Funeral services were held last Friday for David Putterman, who was cantor at the Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan for 33 years until his retirement in 1976. He died last Wednesday at the age of 79.
Putterman was also a featured soloist on “The Eternal Light” on NBC for which the Jewish Theological Seminary of America cited him in 1969 after 25 years of service on radio and television. As cantor at Park Avenue Synagogue since 1933, he sought new liturgical music for synagogues and commissioned leading composers in the United States and Israel to write it.
A cantor since the age of 18, he was a founder of the Cantors Assembly of America and was a leader of the Cantors Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary where he taught for more than 20 years. In 1954 he became the first fellow of the Cantors Institute and in 1971 he was given the first National Jewish Music Council Award. His efforts to encourage new liturgical music made him the first cantor to receive a special citation of merit from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
