{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/2804x54z25/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Cohon, Baruch"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/115/original/Boxed_Milken_Center_logo.png?1628711583","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCohon, Baruch. 1998. Interview by Neil W. Levin. Milken Archive Oral History Project. 30 March.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["Milken Family Foundation"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e© Milken Family Foundation. Unauthorized use is prohibited. For inquiries, please contact info@milkenarchive.org.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Levin, Neil W. (Interviewer)","Cohon, Baruch (Cantor/Hazzan)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["1998-03-30"]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["Los Angeles, CA (Place of Recording)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (Primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eOral history with cantor Baruch Cohon. He begins by describing his upbringing and musical background, along with the ties of his family to Abraham Idelsohn. From here, Cohon details his move to Los Angeles after World War II, getting involved in the film industry and then working in Southern California as a cantor. Also discussed is his choral music and Jewish musicals he wrote.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["Beta SP"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Jews — Music (Topical Term)","Jewish songbooks (Topical Term)","Jewish chants (Topical Term)","Oral Histories (genre/form)","Jewish Ministers Cantors’ Association of America (Person or Corporate Body)","Helfman, Max (Person or Corporate Body)","Temple Israel of Hollywood (Person or Corporate Body)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["A. Z. Idelsohn (1882-1938), Cantorial Counsel of America, cantors, Cantors Assembly, Cincinnati — Ohio, David Kusevitsky (1911-1985), gender, German Refugee Congregation, Hebrew Union College, Jacob Beimel, Jewish Ministers Cantors Association (Hazzanim Farband), Joseph Rumshinsky (1881-1956), Leib Glantz (1898-1964), Let There Be Music, Los Angeles — California, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968), Max Helfman (1901-1963), musicals, Reform Judaism, Shlomo Bardin (1898-1976), synagogue, Temple Israel of Hollywood, The Jewish Songbook, The Journal of Jewish Music, University of Judaism, Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Yiddish theater"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eOral history with cantor Baruch Cohon. He begins by describing his upbringing and musical background, along with the ties of his family to Abraham Idelsohn. From here, Cohon details his move to Los Angeles after World War II, getting involved in the film industry and then working in Southern California as a cantor. Also discussed is his choral music and Jewish musicals he wrote.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u0026copy; Milken Family Foundation. Unauthorized use is prohibited. For inquiries, please contact info@milkenarchive.org.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/115/original/Boxed_Milken_Center_logo.png?1628711583","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/111/968/small/Cohon.jpg?1621000840","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - L3452-53_Baruch_Cohon_Combined.mp4"]},"duration":5453.93067,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/111/968/small/Cohon.jpg?1621000840","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-milken.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/111/968/original/L3452-53_Baruch_Cohon_Combined.mp4?1619777083","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":5453.93067,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Baruch Cohon interviewed by Neil Levin [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Cantor Boruch Cohon, welcome to the Milken Foundation. You are, and have been, a fixture in the Los Angeles area in the area of hazzanut, in Jewish music.  I knew your name before I knew you.  And I want to start with this from what still is the definitive article on the subject.  And you know what I’m talking about.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=17.0,39.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  The article on nusaḥ hat'filla and the modes that appeared — what was it? — 1950?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yes.  1950.  In The American Musicological Society Journal. Called “The Structure of the Synagogue Prayer Chant.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=39.0,82.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e It, it was an interesting set of circumstances that brought that article to life. You know, my, my first teacher of music of any kind was Abraham Zevi Idelsohn, who was really the father of the science of Jewish music.  Well, Idelsohn published The Jewish Songbook, first in 1929, and then a revised edition a couple of years later.  And, and then, sadly, he was, he was cut down by multiple strokes, and he died young, at, in, I think it was ’38, right. So, after World War II, I came back from the Navy, and my mother, olav hashalom, being a, a close friend of, of Idelsohn’s — both of my parents were — had taken it upon herself to reissue The Jewish Songbook, as his legacy to the post-war Jewish world. She was looking for an editor.  And I had the tradition, directly from Idelsohn.  But I was, in — well, see — in ’40, in ’50, I was all of 24 years old.  And had no qualification — no, you know, criteria, no qualifications, professional qualifications, to be the musical editor. She tried an editor in New York.  Didn’t like what he was doing with it,  it wasn’t faithful to Idelsohn.  And so, she really wanted to give it to me, but I needed to establish the credentials. So, at her suggestion, I wrote this article.  And it, it really wasn’t hard to write — I just took what I, what I already knew, and put it into logical form for the magazine.  And since, I guess, they never had anything like that before, they accepted it.  And that’s how it, it happened to come out. It was - later, it was used in, of course, in cantorial schools, and it was published.  Parts of it were published in an encyclopedia.  So then, in, in ’81, the Cantors Assembly reprinted it, you know, in The Journal of American Musical — Jewish Music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=82.0,225.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  The Journal of Jewish Music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But it still remains — I mean, I use it in my classes.  And other people use it.  You never did a follow-up on it, or considered a follow-up?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  No, not really.  I, I think it may be not a hundred percent complete, but I, I think that’s really what I had to say on the subject.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=225.0,245.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e And you got into some very interesting things there in terms of modulation.  Modulation motifs for, to go from one mode to another and one service to another.  It’s very interesting.  I mean, this, you did this all yourself, though, because it doesn’t appear that way anywhere else.  It’s so careful, so logically laid out.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=245.0,265.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON:  Yes, that’s, that was how I laid it out.  Of course, I didn’t invent any of that.  I learned it from another fine teacher of mine, Jacob Beimel, olav hashalom, who was my teacher, main teacher of hazzanas, as such.  And he, he laid it out for me, you know: this is, this is how a cantor modulates.  He did it vocally.  I just put it on paper.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=265.0,295.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Let’s go back to the, now, to the beginning.  I know you, you’re not native to Los Angeles.  You were, you grew up in a strange place for a Jew to grow up, right?\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Well, I, I was born in Chicago, grew up in Cincinnati.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Oh, no.  I thought you — weren’t you — or was this your mother? — was…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=295.0,315.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON:  My mother came from northern Oregon.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But you didn’t grow up there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  You didn’t.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  No.  My mother came from Portland, my father came from Minsk Gubernia, and I grew up in Cincinnati.  So I…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Alright.  Now, your mother was the assistant to Idelsohn.  Right?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=315.0,332.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e To a great extent, yes. What happened was, when Idelsohn first came to this country, my father met him, and he, he knew something about what Idelsohn was doing.  Because Idelsohn came here to raise money to publish the thesaurus — his ten-volume thesaurus of Hebrew Oriental melodies.  And — sponsored by the Learned Societies, and so forth. And my mother had always been fascinated with Jewish music.  And when my father brought Idelsohn home, my mother undertook to set up a nationwide tour for him.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=332.0,368.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  You say when he brought him home.  Your father was in Chicago?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  He was a rabbi?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And where?  On the South Side?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Temple Mizpah was…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Temple Mizpah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  He organized.  He started at Temple Zion, Zion Temple, which doesn’t exist anymore.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Even Mizpah, I’m not sure…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  And then he organized Temple Mizpah in Rogers Park.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So it was in, in North Side?  In Rogers Park.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  There, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Mizpah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  The other one was in South Side.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And when Idelsohn came…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=368.0,390.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e Idelsohn came to, to a, a rabbinical convention, which I forget where it was held, right now.  But my father invited him back to Chicago.  And he and, and my parents became close friends ever after that.  I have, you know, pictures of, of myself with Idelsohn when I was a year old, you know.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=390.0,413.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  And then what happened?  How did he get to… your father went to Cincinnati?  Was that…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yes.  My father was invited to teach in Cincinnati.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  At Hebrew Union College?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  At Hebrew Union College.  And then, after he was on the faculty there, he convinced them to establish the first chair of Jewish music in any institution.  And Idelsohn was the professor.  They brought him in.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=413.0,439.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  They brought Idelsohn to Cincinnati?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Brought Idelsohn to Cincinnati, first, to catalog the Birnbaum Library.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Now, did the Birnbaum Library get there through Idelsohn?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  No.  It was already there, but they didn’t know what to do with it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Well, how did it get there?  Do you remember?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  It was donated.  I don’t know who donated it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I thought that Idelsohn was instrumental in getting it there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=439.0,458.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON:  No, I’m, as far as I know, it was there, and it was not, it was just sitting on shelves.  And nobody knew what to do with it.  Idelsohn proceeded to catalog it and make use of it. And then, from there, he developed a whole chair and whole — you know, courses in Jewish music and in Jewish liturgy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And how did your mother get to work with him?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=458.0,479.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON:  Because she, she loved the subject, because they were friends.  And she undertook to set up this tour. And then, when he decided to print books in English — and English was, of course, not his native language — she helped him with the preparation of the manuscript.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So she helped on the, on the 1929 book, on the…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=479.0,501.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON:  Yeah.  On Jewish Music and on Jewish Liturgy.  And then, other books that he did that are maybe less well-known.  But he wrote a lot of monographs and things like that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah. And she worked on it with the English, and with the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  What about the — now, what about you, during this period?  I mean…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  I was a little boy.  You know.  I was, but when I was five years old, Idelsohn taught me trop, he taught me to read notes, and he used to let me copy his, his compositions.  And so, as I say, he was my first teacher of music.  Of any kind.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=501.0,539.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  And then, how did you get to, how did you get to Los Angeles?  