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Just like noted Sephardic singer Jo Amar's other three children, Madeleine Labovitz married into an Ashkenazi family. Still, she said the Moroccan traditions of her late father will live on in places like her Highland Park home.

Amar, who died June 26 at age 79 from complications of Parkinson's disease, became a star in Israel and made about 20 albums in a career that brought him to Jewish communities worldwide. His journey included a number of stops at Highland Park's Congregation Ohav Emeth, where he led services while visiting his daughter for the Jewish holidays.

The grandson of a chief rabbi in Settat, Morocco, Amar carried customs such as throwing challah on Shabbat and raising the seder plate over everyone's head on Passover to Brooklyn, where he raised Labovitz along with his other daughter, Esther, and sons David and Ouri. Amar's dedication to tradition means his customs "will always stay within the family," Labovitz said in an interview with The Jewish State.

"Even though we married Ashkenazi people, we still have Moroccan traditions that we savor," Labovitz said.

In Brooklyn, the Amar family would attend both Sephardic and Ashkenazi synagogues, Labovitz said. She moved to Highland Park in 1990, and said her husband Ely was eager to adopt his father-in-law's melodies and expose Ohav Emeth to Sephardic flavor. As she mourned the loss of her father during the shiva week in Israel, Labovitz received calls from Ohav Emeth members who reminisced about Amar's singing.

"It was very nice for them to say that he brought them joy when he came to daven in the shul," Labovitz said.

Other comforting calls came from people who remembered how Amar's first songs in Israel inspired them during tense times like the Six-Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Labovitz said.

Labovitz described Amar's early songs as "an oriental twist" on passages from everyday Jewish prayers and Psalms. Later on he fused Sephardic tunes with North African and Western harmonies, performing in large halls, cabarets, and weddings. Along with her siblings, Labovitz said she never truly realized the degree to which Amar reached his fans.

"To us, he was our father," Labovitz said. "We didn't really look at him as an icon how other people did."

Labovitz said she went to only one or two of her father's concerts during her childhood. She remembered how seeing one concert he performed with Hasidic singer Shlomo Carlebach, when she was about 10 years old, "was like a new sight of my father."

"He was extremely modest," Labovitz said. "Half the time we never knew all the concerts he had and where he traveled."

Amar moved permanently to Israel in 1997, when his wife Raymonde passed away. His last visit to Highland Park came about a year-and-a-half ago, Labovitz said.

Labovitz said she takes pride in the fact that her father exposed Jews who were accustomed to strictly European chazzanut (cantorial style) to exotic Middle Eastern melodies. She recalled one Simchat Torah at Ohav Emeth when Amar wasn't sure how people would like his tunes, but Ely insisted that he experiment with them, and at least on that occasion, the congregation embraced an entirely new style.

"It made him so happy to make other people happy," Labovitz said. "He was a very funny, good-natured man. We knew that as his children, and it's amazing that other people also got that from meeting him."