Innovating a New Jewish Style: The Growth of Cantors and Synagogue Music in Los Angeles

• In Event: New Sounds from the West: Jewish Music in California

Abstract

Studies of Synagogue music in the United States are mainly focused geographically on New York’s Jewish communities and the surrounding environment. With the established schools and seminaries like Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Yeshiva University, Faculty and their students developed a network of synagogue music and musicians that influenced congregations throughout America. The post World War II developed of Jewish in Los Angeles was particularly viable and for several decades is the second largest Jewish city in America. Synagogue music in Los Angeles had a different trajectory of development relying more on key individuals and a handful of institutions that resulted in a different network.

Based on research in the newly created Los Angeles Jewish Music Archive at UCLA this presentation will highlight the life key of cantors like Julius Blackmann, Nathan Solomon, Joe Gole and Alan Michelson (active from the late 1940s-1980s) as well as musicians Max Helfman and Charles Feldman (1950s-1990s). Moving from Boyle Heights to West LA and the Valley Jewish communities followed the opportunities to establish and live in new locations. Wilshire Boulevard Temple in the city of LA, Sinai Temple in West LA and Valley Beth Shalom in Encino were all important institutions for the growth of music that these and other cantors who sought to find the traditional liturgical music they knew from prior experiences and adapt and innovat musical traditions to new settings in Los Angeles.

A key aspect of Los Angeles cantorial and synagogue developments was the creation of new networks to build collegial alliances. National cantorial organizations like the American Conference of Cantors and the Cantors Assembly do have a growing presence in Los Angeles by the 1980s into the 1990s; prior to this period key individuals like Cantors Alan Michelson and Joe Gold taught students thus establishing a local legacy. The development of synagogues and their music in Los Angeles is a parallel and different narrative to New York and the North East. In Los Angeles there is more reliance on specific cantors and key synagogues rather than seminaries and colleges.

Author

• Mark Loren Kligman, University of California, Los Angeles