I mean, Idelsohn died either at 37, 38, I don’t remember…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Thirty-eight, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And then…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yeah.  I, actually, I wrote up Idelsohn’s life for his, the hundredth anniversary of his birth.  Also in the Cantors Assembly Journal.  I was on the editorial board at the time, and, and Sam Rosenbaum asked me to do that. How did I get to Los Angeles?  Well, you know, there was a thing called World War II.  And lots of guys from the east were shipped out here in the service.  And I was one of them.  And I thought, well, this is a pretty nice place; I think I’m going to come back.  So, like thousands of others, I did. I came back, first, to get into television.  And I actually worked in the studios for about ten years.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=539.0,590.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  What did you do there?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  I did a lot of story work, first.  I was a writer and story editor.  Then, I went into production.  And I used to produce classical TV shows, like The Cisco Kid and Sea Hunt, and stuff that’s no longer on the air.  But had some, some interesting experiences.  From the point of view of Jewish music, there are two. We did a, a show.  I was a technical advisor on a show for Four Star Pictures that had to do with a Jewish funeral.  So, first, we shot the, the outdoor scene, with a graveyard.  And I recorded some wild tracks of cant - you know, memorial chants.  Okay, then, we go in on the set, and I look around, and I called over the prop man.  And I said, “What’s this doing here?” He said, “Well, I don’t know.  I, I thought that we were supposed to have a candle in the house of mourning.” I said, “Yes, that’s right.  But not a Hanukkah candle.” So, so we did — you know, these things happen all the time.  But we were there, I was working in the studios, as I say, for about ten years.  And then went back into full-time cantorial work, after that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=590.0,665.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Now, the cantorial — I mean, you learned, you picked this up as you went along in youth, or — how much did Idelsohn work with you, aside from what you mentioned so far, in terms of the modes, I mean…\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Now, you realize that Idelsohn was first stricken in the mid ‘30s.  And then he was taken to South Africa, where most of his family was living.  And he died there. So, really, I didn’t work with Idelsohn.  I couldn’t, after about the age of nine. But at the age of 12, I had the opportunity to learn from Jacob Beimel.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=665.0,713.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Beimel was in New York.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So what were you doing in New York?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Alright, so, my mother took me there.  And we lived there for about six months.  And I learned from him. It was not exactly the kind of apprenticeship that characterized the preparation of most cantors, at that time in history.  Because Beimel was no longer an officiating cantor.  He was basically retired from that.  His voice wasn’t there anymore, for officiating.  But he could certainly express, in a private way, you know, what he was doing.  So, it was not that kind of apprenticeship.  But it was more, I was his student.  You know? And he taught me nusaḥ, and he taught me, you know, cantorial improvisation techniques, and things like that, which I’ve been using ever since.  Of course, I added to them, you know, as every cantor does, if he has any intelligence.  He picks up from others and, and invents himself.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=713.0,784.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Now, I want to go into this in a little bit of detail, because it’s an interesting phenomenon in American Jewish cultural history and musical history — the business of these private teachers of hazzanas.  Because, in Europe, things were a little different. People came up more through, in terms of traditional hazzanas, they came more up, more up through choirs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Or fathers who were great hazzanim.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Right.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=784.0,806.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Neither is necessarily the case here.  So here, there were people in New York, of whom Beimel was one…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …who kind of specialized.  You could even — I don’t know if Beimel, one, but there was a Jacob Schwartz — I don’t know if you remember that name — who — Lipitz was another one — along with Beimel, who actually advertised in - you could find it today - in the library, in an old newspaper, cantorial teachers.  Did Beimel work out of a studio, did he call it a school?  Some of them called it a school, which really was…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=806.0,838.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON:  No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  He just took on students?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  We sat in the apartment and took the prayer book and some score paper, and that was it. You see, Beimel, in addition to being a, a highly skilled hazzan, was a very competent musician.  You know, he published a magazine for awhile called The Jewish Music Forum.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=838.0,859.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Now, I just talked about this the other day with somebody.  The Jewish Music Forum — was that, wasn’t that published by the Jewish — no — The Jewish Music Forum Bulletin would have been it.  The Jewish Music Forum was the name of the organization.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  No, no.  His, his magazine was called The Jewish Music Forum, as I remember.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And what was the organization with Binder?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  I don’t know, but it was, it had to be a different thing, because he was not involved with Binder, as far as I know.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=859.0,884.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  There was a Jewish Music Forum that Binder — it was a breakaway from Mailamm.  But I can’t recall that Beimel, but do you think Beimel’s was called The Jewish Music Forum?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yeah, and it was, it was an independent magazine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Right.  It was independent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  And this took a great deal of courage and chutzpah, in the ‘30s,  you know, in a time of, of abject depression, to publish a magazine that was as esoteric as that.  And so, you know, it should be - come as no surprise that it didn’t last more than a year.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=884.0,914.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  This one had — in other words, there were just a few issues?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yeah.  Less than a year.  I know he had the…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Is that all?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And they had some music in the back of it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yeah.  Right.  It was, it was a fine magazine for what it was, but it couldn’t survive. But he was a very valuable man.  And I have, you know, very fond memories of working with him.  So, he gave me a whole foundation of, of nusaḥ and hazzanas.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=914.0,945.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  So it, would you say it’s, you know, from him, that you were able, eventually, to delineate this, the modal structure so, so transparently and so neatly, the way you did?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Well, yes.  From him and, of course, going back to what I learned from Idelsohn about the, the structure of the trop, I realized that nusaḥ has the same kind of structure, only it doesn’t have the symbols. So that’s what I did — I broke it down into its component parts.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=945.0,975.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  And after you worked with Beimel, then, you were ready to take on — and what was your first cantorial…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  My first cantorial job was in Pontiac, Michigan, for the High Holidays.  I was 17 years old.  And I was engaged to do High Holidays there. The, the pay was so small, I don’t even remember what it was. But it was a great boost for my ego.  Because I remember going up there.  Here I am, you know, 17 years old, I’m going to daven for the, for this congregation. And I was, after rehearsal with the choir one day, I’m, I’m standing in the, in the lobby, and the school was letting out.  And I hear this little boy tell his parents, “Hey, that’s the singing man.  Hi, singing man!” To be a, be a singing man, at the age of 17.  I was, I’m somebody, you know.  So it was, it was fun.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=975.0,1033.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  This was still, of course, in so-called traditional circles?  It wasn’t Reform?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Oh, this was a Reform congregation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Oh, it was Reform.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yeah.  And the, the rabbi of that congregation had been a student of Idelsohn’s in Cincinnati.  And, of course, also a student of my father’s.  So, when he came to Pontiac and he, he would, needed a cantor for his own services, he called my father.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1033.0,1057.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  And then what happened, on the road to…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Then, what happened was, I went into the Navy.  And after I got out, I came out here.  No — before I came out here, I had a High Holiday position in Detroit, I think. And then I came out here and I officiated in Bakersfield.  And then, in, then I got a, a year-round job in Pasadena, with a very promising young rabbi in the Pasadena congregation, at that time, by the name of Max Vorspan, who, of course, is now provost of the University of Judaism.  And so we worked together for a year or so. And then, I moved over to the west side of town, to go to UCLA.  And I was cantor for the Hillel Foundation there for awhile.  And then, I went to work for Westchester Jewish Congregation, which was Conservative.  I was there for about three years, and went on to, to other congregations in the Southern California area. I was at Valley Beth Israel in North Hollywood for 11 years, and at Temple Emanuel Beverly Hills for 21 years.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1057.0,1134.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  And so, in all this time now, let’s talk a little bit about the scene here.  I mean, you were right in the middle of things.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  A lot of interesting things happened here, I mean, in the post-war period, which is when you began here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Jewish music programming, there was an organization.  Were you active in any of the organizations, here?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1134.0,1153.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e We actually, we set up a, an organization — I was one of the founding members — called the Southern California Board of Cantors.  Corresponding to the Board of Rabbis, which is, you know, all-inclusive — you know, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform.  We did the same thing with the Southern California Board of Cantors. And it, it was a, a worthwhile organization for several years.  Really, I don’t recall how it, it ceased to exist.  But basically, I think there was a, a conflict of interest for some of the members, that they were more loyal to the Cantors Assembly, or they were more loyal to the ACC.  And at that time, there was the Hazzanim Farband, which was active here. With the Orthodox -","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1153.0,1205.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Yeah, tell me about the Farband. Do you have any…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  They, they were all older men, at that time.  And I did not have a whole lot of contact with them. But, you know, they have a, a book that they published many years ago, that has biographies of some of their members.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1205.0,1228.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Did I — was it you I talked to the other day?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  On the phone, yes.\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.  Yeah. That’s the big question.  Is that a book that’s California?  Or is it an appendix or a section of the Jubilee Volume of the New York Hazzanim Farband?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  As I remember, there was a separate book here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I don’t know how…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  I may be wrong.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …how we could find that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Um…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Maybe the Historical Society.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1228.0,1251.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON:  I’ve seen it.  I’m trying to think where I saw it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Because there is no Farband anymore. There used to be.\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  No. But, I mean, they had some, some very memorable members, at that time.  I don’t know — we’ll have to ask around.  