For more than a century, a synagogue known as the ‘Carnegie Hall of Brooklyn’ has been home to the US’ greatest cantors

For more than a century, the synagogue Young Israel Beth El of Borough Park has been the epicenter of cantorial music in the United States — a type of music sung as a Jewish religious observance.

The New York City house of worship has been home to some of the greatest cantors of the 20thand 21st centuries.

The Borough Park synagogue, located in one of Brooklyn’s most-religious Jewish neighborhoods, was particularly popular during the first half of the 20th century, known as the golden age of cantorial music. It was a time when virtuosic cantors made records and performed concerts, sometimes with orchestral backing. Now, there is an attempt to revive and preserve the practice.

“Beth El is a place where people came to hear the most accomplished and inspiring cantors for over a hundred years,” said Hankus Netsky, a professor at the New England Conservatory of music and an authority on Jewish music.

“What cantors do is they take Jewish liturgy and interpret it. They ‘word paint’ with the text. So that, if the prayer is referring to a mountain, you’re climbing the mountain. If you’re describing heaven, you go up to heaven, melodically.”

One of Beth El’s first cantors was Mordechai Hershman, who emigrated to the US in 1920, specifically to take the cantor job at Beth El. Hershman and the cantors who followed him were such impressive virtuosos that the synagogue came to be known in the Jewish world as the “Carnegie Hall of Brooklyn.”

The three-story synagogue has a large domed roof and a sanctuary that seats 1,300 people and supports concert hall acoustics. Because of its architecture and role in Brooklyn’s religious history, the synagogue was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Beth El is an Orthodox synagogue but, over the years, it drew some Jews who weren’t Orthodox. They came because they loved the singing. Fans of cantorial music, or khazones as they’re known in Yiddish, also went out and bought vinyl records of their favorite cantors. The fans would argue over who the greatest cantor was, often citing Moshe Koussevitzky, who served at Beth El during the 1950s and ’60s.

But none of the synagogue’s virtuosic cantors has had the staying power of Benzion Miller, who died last February after a 40-year tenure.

Miller was known for improvising with a choir during a sabbath service that could run up to four hours. In an interview with the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, Miller said the cantors in his family go back eight generations, adding that the art of improvisation was also passed down.

“From my father, I learned to improvise,” Miller said. “There was always improvisation. You could do whatever you want with it. So, why be tied down week in, week out, week in, week out. It’s boring. I do whatever I feel like. This comes from a lot of years of practice but I always based my style on improvisation.”

Improvising is not as widespread as it was before but some of the most popular cantors still do it today.

Nissim Saal serves congregations in both New York and Jerusalem. He’s led services at Beth El as a guest cantor and appreciates the sanctuary’s acoustics and the way they enable his voice to fill the cavernous space. Saal has performed around Israel and Europe, sometimes with symphony orchestras. Beth El’s legacy, he said, amounts to a spiritual perk for cantors who lead services there.

“The giants were here,” he said during a recent cantorial demonstration inside Beth El. “Mordechai Hershman, Moshe Koussevitzky, Moshe Stern. And being in a place that’s holier and more connected, gets to your emotions, as well. It feels different.”

As inspiring as the cantorial performances at Beth El have been, few synagogues currently have virtuosic cantors chanting the liturgy every week, though there still is a circuit of star cantors brought in on special occasions. Saal is one of them.

The Jewish music scholar Jeremiah Lockwood wrote his doctoral dissertation about what he believes is a revival of the “Golden Age” of cantorial music that’s now underway.

“People aren’t necessarily going to synagogue expecting to hear a multiple hourslong concert of spiritual music,” Lockwood said. “That’s just not the vibe at most synagogues at this point. So, if the synagogue isn’t going to nurture this music, where will it live? It’s not a normal [matter of] supply and demand because, in this case, the supply will create the demand. … If the artists are great enough and are doing something that is profound enough, a niche will emerge where they can do their work.”

Lockwood said the music now lives on in WhatsApp groups, on YouTube and on other social media platforms. He even co-founded a new organization and record imprint called Khazones Underground to nurture the cantorial revival.