The Making of a Reform Jewish Cantor. Judah M. Cohen
cantor in the postwar era. Placing standards of cantorial knowledge and ability within a curricular framework, these schools attempted to improve the cantor’s religious standing, regularize the cantor’s repertoire and training, and, most immediately, “fill the gap left by the Nazi destruction of the European centers of Jewish sacred music” (Blumenfeld 1951: 51).13
As Geoffrey Goldberg has described, cantorial training institutions known as Lehrerseminare had existed in Central Europe from the nineteenth through the first half of the twentieth century (2000). Created in reaction to newly imposed state-sponsored criteria for regulating teacher education (under which cantors qualified), the Lehrerseminare brought candidates through a multi-year, progressive series of classes culminating in the conferral of a recognized cantorial status. These earlier cantorial schools, Goldberg notes, maintained a philosophy and curriculum remarkably similar to what the School of Sacred Music would use decades later; they differed only in that their courses of study often emphasized practical skills over scholarship. Attrition eventually weakened these schools in the early part of the twentieth century, and the Nazis silenced whatever remained.
Nonetheless, when the first promising signs for creating a Jewish music institute dawned in the United States, the Lehrerseminar model appeared to enter the discussion in concept if not in precedent. Communal memories of the Lehrerseminare barely registered in American conversations. Yet the methodology associated with Central and Western European schooling remained, perhaps because many of the School’s key founders themselves came from Central Europe. The tradition they aimed to preserve remained focused in Eastern Europe; the vessels by which the tradition would take root in America, however, maintained an academic (predominantly German) structure. And the whole operation, ultimately fueled by the upheavals of World War II and its consequent destruction of European Jewish culture, would carry the impression of a sudden newness with it.
Interest in establishing American institutions for cantorial instruction had existed decades before the initiative that led to the School of Sacred Music. In 1904 a segment of the Jewish Ministers Cantors Association—the most prominent consortium of cantors in the United States at the time—used the organization’s annual gathering to call for the founding of a New York-based “school for cantors” (Moses 1904, cited in Levin 1997: 739).14 Lacking satisfactory progress, the group renewed its call in 1924, decrying the dearth of standards and professional security for its members (The history of hazanuth 1924: Foreword). This and other cantorial initiatives, however, never succeeded in realizing ambitions for a sustainable school, ultimately due to a lack of funds and interest (Levin 1997: 739–744). The actions that led to the School of Sacred Music instead emerged from a different sector: a consortium of Jewish music composers and scholars that included cantors but did not focus solely on their interests. Nurturing a plan from the late 1930s, these individuals mobilized less out of concern with the cantor’s lot per se than what they saw as the decline of American Jewish music more generally.
What would become the School of Sacred Music started out as a relatively amorphous call for a school devoted to “Jewish” music, first from the Jewish music advocacy group Mailamm (The American-Israeli Institute for the Study of Music [1932–1939]; see Heskes 1997) and later from the Jewish Music Forum (1939–1944), the organization that replaced it. Both New York-based groups hoped an educational institution would restore prestige and intellectual prowess to the Jewish musical arts, particularly as Jewish communities in Europe increasingly lost their footing under the Nazi regime. On Tuesday evening, June 20, 1944, the Jewish Music Forum brought these concerns to the top of its agenda by holding a symposium entitled “The Need for an Academy of Jewish Music.” Prominent Jewish composer Isadore Freed began the meeting by bemoaning the European destruction of the most “authentic” centers of Jewish music, and called for a distinctly American institution devoted to cultivating what remained of these traditions (Freed 1944). Other presenters followed, offering plans for “Training a Jewish Musicologist,” creating a “Curriculum for Jewish Composers and Performers,” and theorizing “The Academy’s Place in Jewish Religious Life.” Park Avenue Synagogue Cantor David Putterman, who delivered this last talk, spoke specifically to the future of cantorial culture. “No profession,” he said of the cantorate, “has ever achieved stature and recognition until a duly established University, Academy or Seminary graduated qualified students with accredited degrees and titles” (Putterman 1944: 23).15 Putterman’s vision of the school ensured that the United States could continue to turn out “qualified Hazanim” (22) at a time when the future of the Eastern European cantorate looked bleak. By evening’s end, the participants appeared convinced of their charge, and “unanimously adopted” a resolution to create a commission devoted to realizing the academy.
Soon after the symposium, Hebrew Union College musicologist Eric Werner, who had sent a letter of support to the Jewish Music Forum symposium in absentia, apparently circulated a “Memorandum Re Organization For Liturgical Music of Judaism” to several influential individuals at his institution.16 In the preliminary feeler, he outlined a plan for creating a “Central Institute for the liturgical music of Judaism” devoted to “(a) familiariz[ing] the layman with the best traditions of the Synagogue in the realm of music; [and] (b) [maintaining] permanently the scientific study of our liturgical music.” The Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College, he floated, would provide an ideal site “to carry the drive for a renaissance of Jewish Music”: located far away from the Jewish communal politics he found distracting in New York City, the campus also held the world’s largest collection of European Jewish music manuscripts.17 Werner’s arguments seemed to impact positively upon the Board of Governors of the Hebrew Union College, for in early 1945 the body gave its sponsorship to an “organization meeting” for a proposed “Society for the Advancement of Jewish Liturgical Music.”18 Representatives from across the American Jewish religious spectrum received invitations, including faculty from Hebrew Union College (Reform), the Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative), and Yeshiva University (Modern Orthodox), as well as Cantor Putterman.19 While many could not attend the December meeting in Cincinnati due to travel or weather issues, those present reinforced the points discussed at the earlier symposium. “Traditional” Jewish liturgical music had reached a “corrupted,” atomized state in contemporary America, and needed both standardization and improvement on all levels and in all religious denominations. Through a concerted effort on the part of major American Jewish organizations, a new “American” style of Jewish music could emerge that adhered to a deep sense of “tradition” and Jewish identity yet exhibited a high level of creativity and currency. Establishing a Jewish music academy, the attendees asserted, remained a crucial component of this plan.
The Society for the Advancement of Jewish Liturgical Music (SAJLM) began in earnest as a New York-based organization in early 1946. Though publicly professing the Jewish universalist ideals of k’lal yisrael (the implication that Jews shared a sense of common responsibility), the group’s support came largely from the Reform movement and Hebrew Union College, which contributed over three quarters of the Society’s 1947 budget.20 The latent denominationalism that accompanied this lopsided support created problems for most of the Society’s activities, especially in the attempts to establish a Jewish music school. The Modern Orthodox movement, represented by Yeshiva University, seemed to reject the school plan immediately. Conservative Judaism, through the Jewish Theological Seminary, eventually begged off from the plan and publicly made alternate arrangements to start its own music school.21 Even negotiations for a joint school with the New York Cantors Association appeared to fall through.22 The Reform movement thus found itself poised to adopt the transdenominational project as its own, despite the SAJLM’s increasing isolation within the Jewish communal world.
Sometime before 1948, Eric Werner appealed to Hebrew Union College to proceed with plans to authorize the founding of a music school unilaterally, under the confidence that “every one of the well-known musicians of the SAJLM would be eager to cooperate with the HUC, especially Rabbi [Israel] Goldfarb, Prof. [Abraham Wolf] Binder, Prof. [Jacob] Weinberg, [and] Dr. [Isadore] Freed, from all of whom I have received written assurances indicating that they would be in favor of such an independent school.”23 After additional negotiation, Werner obtained a commitment from Hebrew Union College, and subsequently