I don’t know.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1251.0,1273.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Ask around.  Because that would be very important.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I mean, I’ve never heard, until you mentioned it…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  …a separate book.  It would be in Yiddish, I imagine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  But there are the three volumes.  You know what I’m talking about.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  There’s a 25th anniversary — whatever it is.  There are three volumes, Jubilee, Jubilee Volume, and all that.  \u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But those are published by the Hazzan — the Jewish Ministers Cantors Association.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1273.0,1296.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON:  Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  In New York.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And there may have been a, a section.  But if you’re talking about a whole book published here, I would be interested — very interested, then — to find out about that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Well, I’ll, I can ask around, and, you know, if you’ll be in town for a few days, you know…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  No, it doesn’t matter if I’m in town or not, I mean…  But if there’s nobody left, I mean…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1296.0,1317.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON:  Not really, no.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  A few people who know — not even Kellemer, or even — and they’re too young.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yeah.  Sam Fordis might know, because he grew up here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Vague, he has a vague memory about it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  You, you spoke to him already?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Oh, sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  I mean, there were people like, for example, right after the war, did you ever meet Ansis?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  I never met him.  Of course, I know who he was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1317.0,1340.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON:  But I never met him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  See, he’s buried in the — that’s, he may have been dead even by the, by that time.  I don’t remember.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yeah, I don’t remember.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  He died in the ‘30s.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  But I wasn’t here then.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  So then, he wouldn’t — and I don’t know.  I’m guessing.  But were they, did they have any active, let’s say, in the immediate post-war period when you were here, did the Farband have any activity?  Concerts, this sort of thing, chorus?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1340.0,1360.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e Separate activities?  I don’t remember any, while I was here.  They did have, there was, as I say, some very prominent hazzanim — Laib Glantz and others — who were still here, then.   And sometimes, they would participate in concerts that we would put on — you know, Jewish music concerts for the whole community.  They had no problem, you know, singing in the same chorus with us.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1360.0,1388.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  It wasn’t a problem then.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And the, you, when you say “we,” you mean the Southern California Board of…\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Mmm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And that was unconnected to the Assembly, or anything like that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  No, that was a separate organization.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  It was a completely independent organization.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Do you remember who some of the officers were?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Well, let’s see.  There was, see, we, Eddie Croll was an officer, I think.  Saul Silverman, olav hashalom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSaul Silverman was my first friend in California.  He was a prince of a man.  Came out of Chicago.  And he was cantor at Temple Israel of Hollywood for many years.  And he also appeared in several movies.  And I think he was an officer of the Southern California Board.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1388.0,1433.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  And people like Julie Blackman, was he a member?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Julie Blackman was with the Assembly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  And Katzman?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Katzman was with the Assembly; left it a long time ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Uh-huh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  He’s still around, you know.  He’s still here in town.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1433.0,1453.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  For that matter, Reich.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Israel Reich was cantor in Breed Street Shul.  And then, came over to the West Side, to Shaarei Tefila.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Uh-huh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Very colorful man, very…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  He’s a lot of, a lot of fun.  He’s, unfortunately, his health is not what it used to be.  But he was well-known, all over the community.  I think he was, I think he was a member of the Southern California Board. Most of them were, you know, members.  How active, you know, I don’t remember.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1453.0,1491.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Itsikel Schiff — you know that name?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  He was active here then.  Uri Frankel, olav hasholem, of course.  And Richman. What’s his first name?  Aaron Richman, I think.  Yeah.  Yeah.  He was at - where Walfish is now - at Beth Israel.  And, then, Hershel Walfish came in, and others.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1491.0,1528.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Now, what about programming?  I mean, there were a lot of interesting things in the ‘50s, I understand, here, in connection with the University of Judaism, and things like that. Concert programming.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN:  Some commissioned pieces, cantatas.  Helfman was around, in those days.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Right.  Actually, I had something to do with introducing Max Helfman to the LA Jewish community.  He came out, you know, to go on staff for Brandeis.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1528.0,1554.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  And he was well-known in the east, but he wasn’t well-known here.  So we undertook to introduce him to the community. And we had joint services.  Not the whole congregation, but joint choirs.  We pooled choirs of three or four different congregations on the West Side.  I was in Westchester, then.  And we had my choir, we had one from Temple Isaiah.  Bob Nadel, olav hashalom, was cantor there then, at that time.  And one from another congregation — I don’t remember which one. And we’d have these services going from one of our synagogues to another, doing Max Helfman’s music.  And Max would come and speak to the people. And, of course, Max was a very colorful man.  Very interesting speaker.  A marvelous conductor.  And so, we, we got him acquainted, a little bit, with the LA Jewish community that way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1554.0,1616.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN:  Were you ever at Brandeis?  Did you…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON:  Yes, I was at, I was on staff at Brandeis one summer.  And worked for — I first worked for Shlomo Bardin when I — I think I was first married.  I must have been 25 years old.  And he hired me to write a script. Well, by the time I got through with a few story conferences with Shlomo Bardin, I came home and told my bride, I says, “I’m never going to work for that man again.  He’s a tyrant!”  Right? Twenty years later, I found myself working for him.  And I discovered that all the things that were important to me, Shlomo Bardin had accomplished, in, at Brandeis camp.  A kind of a shot in the arm for Jewish continuity, by working with young people. And as I worked for him there that summer, and taught music and conducted discussion groups, and one thing and another.  And at the end of the summer, he, he tried to interest me in taking over the, the running of the camp.  Because he said, you know, “I am going to, I am not going to retire.  They will carry me from my desk to my grave.”  He says, “But every place I have ever worked, they had to hire three men to replace me.” So I came away, told this to my wife, and she says, “He’s looking for all three of them, right there, with you.” And I didn’t take the job.  But I had to convince Shlomo Bardin that it was his idea, that he withdrew the offer.  Yeah.  It was a, it was a great experience.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1616.0,1713.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Did you have any involvement with the, I’m going to say the UJ, but I mean either the UJ itself, or the – they started a program at one time, a music, a degree program.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yes, I did. I taught cantorial students and – I forget, I guess it was continuing education department, but they were down on Sunset Boulevard at the time, at the old Hollywood Athletic Club. I taught for UJ for several years. I taught cantillations, I taught some nusaḥ, things like that. Yes I did. Unfortunately what happened a lot of times there – you know, I was on the faculty for ten years and I think I had a class to teach three times, because you had to have a certain minimum, and if they didn’t have the minimum…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1713.0,1767.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: They canceled.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: The whole class. So I’m in the catalog, you can find the class in the catalog, you just couldn’t find it in action. But after that, I taught for HUC. I taught a class called Jewish Life Through Music for several years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I didn’t realize that. At HUC, they had, they didn’t have a real program, did they, but they did, on the other hand…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1767.0,1792.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Well, they did. I was not teaching the cantorial students there. I was teaching the education students and USC students who came across the street to take classes. Bill Sharlin handled the cantorial.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So they did have a program of some sort.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But not with the cache of ordination or investiture.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1792.0,1811.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah, well, you know, you talk about certification, investiture, whatever you call it, is really kind of a strange concept historically for hazzanim. When my son wanted to go into this - which I did my best to discourage him, but he went anyway – but when he went into this, he asked me about, you know, should he go into the school and take this classes? And I said, you know, “You can do that,” I said, “and you’ll get a piece of paper. But any place I ever went for a job, they never asked me if I graduated from kindergarten. You know? You get up and daven. You can do it or you can’t do it.” And so, the investiture and the ordination and all of that are not what, not what they seem.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1811.0,1866.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Yeah. There were some interesting things here connected to some of the very, I mean, stellar composers who were refugees here. Did you ever have anything to do… you know, Toch and Schoenberg and –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Well, I did, I did take some lessons from Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who was a fascinating old man when I knew him. And I enjoyed just being with him. But we did those things really as much out of compassion for him, because he really needed it, as we did for the material. He was, his, he was getting pretty well advanced in years by that time.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1866.0,1914.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Mm-hmm. And people like, who is it, Zeisl or Schoenberg…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: I did not have any direct contact with them, no. There was a – Zeisl had a brother. Willy Zeisl was a cantor here, at the German Refugee Congregation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That was his brother?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I don’t think that’s too well-known.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Now you know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That German Refugee Congregation doesn’t exist either anymore, does it?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1914.0,1940.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e No. There was a rabbi by the name of Jacob Sonderling who organized it. He had a synagogue called Fairfax Temple at the corner of 5th and Fairfax where he really basically recreated the service that they had in Berlin. And Zeisl would get up and sing all Lewandowski’s music. And they were very happy with it. But as the people got older and moved away, the congregation sort of folded. And of course Sonderling, once he died, that was the end of it. He was a, he was a great figure in Los Angeles, for a while.