s “hard to send the people you choose home,” he decided to stick with Zreif.

But Miri Mesika pointed to Zeitlin-Hoffman, telling her, “You do belong on this stage.”

Zeitlin-Hoffman told The Times of Israel that she didn’t think she’d get far on “The Voice,” the music reality show that pairs skilled but mostly nonprofessional singers with one of four mentors, the famous Israeli musicians who are judges on the show.

“I’m primarily a violinist, that’s my vocation; I don’t have much of a voice,” said Zeitlin-Hoffman, who got three out of the four Voice mentors to vie for her at her first onstage performance during the first week of January.

“I wanted to go on for the exposure,” said Zeitlin-Hoffman. “And I kind of wanted something to jumpstart me.”

The longtime violinist — Zeitlin-Hoffman, now 29, began playing when she was seven — figured it would be a lark to perform on the televised show. She sent in the video below as part of her application last year for “The Voice.”

And it was, said the classically trained violinist, who attended the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, and has a master’s degree from the Jerusalem Academy of Music.

Now married to a rabbi and with two small children, she finds that she’s playing more and looking to gain exposure to a wider audience.

“I wanted a push from the outside and it pushed me to do more on my own,” she said. “Basically, a reality show is only as valuable as somebody makes it. If you don’t have anything to back you up, you won’t be remembered five minutes later.”

Zeitlin-Hoffman comes from a long line of performers. Her grandfather, Israeli violinist Zvi Zeitlin, was one of the youngest musicians to ever be accepted to Juilliard, and was a formidable presence in her young life as a violinist.

While her parents were also musicians, they were “Carlebach and hipppie and Haredi,” said Zeitlin, and they didn’t want their daughter engaged in a strict, taskmaster-like situation.

Still, she “pretty much fell in love” with the violin, said Zeitlin-Hoffman. “There’s something about its size that’s fun to hold. It’s more personal than a piano or guitar.”

From the age of 10, Zeitlin-Hoffman was intensively engaged in violin training, having been instructed by her grandfather that she couldn’t learn with just any teacher.

She remembers playing for him a few times a year, “pretty much the most frightening thing,” she said.

Because of her parents Zeitlin-Hoffman played more improvisational works as well, outside of the classical training she was receiving.

Zeitlin-Hoffman would tag along with her guitarist dad to nursing homes where they would play all kinds of tunes. She was also the fiddler in the school productions of “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Annie,” and said she had “this improvisational alternative direction at the same time as intensive classical mastery.”

After she completed her masters degree at the Jerusalem Academy Zeitlin-Hoffman began looking for different ways to engage with her audiences. She had been playing with various bands, and toying around with fiddling and singing.

“I’m not a very good singer, but I’m always looking to connect with the audience,” she said.

Her preparation for “The Voice” prompted Zeitlin-Hoffman to get moving on some of her other projects, including the release of “Incandescence,” in honor of Hanukkah a week before her first appearance on the musical reality show.

“‘The Voice’ just pushed me to get my act together on what I want to be creating,” she said. “To create musical, cinematic Jewish content, because we need to see strong Jewish characters in order to have any kind of identity.”

Zeitlin-Hoffman isn’t the only religious contestant on this season of the reality show. There are fellow American immigrant Avi Ganz singing Bob Marley and The Solomon Brothers, born to American parents, who sang “The Boxer” onstage — the first time a trio has made it on the show — all three wearing their knitted yarmulkes.

There are also three women on the show who cover their hair for religious reasons, said Zeitlin, and she said that Yonina, the YouTube couple known for their gentle, folk cover of Matisyahu’s “One Day” was approached. They are also religiously observant.

“It does seem that they wanted religious people on the show,” she said. “I think they’re looking to hit a different demographic inside Israel.”