A PAINFULLY CLOUDY END TO A RADIANT MINISTRY

I just returned from Chicago, a sentimental journey, childhood friends whom I had not seen in 40 years. Oh, Devon Avenue is now the bastard child of Calcutta, Zagreb and Kiev, but even that is OK. The prune Danish (“sweet rolls,” if you are a true Chicagoan) are still the best, so who cares if you say “spasibo” instead of “thank you”?

The context of the visit was the retirement at age 90 of the beloved cantor of my youth. To this day, I call him “my cantor,” despite not having heard him chant a service since 1965. The title is reserved for a mentor, a father figure, beyond the years and miles that have separated us. His voice still rings melodic whenever I call, still flecked with the Norwegian accent that echoes his childhood in Trondheim. He is still eager to send me a tape of a melody for Li-David Mizmor or a new rendition of Adon Olam that he composed to the clip-clop of his treadmill.

I had the honor of paying tribute to him at his “last” Sabbath service in the cantorate, but the quotation marks bespeak only an official vocational transition. For the myriad who consider him “my cantor,” the lush melodies and self-effacing kindness will never cease.

So, I paid tribute with reminiscences:

How he struggled each week to teach us bratty kids songs for Sabbath and holy days. How he awakened my interest in Judaism by challenging me to read from the Torah, after five years of my being uniformly treated like an idiot by a cavalcade of religious-school teachers. How he compassionately broke the news to me of my beloved aunt’s sudden death. How I helplessly watched his daughter, my childhood playmate, succumb to cancer at age 38. How he retained his commitment to the integrity of his craft, the ancient authenticity of synagogue melody. How he never profaned the liturgy’s majesty with pop-cantorial renditions of Adon Olam to Rock Around the Clock, despite its cheap-and-easy road to being “cool.” How, through it all, he was and is a decent, humble person, a loving husband, a wonderful friend, a passionate fisherman. (Do I hear the icy waters of Norway calling?)

His rendition of the service that last Sabbath morning was magnificent – his voice still strong, resonant, never wavering, a special sincerity to his shaping of the prayers: “Redeem us, O Lord of Hosts, take pleasure in our worship, our choruses of praise . . .”

Yet, the occasion was clouded. For, at age 90, his retirement was still largely unanticipated and premature. A new rabbi with “different” ideas had taken the leadership of the congregation. Authenticity was great, but it had to be compromised for modernity’s sake. No, he did not want the cantor to conduct the Yom Kippur service, maybe chant just one or two prayers. He called the cantor “thin-skinned.” Then, one day during the Holy Season, the rabbi told him that, while the cantor-in-waiting was conducting the service, his singing with the congregation was “too loud.”

It was time to retire. Whether or not the cantor can stand it, the ignominy and irony of his departure stab me in the heart. At absolute least, basic decency if not crass realism should say, “How much longer will a 90-year-old be around anyways? What would it hurt to honor him and his vocation while they are still with us? Is the sanctity of the pulpit better found in up-tempo melodies at the expense of shaming an old man? And, what of the classic musical motifs of the synagogue? As the Golden Age of the Cantorate wanes, should we not venerate a beloved art form just a little longer?

But, the canard of “singing too loud” goes way beyond all that. To be demeaned for feebleness or forgetfulness is cruel enough. But, “singing too loud”? Criminal. Anyone who cannot understand sans explanation is as stone-cold as he who spoke the indignity. A man’s most finely tuned instrument, dedicated to sacred service, is marginalized to an annoyance.

No one should ever be told that s/he is “singing too loud,” even when the voice quivers, or the hands tremble, or the words do not come as easy as they used to. We stifle our children’s singing because it is disruptive. We stifle our elders’ singing because we see it as just another type of “acting out.” And in between, we rarely lift our voices in song, because it is embarrassing or because we are numbed to the prospect of voice-lifting joy. Yet, “singing too loud” might be the only shred of soulfulness left to ensure our sanity.

So, Cantor, you can come to my place and sing as loud as you want as long as you want. I promise to deliver to you a circle of forever-friends for whom “too loud” is an oxymoron. And, you will never hear those scornful words again. It is the least I can do for a man who inspired me, too, to lift my voice in celebration.