In the spring of 1947, a small group of Hazzanim joined together to lay the foundation for a cantorial association designed to address the immediate and anticipated future concerns of practicing cantors in North America. Their most pressing objective was to professionalize the Cantorate. In doing so, they had to establish the Cantor as a…
I came of age with a guitar in hand. As anyone who has heard me play knows, I have scarcely progressed beyond the fundamental G-C-F notes that I taught myself in high school, as my friends and I happily wasted many hours pretending to be Carole King and Joni Mitchell, when in fact we sounded…
A former house guest was charged in the fatal stabbing of Ronald Fischman, an ordained cantor, in Fischman’s Philadelphia home. Jonathan Williams, 33, was arrested Thursday — two days after the stabbing — and charged with murder, burglary and other offenses, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Williams had been a house guest at Fischman’s northwest Philadelphia…
President Obama visited Canter’s Deli today, an old favorite of Jews in Los Angeles. Over the course of the meal, he sat with a teacher, a wounded veteran, and two women entering the job market, according to Mark Knoller, CBS’s White House correspondent. Pres Obama discussing basketball and free-throw abilities with customers at Canter’s restaurant…
When 31 students from Jewish Theological Seminary’s H.L. Miller Cantorial School and Hebrew Union College’s Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music perform together on May 4, the concert will be the first interdenominational collaboration of this sort that David Tilman can remember. Years ago, there were “very significant” differences between the Conservative and Reform movements,…
Pete Seeger, California, 1950s / Public Domain In the spring of 1998, Pete Seeger headlined a free concert in Central Park celebrating Israel’s 50th birthday, sponsored by the Cantors’ Assembly. The event prompted a critical press release from the Zionist Organization of America, protesting the Cantors’ Assembly’s giving a platform to a harsh critic of…
In many ways, Mark Goldman’s a traditional cantor. He serves a 900-member Reform congregation, in Plantation, Florida. He’s performed around the world, including a historic group gig at the Vatican. And he loves to chant the “haunting, yet familiar” Kol Nidre. But this year, the UK expat became a trailblazer. After nearly two decades as…
(JTA) — We were sharing a pastrami sandwich and pickles at the Los Angeles landmark Canter’s Deli. I was 24. She was nearly 50 years older, with a piercing voice as loud as her flaming red wig. Her name was Eva Rubenstein Grant, and she was a little-known nightclub manager the morning of Nov. 24,…
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