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1940.0,1980.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Then you were at Temple Emanuel, I would say, that was the longest position that you -\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: That was the longest position I had, right. Twenty-one years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Tell me about the various groups you had there. You had a quite good children’s chorus, I heard.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yes. You saw the picture of it there. We had over a hundred kids. You have it in the book right there. Inside your book.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=1980.0,2002.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: That’s your –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: That’s the day school choir at Temple Emanuel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: We’ll put it in later.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah. We had over a hundred kids in there, and they sang up a storm. Yeah. They sang up a storm. And they’re still, they’re still going strong.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: They sing your music?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Some.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: How did you get into composing? You wrote a lot of stuff, you’ve got a lot of CDs out. We’ll talk about that a little later on, but -","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2002.0,2026.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah, I, I’ve always done that. It’s something I love to do. And I write for synagogue music because that’s where I live. I also write some musicals for Jewish productions. One year my wife came home – she was teaching a, a teenage dramatic group at the Westside Jewish Community Center. And she says, “You’ve got to help me.” I said, “What’s, what do you want me to do?” She said, “I’ve been looking all over. They don’t write musicals for 19 girls and four boys. Can’t find one.” So I said, “Okay. Get me some money; we’ll write a script.” So she got me some fantastic amount, a hundred dollars or so, and we went to the desert for the weekend with a book. The book was by Chaim Nahman Bialik and it was called The Knight of Onion and the Knight of Garlic. That’s K-N-I-G-H-T. Which I adapted the idea of that story into a musical called Stars Over Shnibishuk. And we did a, kind of a man from Mars comes to Shnibishuk looking for onions. So this was a very successful little venture, and the next day they, the next year they asked me to write another one. And the second one, I did based on my mother’s experiences as an 18-year-old Jewish girl teaching in a mountain school in a village in Oregon, in the Oregon mountains. She had some fascinating experiences there, and we called the show Howdy, Ms. Rosen, and we had a, we had a lot of fun with it. I’ve done stuff like that a lot.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2026.0,2132.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Those things were performed at the synagogue?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: At the synagogue, at centers, they’ve been performed various places. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Recently at all?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Recently. Last performance of Howdy, Ms. Rosen was in New York about, I don’t know, eight or nine years ago. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s pretty recent.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah. And then of course, with the kids choir, I’d take the opportunity to arrange things that they could sing, whether they were my own or other people’s. And we did, you know, all kinds of Jewish music, and being that was the day school we also did American songs because that was their total education.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2132.0,2171.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: The group that you worked with, the children, put out some recordings, didn’t they?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: The – no. That particular group, some of them were on commerical recordings. I’d get a request from somebody that wanted some kids to back them in a, in a number, and we did that. But the book that you’re holding right now –","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2171.0,2196.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: This one?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah. New Year in Song. Had a companion tape.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: That went with it. Which Tara Music published and distributed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: And the group on that tape was a family choir made up of adults and kids.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh, I thought it was your children that you worked with.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: No, I did not sing that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2196.0,2219.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Now, this disseration, called The Choral Music of Baruch Cohon: Combining Traditional Jewish Chant with American Synagogue Msuic. How’d this come to be written? Who is Ilan David – is it Glassman?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2219.0,2238.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e Ilan Glassman sang in my High Holiday choir a few years running, and then got himself a job at Hamilton High School here in Los Angeles as a music teacher specializing in choral music. And, so he was working for his doctorate at USC, and he calls me up one day and he says, you know, “I have to write a dissertation on a living composer-conductor, and I pick you!” And so I was very surprised, and flattered, and I said sure. You know, he wanted to see my music. So finally, after all these years of, of just haphazardly writing stuff and putting it in a drawer, I had an opportunity to get it catalogued, which it is there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2238.0,2280.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: And Ilan did a workmanlike job on it, and this is how that came to be. He got his doctorate, and I got a catalog.\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: This is at USC, isn’t it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: USC.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What year did he get his doctorate?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Just a couple years ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It’s very recent. Tell me about your choral music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2280.0,2300.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e My choral music started really on the basis of experience working with synagogue choirs, and I wrote an entire service to celebrate my father’s 70th birthday. It was performed at Temple Israel of Hollywood, and I published it later along with some other cantor and choir pieces in the, that book down there called Avodah Simcha.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2300.0,2332.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Now this was, this was done in 19 – copyrighted ’61.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Are these things that you’ve performed, that you’ve done at, at Emanuel?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: I did them at Emanuel; I did them before that too. I did some of them – one of the – the Kol Nidre arrangement, I wrote actually at Valley Beth Israel.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2332.0,2356.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Uh-huh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: And I recorded that also.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And this is not in print anymore, is it? This Avodah… \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: I mean it’s, I have a few, you know, small stock of copies left.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You showed me once something very interesting. You had an onion-skinned – oh, it must have been that thick – written out the entire davening…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2356.0,2380.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e Oh, yes, I know what you’re talking about. You’re talking about the old time cantors in Los Angeles. That was the work of a cantor by the name of Schvatzkin(?). Cantor Schvatzki was a zeisen neshuma and really a very valuable cantor, and in his older years, he was living in Santa Monica here, teaching bar mitzvah for one of the congregations, because he didn’t have the voice anymore, but he had the knowledge. And he took this knowledge, and with his, his musical training, he wrote a whole year’s davening. And put in a little hazzanas in everything. You know, he didn’t, it wasn’t just straight nusaḥ. Straight nusaḥ, you can get from, you know, from Bayer -","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2380.0,2430.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: From various others. Katchko. But Schvatzkin had put a lot of color into it. That’s what you - \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But how did you acquire that? Just by chance, or –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: When he died, there was a man by the name of Irving Zane, who was also a cantor here for many years, and he was very close with the Schvatzkin family. And he saw this thing there, and he said he couldn’t really use it, but he thought I could.\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Uh-huh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: And he arranged for me to get it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2430.0,2462.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: And you have some other things too like that? Or is that the only one? Every –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Well, that’s the only that’s that complete.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s that complete.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I mean, others have done it in other cities, you know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Well, sure. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You know what the difference is between – among them? Other than the key and all this stuff -\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Well, if it’s Ashkenazi nusaḥ…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2462.0,2482.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Yeah, I’m talking about –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: It’s all going to be very similar. But because it’s a, it’s a vocal tradition, everybody does it a little bit differently.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. Here’s a – who’s this picture? This is Jacob Beimel with your father.\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Jacob Beimel with my father, mm-hmm. That was taken, I think, the day of my bar mitzvah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2482.0,2503.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: In 1939.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: It was taken the day of my bar mitzvah in Red Bank, New Jersey.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah, Beimel did, there was another book somebody – with Ephros, together with Ephros, that volume. You know about that? Called Beimel-Ephros?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: I am not familiar with that one. Of course, I knew Ephros. And everybody knows his cantorial anthology. Ephros, by the way, was close to Idelsohn. You know, Idelsohn wrote the introduction to Ephros’s first volume.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2503.0,2534.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. And this picture here – no, no, where is it, this one – doesn’t identify, says it’s 1929 – who is this?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: The man in the dark suit here is Idelsohn, and the man in the white suit is my father, and I’m in the middle, looking up at my father. I was about three, I think.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2534.0,2565.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: This is a picture – Friday, September 2nd, 1927. Boruch and Professor Idelsohn. This is a classic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah, isn’t it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: My goodness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Siasconset.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Where were they?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Siasconset.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Where’s that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: They said Siasconset. I was one year old. How should I remember?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2565.0,2585.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: That’s right, it says Siasconset. What country is it in?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: It’s in the United States. Somewhere in New England, I think.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Beach. Yeah, it’s on the beach. It’s probably in Maine then, or something.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Maybe, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It sounds like that. That’s the hap – the only time I’ve ever seen a picture of Idelsohn smiling. Yeah.\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: He could abandon himself to a day at the beach. He had a wonder – he had a great love of life, you know. And he’d get the whiff of that salt air; he says, “Are you breathing!” You know. That was a -","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2585.0,2614.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: He didn’t have – did he – he had children, didn’t he?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Oh, yeah. Yes. Mostly daughters. He had several daughters.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That happens.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: They were living in South Africa. One of them came here – a couple of them came here - while he was living here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Are there any direct descendants now?