Alberto's Voice

Welcome to My World...

...and to my “online home,” where I will be assessing, analyzing, appreciating and articulating this life spent on a tightrope between opera/stage/pulpit… navigating Western/Eastern music… enjoying and pondering travel/food/theology/family/conductors/directors/Rabbis... and reflecting on what a little (!) Jewish Greek boy has learned through it all…

For general information about appearances, recordings, media packet, etc. visit http://www.albertomizrahi.com 

“Nusach” – say it quietly!

I am addicted to my PDA. On a recent trip, my  wife, Deborah and I were able to find our way in Berlin and Munich, St. Petersburg and Moscow using my Google Maps. How opportune in this modern age that we have tools such as these to help us find our way.

As a Hazzan (Cantor), for more than 40 years now, I felt a certain security in my path through the Siddur, Mahzor and even the Haggadah  thanks to a a spiritual "map app" called “nusach Hat’filah,” that has been ours for over 1,000 years.   This collection of modes musically, aesthetically and unmistakably identifies the religious service in which the liturgy is being chanted at any given time. These modes began as cantillation tropes for the Chumash, Nevi’im, and the Megillot and were transformed into what we still recognize as the prayer modes - NUSACH (shhh, do not say it out loud...it has become a “dirty” word). 

The Orthodox movement has decided that most services should be chanted as quickly and amorphously as possible in a “nusach” that reminds one of the Penitential prayers of “Selihot” and sometimes “Tisha B’Av”. Yes, there are exceptions, thank goodness, but in general, a vast number of Orthodox friends have neither heard a real Hazzan nor care to spend the time doing so. Conservative and Reform still teach “nusach” in their Seminaries but, especially in the Reform, cantors are advised to sing mostly contemporary-sounding folk songs, preferably with guitar accompaniment. “Ech naflu hagibborim – How the mighty have fallen!”  The grandeur of the music in the Reform synagogue has all but disappeared. Finally, I turned around one day and was shocked to find that my Conservative movement pulpit, Anshe Emet of Chicago, is one of the very few left in which snippets of real “hazzanut” can be heard.

Judaism is going the way of acculturation in the name of progress and “participation.” Hazzanut (cantorial music of the late 19^th through 20^th centuries) is all but gone. It is understandable, after the catastrophe of the Sho’ah, that our “audience” has been decimated. We are living in fast moving and ever changing times. Yet, we truly should be careful for what we wish; we might get it. As the awe and greatness in hearing Jewish words of prayer float to the heavens in beauty and sweetness give way to campfire songs, sung together, in perfect mediocrity, we may find that the answers to our problems have become the problem, itself.

A Concert in Blue Bell

Following a wonderful Shabbat (usually comprised of being in very good voice, interesting Bar Mitzvah, and great food) I found myself being driven through the gently rolling hills between the Philadelphia airport and Blue Bell, PA, on the way to a concert with my close friend and fabulous mezzo-soprano, Hazzan Elizabeth Shammash, of Tiferet Bet Israel. Not that Lizzie and I need an excuse to sing (we enjoy the rehearsals as much as the concerts), but this concert was the culminating musical event of a year-long project; the writing of a new Torah for the congregation in which just about every member took part. From filling in letters to Torah study, this was a well-conceived project that made everyone in the community feel closer to each other and the synagogue.

Lizzie and I have similar backgrounds, but in different generations. She has had great success in the opera and with major symphony orchestras around the world. She has recorded numerouss CDs for the Milken Archive and, after many years of singing classical music, decided to enroll at my alma mater, the H.L. Miller Cantorial School - J.T.S., where I met her while doing my almost monthly coaching day there. It takes fortitude to decide to become a hazzan these days. Conservative Judaism is changing daily and no one really knows where it will be in the next 5-10 years. We are assurred that the independent minyanim are the wave of the future. I am certain that they will stay strong for a long time to come. But, there are many families for whom a synagogue that provides for their religious, social and pastoral needs in a more classical way will also continue. There will be fewer "large" synagogues but there will always be room for a hazzan like Elizabeth Shammash; wonderful voice, great work ethic, personable and mature.

One of the best perks of being able to occasionally travel and sing around the U.S. is that I get to meet Jews and experience the congregational life of many synagogues. I can tell you that our community, Anshe Emet, Chicago, is unique among a handful of congregations. But, I believe, the Conservative Synagogue will re-emerge as the model for living Judaism as long as there are rabbis, hazzanim and hard-working volunteers working together to create the Masorti model for the 21st century.