27th November 2020 – Shabbat is almost here
And we’ll listen to a cantor that is also the author of some of the most celebrated pieces of cantorial repertoire: Israel Schorr, born in 1886 at the Polish Galicia.
Hello, h
ow are you? I hope well. Today it is the black Friday, isn’t it? Well!!! I have a super offer for you: your subscription to Music Before Shabbat, now, half price! ? Guaranteed.
I am having a super demanding week and I must say I am exhausted but when I start to delve in the thrilling Jewish music and history my strengths are renovated.
This week many people have seen the “secret” Hassidic wedding with 7 thousand guests in New York. If you haven’t seen it yet, check this. I hope the time to celebrate with massive amounts of people together will come back soon… In the meantime, I was thinking what are the usual insights of the population about the Hassidic Jews. Our protagonist of today, Israel Shorr, was from a Hassidic family so I will dedicate a part of this MBS to the Hassidism.
? And remember, there are previous editions of MBS about wonderful hazzanim from the Golden Age: Pierre Pinchik, Yossele Rosenblatt, Gershon Sirota and Moishe Oysher.
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The cantor and composer that left too early
The life of Israel Schorr, as of many great cantors, is reasonably well documented. But Schorr is not as famous as others, because he died quite young at the very early age of 49 on April 9th 1935. This way, he was not a witness of the horror that would trap his mother land.
He was born in 1886 in Khyriv, or Chyrov, that was at that time in the Polish Galicia that was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and that now is Ukraine. But other sources say that he was born in Rymanów, two hours to the West from Khyriv, that is currently Poland.
He started singing as a boy soprano and became the official cantor in L’vov in 1904. He succeed his distant relative, the Hazzan Boruch Schorr, who was very appreciated because of his improvisations and his innovative compositions. There is some nice information about Boruch in this book, Discovering Jewish Music, by Marsha Bryan Edelman.
He served also in Brno, Kraków, Piestany and Zurich before emigrating to the USA in 1924, thanks to a visa for artist that he got with the help of Solomon Bloom. This man deserves attention too, his life is absolutely fascinating. You can start with this.
There at the USA, Schorr served in synagogues in Chicago and New York. Shorr was a composer as well as a cantor himself and one of the most famous pieces for hazzanut art, Sheyibone Beit Hamikdash, has done by him. You can find many renditions of this piece in Youtube. But my favourite is the one by the aforementioned Moishe Oysher, of whom I talked in this previous edition. Israel Shorr died at his 49 years old, because of a heart condition.
Sources for Schorr’s bio (check them to learn more):
- https://www.milkenarchive.org/artists/view/israel-schorr/
- https://www.radiosefarad.com/israel-schorr-la-voz-de-la-devocion/ (Spanish)
- http://www.chazzanut.com/articles/schorr.html
Hassidism in (very) brief
Do you remember the edition about John Zorn and the piece Sippur? Find it here. In that edition I already talked about the founder of Hassidism, Baal Shem Tov, who made many sippurim, many tales, to teach in an easy and appealing way the ethics and practices of this new line of Judaism. It you are not familiar with it, this video is very nice. Maybe I am a little childish? ? The fact is that it is very nice!
The happy way of approaching the religious celebration that you can see in this wedding in New York is explained in the way Hassidism understands life and the relationship with the divinity.
Listen to Av Horachamim by Israel Schorr
Listen to the rendition by Israel Schorr of this Shabbos prayer, Av Horachamim, written in memory of the communities that were wiped out during the Crusades. This brief explaination is from this work by Rabbi Y. Friedman on the web Chareidi and there you can find also a part of the poem: “In his tremendous mercy may [our] merciful Father […] recall in mercy the holy kehillos that gave up their lives in sanctification of [His] Name […]”. The kehillos are the congregations. For the full lyrics in English, check this web page.
There is more information about the use of the poem in Shabbat, on this site of the Ortodox Union.
I found a brief historical explanation about the destruction of the Jewish communities in Germany by the Crusaders in XI century and the use of this poem on this page of the St John’s Wood and The Saatchi Synagogues:
“Its origins lie in the wake of the First Crusade. Many Jewish communities in Germany were decimated as mobs found an outlet for their religious zeal in killing Jews before making their way to the Holy Land to wrest it from the Muslims. Thousands of men, women and children lost their lives in the communities of the Rhineland. Mainz, Worms, Speyer were ravaged over the course of a few weeks as the Crusaders made their way down Europe. […] As the black plague swept across Europe during the mid-fourteenth century, annihilating nearly half the population, Jews were taken as the scapegoat and were accused of having brought about the plague and were persecuted and killed.”
Click the picture to listen to the recording:
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Shabbat Shalom.
Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música
Gershon was born in Podolia in 1874. His father was a cantor in the local synagogue and, already as a child, Gershon helped his father in the services. The family moved to Odessa, where he would be cantor in Shalashner Shul. Later he gave service at the Shtat Synagogue of Vilna. His performances granted him more and more popularity and was called to make special concerts in many cities around, first in Russia and Poland, and later much further. He was the first cantor to record his voice on phonograph records and he became world famous thanks to this. 