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Oh, yeah. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: There are?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah. As a matter of fact, his grandson came to my house a few years ago on a visit to LA with his wife and children.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2614.0,2640.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Oh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: So they’re still living. Family is very much alive. He had a brother, you know. Idelsohn had a brother by the name of Jerry Idelsohn, who was a musical director in some of the congregations in Johannesburg. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Because they, well, they donated, I think, most of the material to – or all the material – to the archives in Israel.\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2640.0,2663.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: To the Hebrew University.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Museum.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Peter Groduwitz(?), I think, had a lot to do with that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Did he get it over there? Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah. Because he was the one who was instrumental in finally getting Idelsohn some royalties on Hava Negilah. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Oh, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: After many, many years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And then they published the (?) which your mother has an article in there. In the, you know, Yuval.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2663.0,2684.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Right. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Her recollections of Idelsohn and so forth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: At Emanuel, which is a Reform congregation, how much did you utilize, or did you utilize, all this clear feel you have for nusaḥ hat'filla, for the…?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2684.0,2702.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/79","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e I utilized a lot of it. My, my theory always is that, that nusaḥ is not bound by denominations. You know, the prayer book may be longer or shorter in whichever congregation you happen to go to, but the structure of the service remains, it’s the same structure. And if I’m going to do, you know, shacharis nusaḥ, I’m going to do shacharis nusaḥ. If I’m going to do ma’ariv nusaḥ, I’m going to do ma’ariv nusaḥ. Whether it’s an Orthodox or Reform congregation or anything in between. So I used a lot of it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2702.0,2739.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/80","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Did you function there, really, as a, in some ways, therefore, as a traditional hazzan in a Reform – strictly Reform temple? Right? I mean, it’s not –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Strictly Reform temple. Temple Emanuel was always known as the most traditional of the Reform congregations in Los Angeles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Uh-huh.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: And for example, most of – through most of the history of Emanuel, the rabbi and cantor wore yarmulkes and taleysim.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2739.0,2764.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/81","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Oh, really?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Hey, is that, that is unusual for here, for Los – for California? I mean –\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Oh, sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Let’s take Wilshire Boulevard Temple now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Well, Wilshire Boulevard was the bastion of what’s called Classical Reform, and Edgar Magnin, olav hashalom, wouldn’t hear of having a cantor, he wouldn’t wear a yarmulke, he wouldn’t wear a talis, nothing like that. But Emanuel is a different style. And a lot of the, of the smaller congregations followed Emanuel to a certain extent, but they were, they were in between.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2764.0,2799.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/82","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: But you used the Union Prayer Book there?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: We used the Union Prayer Book. And when Gates of Prayer came out, we put that in.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Tell me about both your views and the episode and the whole thing with the Cantors Assembly and the admission of women, and how it is that you, a cantor from the Reform temple, clearly became the leader in doing what he said he was going to do? Because without naming names, there were others –","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2799.0,2830.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/83","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And you know who I mean.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Who said that if that happened, for reasons of principle, they were going to leave the Assembly. And they didn’t.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Okay. Number one, I got to tell you a story because I need to clear something up. When Rabbi Heller retired from Temple Emanuel and they were interviewing rabbis, of course, those of us who were on the senior staff had to interview each one of them separately, and the one who finally got the job was Laura Geller. Laura came in to see me that afternoon and she said, “I know how you feel about women cantors. How do you feel about women rabbis?” So I said, “Well, I expected you to ask me that question, and I have good news and bad news.” She said, “What’s that?” I said, “Well, the bad news is I never worked with a woman, I’m not looking for it, and I’d be more comfortable with a man. The good news is that philosophically I have no problem with it, because Halakhah is different for rabbis than it is for cantors, alright? Rabbi is essentially a teacher, women have been teachers since the year one, and so I have no problem with that. But with – so, people, if people tell you that I retired from Emanuel because they hired Laura Geller, that’s not true. But with female cantors, it’s a different situation. I felt, number one, that a shaliach tzibur, as I read Jewish law, a shaliach tzibur has to be responsible for the same mitzvahs as his constituents, alright? Therefore, since men are obligated to certain mitzvahs that women are not obligated to, women cannot represent men in prayer. They can represent other women, but they can’t represent a mixed congregation. Therefore, to hire a women as a shaliach tzibur for a mixed congregation is against Jewish law. I mean, you’re welcome to interpret it your way, that’s how I interpret it. The second factor that led to, to my activity with, and my separation from the Cantors Assembly, was the way they handled it politically. They took votes three times in the convention to admit women or not to admit women, they lost all three times, and then the executive committee decided that they’ll do it without a vote. And that I objected to. And so I wrote to the president of the Assembly that year and I said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t support an organization if I don’t support its policies.” So I left them.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=2830.0,3017.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/84","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: And would you have stayed if the vote had gone the other way the third time? Or the fourth time? Because it was getting there. I mean, well, the margin was changing.\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: That may be. But it didn’t happen, so I don’t have to make that decision.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. And did you – were you involved at all with the attempt to, you know, with the, with the alternative organization that they were –","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3017.0,3037.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/85","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Oh, I went to Toronto. Yeah, I went to Toronto to that convention. And I enjoyed it. But it never went any place. It never got off the ground.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, I know. I think they made a mistake. They - this was the opportunity to revitalize the Farband. Because the Farband in New York still exists. In other words, they didn’t dissolve. They still have a bank account. They’ve got three members or whatever. No, but they’re there! Charlie Bloch is still on the board of the Farband. I mean, it’s a joke, in a way, but it has not dissolved. So all – it wouldn’t have to be reformed. And that was the suggestion – I don’t know what kinds of politics there –","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3037.0,3071.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/86","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Well, you know, Cantor Malovany I think it was, who spoke to the convention in Toronto that year, and said, “You don’t need this organization, because you have the Farband. Or you have the Jewish Ministers Cantors. Why don’t you guys just come into it with us?” And they didn’t go along with it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, of course Malovany isn’t, he’s talking about – he’s not talking about the Farband. He’s probably talking about the Orthodox – that’s the difference from YU, that’s not the Farband, that’s the Cantorial Counsel of America.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3071.0,3101.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/87","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Cantorial Counsel of America.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, you can’t go with them, because then you couldn’t take a congregation with mixed seating. You see, that, you see – altogether, that’s strictly Orthodox. But that wasn’t your – obviously, I mean, here you were –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: No, that wasn’t, that was not a problem for me. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: You delineated the issue of the obligation of mitzvahs. Now comes along a, a Rabbi Joel Roth, who says, “Yes, of course, that’s, that’s the starting point. But supposing a woman adopts upon herself the obligation to observe those mitzvahs that are not – ”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3101.0,3142.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/88","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: That doesn’t change anything. As a matter of fact -\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Why?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Well, because there’s a statement in the Gemara. (quotes text). One who is commanded and carries it out is ahead of one who is not commanded and carries it out. Voluntary – you can volunteer to do it, you can volunteer not to do it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3142.0,3168.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/89","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: In other words, you can take an oath that you have adopted this obligation, but there’s no provision – you’re saying there is no provision for such adoption that, that makes it binding.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: That’s right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Which makes sense, so how does, how does the Assembly answer that one?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3168.0,3186.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/90","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e The (?) finger. No, the – look, I know that the Conservative movement is a very valuable thing in American Jewish history, and I’m not taking anything away from it. But if you follow some of the decisions of the rabbinic law committee, they are really finding excuses for validating conditions that already exist. And where it was, by concept, a way to conserve, to hang on to Jewish tradition and Jewish practice, it became, over the course of time, timid Reform.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3186.0,3237.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/91","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e So, you’re say – you allude to a, to a comparison in one way with rabbinical versus the cantorial situation by saying that a cantor, that there - rabbinical doesn’t matter so much because – and I understand what you’re saying, becase there’s really not any such thing anyway, other than teaching, I mean – and sermonizing is not a Halakhah-ly necessary thing to do. And I’ll come back to what you think about that anyway, because we didn’t get into the kol isha ervah issue which could apply to sermonizing – well, theoretically. But so, it could be say that it really doesn’t make so much difference, whereas hazzanically you’re talking about the shaliach tzibur issue, which specifically, you know. On the other hand, Louis Finkelstein, in his 90-some-odd old year retirement, but still as alert as ever, you know, he lives at home – said the opposite the day that, that this came out. He said to – somebody went over to his daily briefing and said, “Well, what do you think?” This is about the cantors.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3237.0,3304.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/92","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: He was upset with women as rabbis. Upset, I mean - he said himself, “Look, I’m from a different era. There’s no use fighting it. I’m 90 years old.” But he didn’t like that. Now they come a few years later and said to him, “Look, you know what happened? They said women can be a cantor and get the cantorial ordination from the school.” You know what he said? “If they want to be cantors, let them be cantors.” In other words, to him, cantors doesn’t count. Who cares what they do? But from halakhahic point of view, you’re speaking very specifically.