$1 Million Fund Sought to Alleviate Shortage of Trained Cantors and to Combat Jewish Illiteracy in W

A $1 million fund to alleviate the shortage of trained cantors and to combat Jewish illiteracy in congregational worship was proposed as the Cantors Assembly opened its 39th annual meeting here Tuesday.

Noting the critical shortage of trained cantors — only one student will be graduated this year from the Cantors Institute — Cantor Samuel Rosenbaum, executive vice president of the world’s largest body of cantors, urged the group to commit funds to underwrite scholarships that would help train 150 to 200 qualified cantors in the next decade.

Rosenbaum told the 300 delegates that 60 Conservative synagogues were currently seeking full-time cantors, adding: “If our generation of chazzanim (cantors) is to have meaning and significance beyond the moment, we must not allow what we have created and nurtured to wither.” He called on the Cantors Assembly to “make a leap of faith” and provide the funding that would permit the training of a new generation of cantors.

At the same time the Conservative leader challenged Judaism’s other cantorial, rabbinical and congregational bodies to “unite in a common effort to implement this fund.” He stated:

“Our studies of the Holocaust reveal that, under those trying conditions, chazzanim led prayers, conducted choirs, presented concerts and used their skills to uplift the Jewish spirit. Both openly and clandestinely they served in the ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw, in the labor battalions, in the concentration camps, risking their lives daily to comfort their fellow-Jews and to pray with them. Dare we who live in the world’s most affluent Jewish community be any less committed?”

HIGH HOLY DAY TAPES

A portion of the fund, said Cantor Saul Hammerman, president of the Cantors Assembly, would be utilized to combat “Jewish illiteracy” by producing video tapes of high holiday services to help synagogue-goers familiarize themselves with the Rosh Hashanah and Yon Kippur liturgy. He suggested that these video cassettes be sent on loan to members of congregations “so that they may more readily understand and follow high holiday synagogue ritual.”

Decrying the “spiritual complacency” of contemporary American life, Hammerman declared: “We lead prayers for a generation of illiterate Jews — not ignorant or stupid, mind you, but simply untutored in the glories of our heritage. Thus, new approaches must be devised to bring our people to the level of appreciation that they — and we — need for Jewish survival in the synagogue. “The invention of the videocassette recorder now makes it possible to introduce Jewish families to High Holy Day services and orient them to the music and the form of worship. I think we’ll find that making use of the TV tape as a tool of Jewish literacy will evoke a heightened degree of participation in the services and make the synagogue and its rituals more attractive to our congregants.”