I have copied major portions, but not this entire article. I have at least included partial or complete sentences from every paragraph to give a sense of the entire article. At some point in the future I hope to fill in the entire article. However, I have recorded those passages that relate to the life, work and family of Asher Perlzweig. Asher Perlzweig - A Cantor in Anglo-Jewry Maurice L. Perlzweig "Cantor in Anglo-Jewry" by Rabbi Maurice Perlzweig. Professor Dov Noy of the Folklore Research Center at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. It was part of an edited collection called "Studies in the Cultural Life of the Jews in England", vol 5., pg. 227-243. Before the First World War the Jewish community in Great Britain could plausibly have been considered to consist of two parts. On the one hand there were those whose families had lived in the country for generations and even centuries, and on the other, there were those who, following the pogroms and discriminations in Eastern Europe, had immigrated in significant numbers during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. The first group had the outward appearance of being totally assimilated - in speech, manners and social life; but, with what are by contemporary standards rare exceptions, they remained faithful to the religious traditions which they inherited ............. The immigrant Jews of the later nineteenth century and early twentieth century and their children simply reproduced, as far as they could, the religious and cultural conditions of their home countries. They were concentrated in the East End of London and in districts of their own in a number of provincial cities. Their synagogues were indistinguishable from those in which they had worshipped in "der Heim". They had Yiddish dailies and numerous short-lived weeklies representing various political sects which the immigrants had brought with them. Andy they had a flourishing Yiddish theatre. They provided the mass of the adherents of the Zionist Movement, and maintained a Hebrew weekly, HaYehoodi, (founded 1898) which at that time and in that community was no mean achievement. Nevertheless, I do not wish to suggest that there was a clear line of demarcation between the two segments of the community. Anglo-Jewry discovered or adopted ..... I could site numerous examples of the way in which the "line" was crossed.... Sir Samuel Montagu (1832-1911), later Lord Swaything, was a member of an old Anglo-Jewish family. He was a power in the city of London..... The maintenance of this sense of unity, which undoubtedly owes much to the British tradition of tolerance and consensus, no doubt had its effects. .............. Nevertheless the value of this unity, first in the struggle to secure the ............ The first is to be found, paradoxically enough, in the distinctive quality of the assimilation of the British Jew. He is an imitator, whether conscious or not, ................ Except for this last requirement, which is in some form essential to its maintenance, the Jews copied this system. There is a Chief Rabbi (the Sephardim have a parallel...... I hasten to add that the system has now suffered erosion. More than a hundred....... The second reason that I venture to suggest of the maintenance of this unity ........ In the Britain of the time of which I write there was no single Hazzan who did not come from abroad, - from Central and Eastern Europe. None was trained in Britain. Though they were expected to assume pastoral and educational duties which .......... The Hazzan is not only a leader in prayer. He is the repository of an ancient and complex musical tradition; and this embodies an authentic folk-music to which the ordinary Jew responds even when he does not understand the words which it seeks to interpret. Nothing has given me more satisfaction in my later years than to see the return of the Cantor to Reform and Liberal Synagogues - from which he had long been banished - in both Britain and America. Something precious has been recovered. Many years ago I heard Balfour use the phrase, "Life is more than logic", as he sought to explain to a skeptical friend his conviction that Zionism would succeed even though it confronted obstacles which seemed insuperable. The analogy is far from perfect but, mutatis mutandis, we may apply it to the subject of our discussion. Logically men may worship without the benefit of Hazzanut, and they may even treat it as an irrelevance, or as an accretion on a simple act of prayer. But, as non-traditional Jewish spiritual leaders have learnt, Hazzanut is of the substance of the liturgical experience of the Jewish people. It is against the background of these considerations that I have undertaken to recall the life and activity of Asher Perlzweig, Hazzan and musician, who made a massive contribution to the preservation and dissemination of the Jewish musical tradition, both liturgical and folk. Simultaneously he maintained fruitful activity as composer, conductor and teacher, in the field of Western secular music, in the late nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth century London. Asher Perlzweig was born in the Tsarist-Russian town of Kremenetz-Podolsk, the son of Raphael, himself a well-known cantor. I have encountered his disciples and pupils in the United States and elsewhere; and have even had the unusual experience of acting as the Rabbi of an American Congregation whose cantor was trained by my grandfather. Raphael's father was also a cantor. Asher was taken by his parents at a very early age to Dukla in Galicia (Austrian Poland), where his father was appointed cantor of the principal synagogue. From there the family moved to Jaroslaw, another town in the same province, where Raphael was appointed cantor of the principal synagogue, and it was there that Asher received his early Jewish education