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3304.0,3336.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/93","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Therefore, did – in the position that you took, which as I say, is – I don’t know if you know this, but it’s well-known around the country because you followed your conscience. I mean, you quit the next day and many, many others threatened to do that also over the political – not the political – over the way it, over the way that it was handled, which I suppose could – two questions about it: one, did you and any others ever consider as a member, as a dues-paying member, exercising your rights and fighting that form of decision? Fighting the way it was done. You could, or you could have fought it in court, actually.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3336.0,3373.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/94","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: I don’t know that anybody considered fighting it in court. I believe David Bagley also resigned about the same time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, he didn’t. No. He resigned years later, only when he went to an Orthodox synagogue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Oh, well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Sorry to tell you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: That’s not – that’s beside the point. As far as, as fighting it in court, as far as I know, it didn’t come up. And my sense about where my colleagues were at that point in time, I wouldn’t have started such a movement because I think that they were more concerned with where their pension was going to come from.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3373.0,3417.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/95","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: What about the other issue of… I’m – I don’t even want to use the word issue – what about the other often-cited consideration? Kol isha ervah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Okay, that – outside of the Haredi community, I think that’s really not an issue anymore. You’re right that it’s stated, it’s stated in the Shulhan Aruch and all that. But it’s… you know, (quotes Hebrew phrase). That, when the Gemara says go out and see what the people are doing. We do have to take that into consideration. And, as I say, outside of the Haredi community, the prohibition on listening to a woman sing is ignored. And I, I didn’t think it was serving any practical purpose to bring that into the argument at all.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3417.0,3483.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/96","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: And, as you know, it was not even addressed –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: - in the teshuvah. In Roth’s teshuvah. It wasn’t answered, it wasn’t addressed, it was ignored. Only the time-valued or the time-related mitzvot.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Mm-hmm. Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So you feel that, one way or the other, that that is the only issue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: That’s the practical issue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s the practical issue.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3483.0,3503.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/97","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah. Yeah. Now, you know, I recently took part in a Carlebach memorial concert and it was done at a convention, a UO convention, the Orthodox Union. And all of the performers were male. There were no women singing in that program. Because officially, it’s an Orthodox organization, got to follow that. And that’s – outside of, of the services, I mean, this was a concert. So there is a certain amount of official lip service given to the concept of kol isha ervah. But go walk into an Orthodox home and you can hear it on the records, you know.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3503.0,3560.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/98","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah. Well, there’s a way of getting around that though, because that’s on the record, it’s not in person. Therefore it’s a, an electronic reproduction, and an electronic reproduction doesn’t count as actually hearing. But you’ve heard that argument before. But the important thing is the – that was not your concern. Your concern was the halakhahic logic, actually, whether you can adopt, whether you can provide for an adoption procedure which isn’t provided for and so forth.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3560.0,3586.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/99","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Yeah. Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And how did you – how did this square away? In your circles, at Emanuel, that you were the lead – one of the leaders of the, of the vote against, and now you’re here in a Reform temple all together where –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: It came up. I mean, it was – I was asked, supposing the Assembly decides to admit women, what are you going to do about that? I said, “They can decide any way they want to. I don’t have to go along with it.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3586.0,3616.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/100","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: No, but didn’t this antagonize some of the people that you, that you worked with?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Not that I know of. Not that I know of. One thing about my years at Temple Emanuel, I found that there was – they were very accepting. They accepted me where I was and I accepted them where they were. They were not representing me, I was representing them. And that’s the way we worked.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3616.0,3643.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/101","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Your father was the founder of a Reform temple in Chicago, Temple Mizpah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Right. Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Your family was active in Reform Judaism, you were very much connected to your family with Hebrew Union College, and yet, even if I didn’t know it, I would know it now from listening that you have a yeshiva background in some form, whether it’s internalized or there’s actual. Where does that come from?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3643.0,3669.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/102","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e Originally from my father, olav hashalom. My father was a yeshiva bochur in Minsk, before he came to this country. And he, he exposed me as a, as a young fella to the full, the full tradition. You know? We learned Chumash together, we read Bialik. We learned Gemara, you know. And we had a concept of klal Yisroel, which was very strong in his life and it’s very strong in my life. And he said, “You should always be at home with any group of Jews anywhere.” I think he was right. So I got that – and I gravitated towards the tradition. Long after he was gone, I went ahead and got semicha from Rabbi Dr. Henoch Singer here in LA, who was also an elui and the classic test of a yeshiva bocher is you stick a pin through the Gemara and he has to tell you what word it goes through on every page. You know, I’ve tried that. You know what I get? Bloody fingers. But he could do it. And he had that kind of, of a mind, and so did my father. I was very fortunate to be able to study with two men like that. And, and Singer ordained me in ’62, I think it was.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3669.0,3755.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/103","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: So in effect, you’ve had a yeshiva approach.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: With the Gemara -\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And that also must have – I always marveled how that stood out in Beverly Hills.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Actually, it stood out as a help to the way we functioned because in – at that time, at least – Temple Emanuel was very much a klal Yisroel congregation.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3755.0,3783.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/104","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: We had people from many different backgrounds, and if somebody came to us and wanted a – wanted to get married with a traditional kesuvah, I was the one that had to make it out. Worked out fine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So it was a different kind of – it was almost an ecumenical congregation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: To a certain extent, yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3783.0,3804.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/105","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Yeah, compared to other situations. Now let’s move on to some of these recordings that you’ve done, which I’ve of course known about for a long time. I have them. The, the, this, yeah, this is, this is one that has interested me. This Let There Be Music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3804.0,3829.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/106","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: These are all your own melodies?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: No, the list is on the back of each recording.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Where’s the other one?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Some of them are mine and some of them are –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, this is, this is the other one. So here you’ve got things like Lamkoff – by the way, did you know Lamkoff? He was out here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: I didn’t know him personally.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I think he was out here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Oh, yeah. He was here. He wrote that setting of Od hayesod me’afar. You know why he wrote it? He wrote it for the Danny Thomas version of the Jazz Singer.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3829.0,3854.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/107","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: That’s Lamkoff’s?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Lamkoff.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Does he get credit in there? I never saw. Of course it’s such a bad version of it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: I don’t remember even seeing the picture, but it’s a fine piece of music.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And it’s a traditional –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Traditional hazzanas, choir…\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Sure, sure. But Lamkoff is mostly known for his Yiddish songs, at least to me. Another one of our lieder songs out here… Wein.. it’ll come to me in a second. He was a Yiddish lieder composer.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3854.0,3883.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/108","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Oh, Peretz Hirschbein.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: No, Hirschbein was a poet. I’m talking about the –\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Oh, composer?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah. It starts with a W. It’ll come to me in a few… he lived here. It’ll come to me in a minute. But anyway, you have a number of things of yours on here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And on this one… oh this you also have, now for example, songs like Welcome to the Mountain.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3883.0,3911.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/109","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Mm-hmm. Welcome to the Mountain -\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: This is a totally different kind of thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah. It’s interesting that you picked that out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Well, because it’s different.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: The only song in there that isn’t specifically Jewish.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: It’s just a song song. And I love mountains, I love the climb and be there, and when my kids were born, that’s how I felt about it. You know? Welcome to the Mountain.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3911.0,3942.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/110","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Now, you’re, you have one son who is a cantor. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Where is he today?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Spartanburg, South Carolina. He is the chief rabbi of Spartanburg. He is also the chief cantor, he is the chief teacher, answers the phone, you name it, he’s done it, he’s got it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Have you done any concerts together here?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Oh, yes. As a matter of fact, I think I have a piece from the Heritage announcing a concert that we did a couple years ago at the Gindi Auditorium. University of Judaism. And of course, we made that recording together. With a, with a klezmer band, by the way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3942.0,3980.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/111","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: I don’t see it here. Is this… right, but we’ll put it in there. We can get it. So you, you – is he your only -\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: He’s the only –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: One who’s involved in –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Rabbi or hazzan in the family. My other children do very different things, each one of them.