Choral Synagogues and Cantors

Abstract

Chapter Five explores the rise of choral synagogues—named after their choir-based services—which proliferated in urban Jewish centers in the late Russian Empire from Warsaw to Siberia. It further analyzes the rise of professional cantors, listening to sacred music as a form of leisure, and increased budgets associated with choral synagogues. Pinhas Minkovsky’s celebrity career illustrates the high premium that choral synagogues placed on professional cantors and choirs. The modern cantorate was what came to differentiate liberal from Orthodox streams of Russian Judaism. This chapter also investigates the imperial Russian state’s role in favoring progressive synagogues as (unintended) support for the state’s educational enlightenment agenda. Yet it also contested the official institutional presence of Jews in the Russian interior and the architectural symbols of their imperial integration. Finally, the chapter turns to Jewish synagogue innovation from the perspective of Orthodox Jews, who used the legal authority of rabbis and synagogue functionaries to resist choral synagogues.