and training in Hazzanut. His father, who was himself well known as a composer of synagogue music, and whose compositions were at the time in circulation in manuscript in Eastern Europe, regarded Asher as a boy with unusual musical gifts. Accordingly, he sent him to Vienna to further his musical education, and this Viennese period in Asher Perlzweig's life left an indelible mark on his personality and creative work which a half century of subsequent residence in England could not wholly obliterate". In Vienna he pursued his musical studies at the famous Conservatoire, and helped to cover the cost of his education by acting as choirmaster or as a musical director in one or the other of the numerous Viennese synagogues. Vienna meant for him not only an advanced musical education in one of the world's greatest centers of musical culture; it enabled him to become thoroughly familiar with the modernization of the cantorial tradition introduced by the celebrated Viennese cantor Salomon Sulzer (1804-1901) and others. At the same time he became intimately associated with the Jewish student organizations that were later to play a significant role in the development of Jewish cultural activity, and the Zionist movement. It was from these student organizations, only a few years after Asher had left Vienna, that the first call came to Theodor Herzl to assume the leadership of a Zionist movement. Perlzweig returned to Jaroslaw to marry his boyhood sweetheart Sarah, Stern, whose father Abraham was a leader in the Jewish community and who played a part in municipal politics. The family into which he married was by Polish-Jewish standards assimilated, though it lived in strict accordance with Jewish religious tradition. His wife normally spoke Polish and continued to do so after the family migrated to London; some of her relatives were associated with the Polish national movement. With what may seem to be an inexplicable inconsistency, my mother - a woman of natural piety and impeccable propriety - was a passionate supporter of the emperor Franz Joseph, to the extent of condoning his liaison with a Jewish mistress. In the meantime, Asher, one of whose brothers was then present in London, had been offered the post of cantor at the Vine Court Synagogue in the East End of London. This synagogue no longer exists, but in its day it was widely known as a center of Zionist activity from which the British Zionist Federation drew some of its principal officers. Under my father's youthful and energetic direction it soon also became a center of musical activity. I was born a year or so after my parents settled in England, and it is a curious reflection on the conditions of the time that my mother preferred to go back for the birth to Jaroslaw whose medical standards she thought superior to what she regarded as the comparatively barbarous conditions of contemporary London. No doubt the desire to be with her parents during the birth also had some influence, but the fact that I was born in this small Polish town, from which I was taken back to London at the age of a few months, affected my citizen-status in a way which my mother could never have foreseen. (pg. 233) The belief of the Jews in the benevolence of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was not limited to my family............. I have now only a fading memory of the household in which I was brought up, but I remember that as a small child I began to forget the Polish which I had been taught by the Polish nurse whom my mother had brought back form her native town when she returned to England. Polish was in due course superseded by what might be called a Judeo-Viennese version of German, and strange as it may sound, my mother only learnt to speak Yiddish fluently in London. But the Viennese influence continued to permeate everything Asher Perlzweig did until the day of his death. I ought here to recall that I still have vivid memories of the immense numbers of worshippers who crowded into the Vine Court Synagogue and overflowed into the women's gallery in order to hear the choral services which Asher Perlzweig conducted and which on occasions when such an innovation was permitted - such as Hanukkah - had the choir reinforced by instrumental music, sometimes supplied by a small orchestra. These musical innovations led to the growth of my father's reputation as a musician in the Jewish community, and after a few years he was appointed cantor of the Finsbury Park Synagogue, which was then on the outskirts of Metropolitan London. This appointment entailed what was at the time a radical change. We moved from a Jewish district into a part of suburban London where the Jews were a tiny minority. In the street in which we lived there was only one other Jewish family. At school I found myself sometimes the only Jewish pupil in my class. At other times there were one or two others, and by a curious coincidence they included boys who subsequently became famous. The Finsbury Park Synagogue was, by contemporary standards, strictly orthodox, though many of its members had what might fairly be described as a relaxed attitude towards orthodoxy, which meant, for example, that in practice they did not observe the second day of festivals. Its leaders came from Alsace in France, the President of the congregation at the time of our arrival being a close relative of Chief Rabbi Zadok Kahn (1839-1905) of Paris. ........ There were others like Frederick Spiers, a member of a rabbinical family ............ The synagogue, as I have related above, was attended by people who, in many cases, practiced a somewhat relaxed orthodoxy, although the service in every respect conformed to tradition. Nevertheless, it was a breakaway from this synagogue that there was established in North London the first congregation which was directly inspired by what was then regarded as the ultra-orthodoxy of Frankfurt. The Finsbury Park synagogue was criticized because its ministers, in accordance with the custom of the time, wore the dress of the Anglican clergy and because they wore gowns at the services. There was some objection also to the use of a choir, and to the emphasis on the musical quality of the services, which was judged to be a form of hukat hagoy. Finally, the complaint was made that the almemar was immediately in front of the ark and not in the centre or at the western end of the building. No change was made in the synagogue as a result of these complaints, except that years later the almemar was moved. The synagogue itself was demolished a few years ago and a new building was erected under the same name further north to accommodate the shifting Jewish population. Removal to this suburban area changed the tenor of Asher Perlzweig's life. He had been a popular cantor in the Jewish ghetto of the time, and had acquired a reputation as a composer of Zionist songs and publisher of Jewish folk-music in the early days of the Zionist movement. At Finsbury Park he acquired numerous gentile pupils whom he taught piano, singing or musical theory; and he sought to continue his work for popular musical culture by founding a Jewish choral society in north London, which was certainly one of the first, if not the first, of its kind in London. He trained the members of the society and conducted its concerts, and he greatly cherished the baton which they presented to him as a sign of their appreciation. I should add here that he acted in an honorary capacity throughout the life of this group. At the same time he was invited to become conductor of the choir of cantors which was established by the Association of Hazzanim in London; and this mark of recognition from his colleagues, many of whom were men of great experience and fine musicians, was something that he greatly valued. There was , indeed, at no time any doubt of his preeminence both as a musician and as a master of the Jewish liturgical tradition. Candidates for cantorial appointments sought testimonials from him because they knew that such recommendations would carry great weight. And in this context it should be recorded that he often instructed students who sought to enter the profession, both Ashkenazi and Sephardi, and they subsequently occupied positions in various parts of the world. Before any formal organized instruction for cantors was instituted in England, he acted in a measure as a substitute. He had, in the meantime, been exposed to the distinctively English musical traditions as taught in a number of academies in London. With a view to understanding this tradition, and mastering its methods of work, he enrolled in the Guildhall School of Music, one of the principal musical academies in London, where he studied harmony and musical theory under Dr. Ebenezer Prout, who was himself a highly respected composer of church music and an exponent of strict adherence to the rules of harmony and counterpoint. This had one curious effect on Asher Perlzweig, and it enabled him to acquire an unusual private hobby. He never, for example, took the family to a vacation home unless he was sure that a piano was available. But the influence of Prof. Prout, to whom he remained attached and to whom he dedicated one of his compositions, resulted in his private hobby, which was to go through he works of leading classical composers, not excluding Beethoven, whose deviations from the strict rules of harmony he calmly corrected on the score. This was his private substitute for any kind of leisure activity. Though he had been a strong swimmer in his youth, particularly in the River San in Jaroslaw, he had lost, during his Vienna period, and interest in physical activity of any kind. The only serious difference of opinion which I had with him arose out of my playing football at school and competing as a sprinter in races, during which I acquired a number of trophies. he regarded all this activity as an addiction to barbarous exercises and a waste of time, when there were more important things to be done. In this respect the British environment exercised absolutely no influence on him. He remained at heart a central European Jew though, as he walked the streets of London, he could have been, and sometimes was taken to be, an Anglican clergyman. It is always difficult for a son to write about his father. I should therefore emphasize that the theory of one school of psychologists that between father and son there must be latent or even lethal hostility, does not apply in this case. The danger which confronts this writer is that affection and gratitude may gain priority over the obligation to truth. I hope that I have not succumbed to this danger. I think, however, that it illustrates the character of my subject to emphasize the truth, that whatever the differences of our point of view - which were inevitable if no more than because of the differences in generation and education - they never undermined the deep affection which united me with him as with my mother. I became, after all, a rabbi in what to him must have seemed a highly heretical form of Judaism and this inevitably caused him professional and social difficulties. But it says a great deal for his conception of the Jewish people, that for years after I became a preacher, I continued to live with my parents, neither of whom would allow public criticism to rob them of what they conceived to be their natural feelings and rights as parents. They were even present when I was formally inducted into the ministry of the Liberal Synagogue in London, and in the atmosphere of that time this was an act not only of love but also of courage. My father's concept of the Jewish people........... Rabbi Cohen was a musical scholar..... The question might well be asked why F.L.C. should insist on quasi .... Another great influence on my father's thinking and attitudes was his intimate friendship with Dr. Moses Gaster (1856-1939), the Haham of the Sephardi Community in Britain. This relationship became even more intimate after one of Asher Perlzweig's daughters married a son of Dr. Gaster and they officiated together at the marriage which took place at the Finsbury Park Synagogue. Gaster was a man....... I am not sure whether the following reminiscence is relevant .............. It is a matter of deep distress to many of us that the Haham's oldest son, Vivian.... This list of personal influences would be sadly incomplete if I omitted ............... (pg. 239) Asher Perlzweig's creative work can be conveniently divided into four distinct categories. he was a prolific composer of new music for the synagogue, and in this he was both a preserver of traditional modes of and an innovator on lines which would have been appropriate in services at which instrumental music would and could have been used. These compositions were widely used in synagogues in London and elsewhere, though few of them were published, since their sale would have been to a comparatively small clientele. One of his most important contributions in this field was to help other cantors to produce collections of compositions for the synagogue, on special occasions such as retirement. It will be found that many of these publications which still exist, contain acknowledgements of my father's help, which at this distance in time I need not hesitate to describe as an understatement. At any rate, he enriched the synagogue music of his time, and some of it is still in use. I saw evidence of its use in the United States in at least two places, although the composer himself was never aware of the extent to which his music had traveled. There were some features of his work which call for special mention. ......... Secondly, he was a martinet in insisting on the correct pronunciation and accentuation of the Hebrew words. At that time, ........ One publication which illustrates his application of these principles ......... The second category of his work which merits attention was his interest in what I would call Jewish musicology. He published in 1912 a book entitled A Manual of Neginot. This contains, in musical notation, the cantillation used in the traditional reading of the Pentateuch, prophetical readings, and the Books of Esther and Lamentations. It also adds the traditional chant of the appropriate benedictions as well as examples of these various texts. This manual was issued with the approval of the Metropolitan Association of Precentors, which means that it was scrutinized by the best informed practitioners of this art. It proved to be an immensely useful work, and I have encountered it in the United States where it was used as the basis for the composition of the music for scriptural passages chanted by choirs in Reform Temples. In 1933 Asher Perlzweig published A Book of Esther: Text and Traditional Cantillation. In this book, which was dedicated to Haham Moses Gaster, the music and the Hebrew were printed form right to left in accordance with the custom which he had adopted for works of this character. Dayan Harris M. Lazarus, one of the more conservative members ...... Its author, however, failed to secure a publisher ......... These modes, which were used and classified by the ancient Greeks, ..... In addition to his essentially Jewish work, he also led a fruitful and creative life in the general field of classical music. In an essay of this kind it may not be appropriate to go into detail on this aspect of his activity. But it should be mentioned that he was the composer of numerous works which were performed by British military bands, and as overtures in theatres. On one occasion two such pieces, one by the Jewish composer Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864), and the other by Perlzweig, were performed in the Hippodrome which in its day was the most famous music hall in England. What gave him immense satisfaction was that he appeared on the same programme as Meyerbeer for whom he had immense admiration. He marked the occasion by giving a young brother of mine, born at the time, the name of Meyerbeer, a fact which, in the later life of the recipient of this favour, was not appreciated. Anyone who knows the old British Territorial Army, in which my brother served for many years, will understand that to be addressed by a British Army sergeant as Meyerbeer Perlzweig, was not likely to result in a comfortable existence. I felt great sympathy for him when he dropped these Germanic sounding names and substituted that of his mother - which was Stern, although I fear that this led to the further complication that he was asked perpetually whether he belonged to the Stern gang. My father's heroes included Mozart ..... My father had one deeply rooted prejudice, the object of which was Richard Wagner 91813-1883). Wagner had not only written in 1850 an anti-Semitic pamphlet, ........ Finally, Asher Perlzweig made an impressive contribution to the preservation and dissemination of Jewish folk-music. ... In this context I should like to refer to the assertion of some writers that my father was the man who originated the singing of Hatikvah by adapting its melody to the words of Naphtali Herz Imber (1865-1909). .................. There have long been discussions and debates about the origin of the Hatikvah melody, and this is not the place to examine it. Nor have I ................ I have a very clear recollection of the circumstances which gave rise to the conjecture of de Sola Pool and many other writers. At a date which I can no longer recall .......... There was another request. The publisher insisted that under the normal musical notation there should be added the same melody in what was called tonic sol-fa, ...........