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=3980.0,4001.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/112","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Now, back to this, back to some of the music. How would you describe your music, your choral music? Never mind how he describes it. And I must say this, I haven’t read this, now I’m seeing this dissertation. Doesn’t matter. How would you describe it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: What I try to do in, in composing for the synagogue particularly is to blend the traditional with the modern. What seems to be happening with all the different influences that come into synagogue music in our time, whether they come from the summer camp or wherever, is that rhythm becomes very – much more important than it ever was. I mean in traditional hazzanas, basically the, the rhythm of the, of the chant is the rhythm of the Hebrew language. That’s it. Now, they’re going much more in for rhythmic refrains and congregational singing and things like that. So what I try to do is to, is to put elements of both into the same composition. You have on that – the first recording that you held up, Let There Be Music, one cut on there is called Let There Be Love. What’s Let There Be Love? It’s a free translation of a Hashkivenu which appears in the Gates of Prayer prayer book. And I took this – and I, I do the Hashkivenu in traditional chant with hazzanas, and then with the same melody line, I bring in the English translation with a beat. And I try to do this – that happens to be a successful composition. And I try to do this in other ways too, so that we bridge the gap – we bridge the generation gap, and we keep the tradition going in perhaps a revised way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4001.0,4119.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/113","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Could this apply, would you say, to most of your, most of your composition?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: To a greater or less extent, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And what about hazzanic line?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Hazzanic line, I do, you know, I write for myself. I write what I do best.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4119.0,4141.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/114","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: What do you think about the, about the direction of hazzanas in the United States in the past 25 years?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: It’s in decline. No question about it. It is in decline. For a very logical reason: the public isn’t there for it anymore. You want to, you want to draw a big audience to a cantorial concert, there’s only a few places in the world that you can do it: New York, Miami, and Israel. That…","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4141.0,4175.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/115","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: What about here?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Let me tell you something. I have a – one of the pictures I showed you there – a picture that was taken at a convention with David Koussevitsky and his wife. And as you know, David is one of the four Koussevitsky brothers who, you know, were the foremost hazzanim of the generation. David Koussevitsky came out here once on a tour and the local hazzanim asked me to put on a – to produce a concert with him, and try to get him some tie-in dates. So we produced a concert at one of the Orthodox synagogues here and the concert itself was, was very interesting because David Koussevitsky had already been ill and this was a kind of a comeback for him. Well, you should have seen the hazzanim walk in there with pitchforks, with pitch pipes, how high can he go? You know? It was very funny. But he’s a - was a marvelous man and a real mensch, a real prince of a guy. And he did this concert, and so I tried all over southern California, finding tie-in dates. I was able to get one, in San Diego, in an Orthodox congregation. Any place else that I called, I said we have a great opportunity, David Koussevitsky is going to be here, and they said, “Who’s David Koussevitsky?” They don’t know. Without that knowledge, there’s no future for hazzanas. I wrote a – one of the columns I wrote for the local press was in the fall season before the High Holidays; in it, I said, will this be your last Kol Nidre? Because it’s a forseeable time when, you know, Jews will go to the synagogue to hear Kol Nidre, and they’ll have to hear what they hear sometimes in outlying small towns and at home. They put on Jan Peerce’s record, because nobody knows how to sing it. There’s no reason. There’s no, there’s no – increasingly, there’s a - such a small demand for cantorial talent that it’s limited to High Holidays here and there. Not enough to attract people to study the art. So you have a trend in both Orthodox and Reform congregations away from cantorial work. You go to baal teshuva congregations, they don’t want to hear from hazzanim. They want - the members want to daven! Whether they know nusaḥ or not. Whether they have a voice or not. They want to daven. That’s - they get fulfillment out of leading the service. Gezunterheit. But as a field for cantor – for cantorial talent, it’s going away. And you talk about people in, in Conservative and Reform congregations, you have such a dearth of Hebraic knowledge, that such a thing we used to call a maven of hazzanas, they don’t even understand the words! So where are you going to find it?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4175.0,4382.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/116","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e What about the direction of the service in terms of – aside from virtuoso hazzanas, let’s leave it. But now let’s talk – I mean in terms of a sing-along as opposed to… whether it’s hazzanas, whether it’s choir, whatever it is. I mean the direction of, the type of melodies that are chosen to adapt to congregational texts.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4382.0,4414.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/117","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e Well, again, you have a lack of knowledge which is unfortunate. People who didn’t have any or don’t have any experience or background with daily davening or even weekly davening cannot be expected to know nusaḥ. Because that’s how you develop it. It’s a habit. And where our problem is that we don’t have good habits. We don’t have Jewish habits anymore, for sure. And so the – you bring in a melody – I mean, you know, it could be like the hazzan that told Idelsohn many years ago in Europe, “I’ve got a wonderful - wait until you hear my new Hineni. I heard it in, in Warsaw, wonderful melody I’m going to use for Hineni.” So Idelsohn says, “How does it go?” He says, “Hineni he’ani mima’as.” And fortunately Idelsohn was able to talk him out of it. But if he brought that into the average congregation today, he would get away with it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4414.0,4487.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/118","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Why is that? Why would he get away with it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Because people don’t know. They might recognize the toreador song. But they won’t know whether anything that he sings has any relationship to the tradition or any relationship to the text. Our biggest problem is lack of habit. I won’t say that in previous generations everybody were scholars. Of course not. But they had the habit. They could go in and they expected to hear a certain sound and to participate in that sound. And since we don’t have that habit, we can’t really expect to continue a tradition that relied on that habit.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4487.0,4535.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/119","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: What about composition for the synagogue? As a composer, are composers writing in vain for the synagogue today? They write serious music, or –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Well, I can’t speak for other composers. I think that there’s a certain amount of optimism and a certain amount of courage that it takes to write for the synagogue, because money you’re not going to make. But the problem is, you know, Joseph Rumshinsky came to this country – you know about this? He wrote a letter home? - He said, “America’s a very strange place.” He says, “Here I find cantors singing show tunes in the synagogue and actors chanting prayers on the stage.” Right? Now, things haven’t changed a whole lot. As a matter of fact, they’ve gone further in that direction. So when you write for the synagogue, you’re writing for an audience, not a congregation. If you get people to sing with you, they have to have something in front of them to sing because they don’t know the words either. And composers are faced with this problem. So what do you have? A lot of one-word or two-word refrains, and they’re necessary. Alright? I do it too because it’s necessary.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4535.0,4616.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/120","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e That brings up a very interesting question. Take, take the refrain situation. That has, that’s, as far as I’m concerned, at least as far as I could document, are - is American. Now for example, I’m not even talking about taking an Adon Olam which doesn’t have a refrain and bastardizing that. But I’m talking about something like B’Rosh Hashanah Yikateivun.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4616.0,4643.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/121","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Do we agree that probably started in America? Nobody wrote – you look at Sulzer’s, or Lewandowski’s, there’s no refrain. It’s not a refrain.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: No refrain.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It’s the first line and it’s actually the least – it’s an introductory line.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It’s when it gets into the mi yamut and so forth that it becomes powerful. And yet that’s the refrain. And so what - would you say that that accounts for it? They only do just a few words and they can’t – at least that’s - B’Rosh Hashanah Yikateivun they can memorize? Or –","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4643.0,4676.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/122","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: I think that has something to do with it. By the way, you can’t get away with that in a baal teshuva synagogue. No repetition allowed. You can’t get away with it in a Chabad synagogue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Now wait a minute. That’s in theory, but you’re - what you’re bringing – that’s not – my experience is that’s not really so. In other words, you shouldn’t be able to get away with it, because they’re the ones that complain about repetition in words. That’s if a hazzan repeats words. But in their own, in the refrains, in the baal teshuva synagogue, they without thinking sing ki mitzion.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4676.0,4704.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/123","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Ki mitzion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Ki mitzion tetze Torah, alright? Baruch shenotan shenotan Torah. That’s repetition of words.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: That talk is a habit they can’t break.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: A habit that makes no sense word-wise, right?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: No sense at all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: If you wanted to repeat it, it should be baruch shenotan shenotan Torah, not Torah Torah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: I know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So they’re not thinking, thinking about it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4704.0,4724.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/124","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e No. Thinking is a, is a luxury. But the – you’re right about that. That’s an exception. But most of the time, I mean, I mean, I frequently attend a Chabad shul now. And the rabbi, who is a delightful man, told me the first time I davened fromr the omed there, he said, you know, “We don’t repeat any words here.” But he wanted me to know that going in, alright? And it’s a, it’s a handicap to a hazzan that’s used to davening with repetitions, but I can respect it and I can understand why that’s – every word should be important.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4724.0,4765.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/125","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eLEVIN:\u003c/strong\u003e Although there’s no legal reason. We just did a - abuse is one thing. One of the things that we’re dealing with there is the difference between abuse and extremism of saying you can’t ever, as if it’s a halakha mi-Sinai, which it’s obviously not. We just did a similar discussion in – with Rabbi Israel Schorr. You know who he is?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4765.0,4788.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/126","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Oh, sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Moshe Koussevitsky’s rabbi. He’s about 94.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Is he really?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And he’s still functioning.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: I remember when he used to come to the conventions at Grossinger’s and his divrei Torah were marvelous.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I’ll tell you what he said about two weeks ago. Two weeks ago. Three weeks ago. He said – we asked him about repetition.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4788.0,4811.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/127","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: He said, “There’s nothing illegal about it.” Right? He’s an Orthodox rabbi.