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'A Cantor's Tale' comes to Hillsborough

By Michele Alperin

April 25, 2008

For Cantor Jacob Mendelson, the path to learning the art of chazzanut, or cantorial music, bore much similarity to that of medieval apprentices who imbibed spirit and technique through years of work with a master craftsman.

At the Hebrew Union College of Sacred Music, Mendelson found two role models. One was Israel Alter from Hanover, Germany, and later Johannesburg, South Africa. The second, Moshe Ganchoff, became like a father to him, and the relationship between the two men continued until Ganchoff died in 1997.

"I would see him three to four days a week," said Mendelson, "and the lesson would turn into an all-day affair. I kind of took care of him and saw to it that he had what he needed. He loved me, and I loved him."

Mendelson started studying with Janchoff in college and continued on a private basis. "I mentored with him in the old style," he said. "The old cantors used to live with their mentors -- that's how they learned the art so well."

Close relationships with his teachers have been essential to Mendelson. "Chazzanut is an oral tradition," Mendelson explained. "You need a good ear, to pick up moves and coloratura, and krechtzing, and it's not easy to do unless you hear it a lot."

Mendelson will be at the "Magic of Chazzanut" program at Temple Beth-El in Hillsborough, Thursday, May 22, 7 p.m. In addition to screening "A Cantor's Tale," which Mendelson describes as "a cantor's documentary about me and learning about chazzanut through the lens of my career and my life." In this program 
co-sponsored by Shimon and Sara Birnbaum JCC and Temple Beth-El, Mendelson will answer questions as well as offer a 
performance. For more information, contact Debbie Golden, Director of Marketing and Public Relations for the JCC by calling (908) 725-6994 ext. 210 or e-mailing her at DGolden@ssbjcc.org.


Mendelson experienced what turned out to be a prophecy at age 4, when the great cantor Bereleh Chagy attended his sukkah. "My parents asked me to sing," said Mendelson, "and he predicted I would become a chazzan."

The path to a career in music was a little rocky in the beginning. Born the last of four children, with the next child 13 years his elder, Mendelson ended up with little parental supervision and a troubled childhood. Left to his own devices, he attended Yeshivas Etz Chaim in his Boro Park neighborhood, Brooklyn Talmudical Academy, and then public school.

But he had never really learned to study and at age 17 quit school and ran away from home. He supported himself by working in a hat factory and also as a waiter at Ratner's dairy restaurant on Delancey Street. He earned a general high school diploma at night.

When he decided to become a cantor, New York City offered two schools, and Mendelson chose Hebrew Union College (HUC) over the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). Whereas JTS had only one master cantor, Max Wohlberg, HUC already had five or six. Furthermore, HUC had a two-track system where cantors learn both Reform and traditional chazzanut. Another small reason had to do with his poor academic preparation -- he was certain he could not handle liberal arts courses at Columbia University that were part of the JTS program.

Yet Mendelson has maintained long relationships with both institutions; he been teaching at HUC for 27 years and at JTS for 25.

Mendelson took his first full-time cantorial position at age 19, while he was in school, at the Conservative Synagogue of Riverdale, staying there for six years. After graduating from the Hebrew Union College of Sacred Music in 1970, He moved to Beth Torah in North Miami Beach, where he stayed four years.

That's when he got the opera bug and ended up spending 1977 to 1980 at a special program at Julliard, the American Opera Center. There, he met his wife, Fredda Rakusin, who was an opera singer at the time.

"It was a bashert kind of marriage," said Mendelson. "Her grandfather was a cantor, my grandfather was a Lubavitch rav, and we found out they had served together in the Brister Shul in Newark."

While studying at Julliard and "taking a start at being an opera singer," Mendelson served on weekends at Temple Gates of Prayer in Flushing for 10 years. He did have some opera gigs, for example serving as the Wagnerian (Helden) tenor for the Kansas City Symphonian.

After the couple's son, Danny, was born, Fredda went to HUC to learn the art of chazzanut herself and became the cantor of Larchmont Temple. Mendelson decided he was done with opera and moved to Temple Israel Center at White Plains, where he has been for 22 years.

He loves his community, his colleague Rabbi Gordon Tucker, and his "terrific shul." Mendelson brings music into all parts of the congregation. "I'm not the 'star chazzan'," he said. Every Friday he gets down on the floor with his guitar for six different nursery classes; he runs two choirs, one for children and one for adults; and he teaches Torah tropes to 5th and 6th graders and a portion of the b'nai mitzvah program.

Then came his opportunity to put a foot into the show business arena. It might seem chancy to be tapped for a movie during a concert at Anshe Chesed on the Upper West Side, but that's where the connection between Mendelson and Erik Greenberg Anjou, a filmmaker and a fan of chazzanut, began. They got together for a Shabbos meal and became friends. After Greenberg Anjou had heard lots of stories from Mendelson's youth, he decided, "This has the making of a documentary."

Although the film is built around Mendelson's life, it also uses footage of Golden Age cantors, including Yossele Rosenblatt -- the beloved idol of the Jewish masses who sold more than a million records in the United States. It also includes interviews with well-known cantors like Alberto Mizrahi, Matthew Lazar, Joseph Malovany of the Orthodox Fifth Avenue Synagogue, Nate Lam in Los Angeles, and Debbie Freedman. Joseph Levine, a Jewish music scholar in Philadelphia, was also very involved.

The biggest lay role went to Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard University. How did that come to be? "I knew he loved chazzanut," said Mendelson, "because we had sung in the same choir when we were kids." Then it turned out that one of Dershowitz's dearest friends, Zalman Eisentadt, was a member of Mendelson's shul, and Mendelson asked Zally to give Dershowitz a call.

As often happens with people who are well known, Dershowitz had first offered them only a 20-minute interview. "Two hours later," recalled Mendelson, "he wouldn't let us out of his office."

And through Dershowitz they came to comedian Jackie Mason. "At the beginning he was quite serious," said Mendelson. Mason talked about chazzanut being the cultural music of the Jewish people that was in the air around him when grew up like pop is today for kids or gospel for African-Americans. The segment ends with Mendelson singing for Mason and Mason returning the favor.

"The thing everyone loves the most is the end of film," said Mendelson, "where I go to Boro Park and try to get people to sing chazzanut." In the film, Mendelson sings with bakers and deli people in Brooklyn. In Israel he got a Yemenite man with an uzi to sing with him and later a guy on the beach in a Speedo bathing suit, holding a video camera.

The film also features cantors on different sides of the argument about whether a woman can legitimately be a chazzan or not. Benzion Miller of the Beth El Temple in Boro Park -- "the shul with the greatest chazzanim in the world, built for Mordecai Hershman," said Mendelson -- argues strongly against women serving as cantors.

The filmmaker, Greenberg Anjou, describes Mendelson on the film's Web site, www.acantorstale.com, as "a one-man hazzanic ball of fire, encapsulating so much artistry, humor, musicality, compassion, care and dynamism." With such a guy at the center of an array of cantors and cantor wannabes, living and dead, the film is a must see.