A funeral service was held today for Arthur M. Wolfson, cantor of Manhattan’s Temple Emanu-EI since 1949. He died July 26 while on a vacation with his wife in New Zealand, at the age of 65. Wolfson was also the Reform temple’s music director and three years ago became the educational director of the temple’s religious school.
Born in Philadelphia, he received both a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree from Temple University before beginning his studies at the New York School of Sacred Music at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Before coming to Temple Emanu-EI in 1949. Wolfson served congregations in Philadelphia where he also taught in local schools.
He had served as president of the American Conference of Cantors, the Jewish Music Forum and the Jewish Liturgical Music Society. He was a chairman of the National Music Council of the Jewish Welfare Board and was a member of JWB’s executive board of the Jewish Book Council. He also lent his manifold talents to the American Musicological Society and the Schola Musicae Liturgicae.
Wolfson was also a member of the faculty at the School of Sacred Music at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion where he was chairman of the faculty from 1972 to 1974.
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