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yup.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: He said hazzanas is mechaye hameitim. Brings dead words - otherwise dead words - to life.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4811.0,4830.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/128","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e Ideally, and conceptually, the hazzan is not performing. He’s not singing to the people. He is helping the people sing to God. So if he comes, you know, through the congregation singing Hineni, one reason – why do we do that? One reason we do that is we want to feel those people around us. We have to express their thoughts and their desires and their prayers, and so from that point of view, it is mechayim hameitim because without some kind of a focus, those prayers will fall flat.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4830.0,4869.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/129","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Talking about the Yiddish theater. It started here from Europe - yeah. It didn’t - it was over by the ‘50s, for sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Well, it was on its way out, certainly. Because I used to get calls, you know, to go and sing for the Yiddish organizations. My in-laws were very active in Arbeter Ring, and other Yiddish organizations. And it struck me first of all, who these people really are – were, at that time. Because as you know, when you go to a meeting like that, the music is the last thing on the program. So you got to sit there and listen to a lot of speeches. So the - all the members would get up and talk. And they’d quote. Where would they quote from? They’d quote from Chumash, they’d quote from Gemara, they’d quote from all this Jewish literature. They knew more about what they rejected than most of our people know about what they accept.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4869.0,4921.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/130","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Well, that’s the classic – that’s the real definition of apikorsus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Of course. Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: But an apikoros is one who – but look, that’s also – there’s active – there’s no active Arbeter Ring here, is there?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Not really, no. It merged with the Jewish Culture Club.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: And they have a little office. But they don’t really do much anymore.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4921.0,4943.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/131","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: In New York, it’s different. There is – again, I suppose if they - there’s some cultural things. But there was an Arbeter Ring chorus here, wasn’t there?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Oh, yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Do you remember who conducted it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Let’s see. Sunshine. I think his name was Sunshine. Conducted it for years. And then they had a – I can picture the man, but I can’t remember his name.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4943.0,4975.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/132","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Not Ben Pollack?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: No, Ben Pollack was a well-known conductor around. He used to conduct the Jewish Center choruses. And he also conducted in some shuls. But he had what was called a Halevi chorus that he would teach people in Jewish centers all over the area and then combine them into one concert.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4975.0,4997.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/133","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Really?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: And he called that Halevi?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Halevi Chorus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s interesting, because he was in Chicago for a while and then the, the Halevi chorus in Chicago was Hyman Resnick.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Right. And he used the same – yeah, that’s where I first saw your name, in connection with the, with the Resnick stuff. Well, Ben Pollack was doing the same thing here. And as a matter of fact, he premiered my cantata, Let There Be Light, with his Halevi chorus. And Saul Silverman, olav hashalom, was singing the, the solo part. Ben Pollack was very active in Jewish music here for many years. But he was not the conductor of the Workmen’s Circle. I’m trying to remember who that was.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=4997.0,5035.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/134","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: But it was a regular chorus. I mean –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: It was a big chorus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Big chorus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Those were the days of big choruses.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: What they called the Labor Temple.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That’s right. Did they have other – did they have a Labor Zionists Chorus here?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Probably did. I don’t remember.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Not that you remember specifically. What about the Communists? Did they have a group?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Were they, like – in New York, called the Jewish People’s Philharmonic Chorus.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=5035.0,5058.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/135","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Something similar here. They didn’t use the word philharmonic, but it was –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Jewish People’s Chorus or something like that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Jewish People’s Chorus. Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: They did have it. But then no more?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: So they still have it in New York. And ten people, they don’t want to admit that it’s over, they’re in their nineties and they say, “Oh no.” Do you remember – were there any other communal choruses here?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=5058.0,5077.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/136","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: Pardon?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Any other communal choruses?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Communal choruses. That about summed it up, I think.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Either politically connected or not.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Well, the, of course, the left-wing chorus was politically connected. And the Workmen’s Circle was what they called the rechta, which were the right-wing socialists.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=5077.0,5097.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/137","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Yeah, no, that’s a political agenda. No question about it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: That’s a political agenda. Absolutely.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: The Zionists chorus too, any of those?\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: No. We had - but they used to put on shows at the Wilshire Ebell and at the Shrine Auditorium with a lot of Israeli music and dancing. We had a wonderful choreographer here by the name of Nathan Vizansky; he used to - my wife used to dance with him. They put on wonderful hora type of, of performances. Nathan Vizansky was the man who danced the solo dance of the Dudele in a show called The Romance of a People in Chicago. You should know about this, right? At Soldier Field?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=5097.0,5149.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/138","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Wasn’t that 1933 World’s Fair?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah. World’s Fair, Chicago, 1933. And they did it in Soldier Field too. The Romance of a People. And he stopped the show with that solo dance of the Dudele.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: That was produced by Meyer Weisgall.\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Really?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Mm-hmm. And that was - Romance of a People, that was – and the whole day was devoted to Jewish things, Jewish day at the World’s Fair. Something like that. 1933. And I’ll tell you a little secret: I have located a tape of that day.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=5149.0,5184.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/139","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: An audio tape? They didn’t even have audio tape.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah, they had. It’s very good quality, sure. And there was a chorus there of 5,000 or 3,000 or something like that. Because they also brought together all of the Jewish Communal – yes, in fact, we’re probably going to find a way to clean up a few minutes of it and put it on a companion CD to this archive set.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=5184.0,5212.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/140","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"COHON: That would be interesting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Because of the nature of the thing. The Romance of a People. Sure.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: It’s a very interesting phenomenon that you as a cantor and as a musician in Jewish – involved heavily in Jewish music – have also been involved in writing in other areas – extra-musical areas, Judaically related. Tell me about that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=5212.0,5238.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/141","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e That’s true. That’s true. Well, I wrote some screenplays when I was working in the studios. And I always enjoyed the process of writing and I find it challenging, and I now am writing columns for Heritage, one of the local Jewish papers here. I also had a chance to edit a book called Jewish Experience – Jewish Existence in an Open Society.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=5238.0,5263.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/142","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: That’s this book here.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Right. Which was based on a symposium that the Jewish Centers Association held, and it includes the work of some pretty important people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: I would say so.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Like Elie Wiesel, and they had –\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Trude Weiss-Rosmarin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Trude Weiss-Rosmarin. They had – \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: David Lieber.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Yep.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=5263.0,5283.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/143","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: And Gordis. And Moshe Davis. How did you get involved in this Jewish Existence in Open Society?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Saul Marshall, who was public relations director, I guess, for the Jewish Centers Association at the time, had this project. He had the transcripts of all of these talks, and the – there’s a companion book to that, which was the discussion part. So he had all this, and he asked me if I would edit it for publication. So I edited it, and wrote an introduction, and I think it’s a, it’s a valuable document historically for the time that it was done. And I wish they’d do another one. I think it was a worthwhile activity.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=5283.0,5329.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/144","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"LEVIN: Can there be Jewish existence in an open society?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: Well, the panelists were divided on that subject, as you may imagine. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCOHON: They were, they were considerably divided. They were having, they had problems with it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLEVIN: What do you think?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=5329.0,5351.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968/transcript/25014/annotation/145","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"\u003cstrong\u003eCOHON:\u003c/strong\u003e I think there can. I think there can. It’s not as easy in some ways and it’s easier in other ways than it was under closed societies. But we - despite the fact that we have a tendency to be our own worst enemies at times - there is a, certainly an opportunity… One of the things that came up in that book actually, Max Lerner talked about the United States as the country of access. He says, “Most people think of it as the country of success.” But he says, “To me it’s the country of access. Here, no matter who you are, you have access to what makes the society run.” And, you know, we do have, we have access to a lot of things we never had access to in other societies. I think we have a great opportunity, and it’s our, it’s up to us to use it. It’s up to us to keep our existence going. Nobody is going to do it for us. And the negative influence is that, you know, once you discover that you’re going to be typed as a Jew no matter what you think you are, it’s not enough anymore. We have to have a positive side of it too. I think it’s possible.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/40303/file/111968#t=5351.0,5453.93067"}]}]}]}