Sanctifying the stutter: How I embraced my speech disorder as a Jewish cantor
A space in which I was given the time to speak freely became my Shabbat
A space in which I was given the time to speak freely became my Shabbat
A cantor steeped in Israel's history takes the pulpit in Minneapolis
Yisroel Leshes, assistant cantor of New York’s Orthodox Lincoln Square Synagogue, has released a cool, jazzy version of Morris Winchevsky’s Yiddish song, “Di Tsukunft” (“The Future”), which dreams of the day when “di velt vet vern frayer, shener, yinger, nayer” (“the world will be freer, lovelier, younger and newer”). The music video, accompanied by English…
Read this article in Yiddish. Musician and music archivist Hank Sapoznik has announced that he has raised enough money from private donations to put up a gravestone for the remarkable African-American cantor, Thomas LaRue Jones. The in-person unveiling ceremony will take place on Sunday, August 29th, at 11:00 am, 67 years after Jones’ death,…
In January 2018, after the late Leonard Cohen received his last, but not final, Grammy nomination, a representative from his hometown attended the ceremony: The cantor from the synagogue he grew up in. He wasn’t just there as an observer — he was a contributor. “My greatest sources of pride is that the choir and…
Mordechai (Max) Fuchs, who died on July 3 at age 96, was a survivor of a time when heard Jewish melodies were sweet, but those unheard were sweeter. An amateur cantor, he participated as a rifleman in the Normandy Invasion on D-Day, landing on Omaha Beach, where he was hit by shrapnel. Born in Rzeszów,…
Jews have always had a complicated relationship with opera. Ostracized in European society, Jewish composers and librettists had few chances to make professional headway; perhaps the most successful of them, Mozart collaborator Lorenzo da Ponte, converted to Christianity. The most influential late-Romantic opera composer, Richard Wagner, was a notorious anti-Semite. And prior to the mid-19th…
Rebecca Garfein was fifteen years old when the man seated in front of her turned around, at the sound of her pleasant singing voice, and offered her an opportunity that would lead her on the path to become a cantor. At the time, Garfein didn’t even know what a cantor was. Throughout her childhood, Garfein…
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