Cantors Go to Hollywood : An organization of singing Jewish clergy is convening in Los Angeles and the public is invited to share in the music and the prayers

Move over, Michael and Madonna.

Make room, Phil and Prince.

For five days, starting today, cantors are coming to Hollywood, and that doesn’t mean another Fairfax deli.

It means clergymen and women from synagogues across the nation descending on the show-biz capital to, among other things, celebrate the close relationship between Hollywood and Jewish music. After all, the first talkie, 1927’s “The Jazz Singer,” chronicled the life of a cantor’s son played by Al Jolson. Cantors lead their synagogues in singing prayers.

“Hollywood has traditionally used cantorial music to frame a dramatic sequence,” said Cantor Nathan Lam of the Stephen S. Wise Temple, the first Los Angeles-based cantor to be selected as president of the Cantors Assembly.

The cantors are here for the assembly’s 44th annual convention, a meeting previously held only in the Catskills or Israel. Bringing the gathering to Los Angeles means more than substituting Beverly Hills for the Borscht Belt. It symbolizes the expansion of Jewish music throughout America.

“Some of the cantors have been very provincial, thinking there is nothing beyond New York City. We’re coming out to get out of the cocoon,” said Cantor Alberto Mizrahi of Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago. “There’s a whole vibrant way of Jewish life outside the East Coast, and we have to recognize that.”

Events have been scheduled at a variety of sites, from Valley Beth Shalom synagogue in Encino to the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, to give guests--about 400 are expected--a generous sampling of Jewish culture here. A tour is also being arranged to visit the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the memorial to the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust.

The entertainment menu is also packed, and the public is invited.

Tonight at 7:45 at Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles, the music of such legendary Jewish songwriters as Burt Bacharach, Sammy Cahn and George and Ira Gershwin will be performed. On Monday night at 7:45 p.m. at Valley Beth Shalom, there will be an evening of cantorial and Yiddish music.

On Tuesday night at the same time at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, the music of Jewish composers Meir Finkelstein, Leib Glantz and others will be performed. And at 7:45 p.m. Wednesday at the Shrine Auditorium, Yiddish, Hasidic and Israeli songs will be sung. A children’s chorus of 450 voices, the Keshen Chaim Dance Troupe and a 120-voice adult chorale will entertain. All the groups are based in Los Angeles. According to Lam, this will be the first concert of Jewish music at the Shrine since 1964.

In addition, a montage of clips from “The Jazz Singer” and other films will be presented Wednesday morning in the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills. Cantor Moshe Koussevitsky’s film about the post-World War II Warsaw Ghetto will also be screened.

Opening the program to the community is an experiment for the Cantors Assembly. Because of the Catskills’ distance from population centers, the cantors didn’t get a chance to perform in front of a lot of people. They would hold seminars and concerts but rarely leave the same dining hall.

This time, it’s different.

“We want to give the Jewish community an opportunity to hear us sing and rejoice in our Judaism,” Lam said. “In the past, they’ve seen us in concerts but never so many of us together.”

After years in the Catskills, Mizrahi said, it was definitely time to change the routine.

“You would sit around, eat a lot, go to the pool and sing,” Mizrahi said. “It was like overkill. You couldn’t move around. In L.A., we’ll be able to go all over the place.”

The move to Los Angeles, suggested by Lam, wasn’t a simple decision. Mizrahi said there were some cantors unwilling to forgo tradition, concerned about the group’s gradual progressiveness. (Women were recently accepted as full-fledged members.) The assembly is composed mainly of cantors from Conservative synagogues, though Lam and others practice at Reform temples.

“The move, to them, represented the new openness,” Mizrahi said. “There has been a passing of the guard.”

In many ways, Hollywood is the perfect place for such an assembly. Cantors are entertainers. Their enthusiasm and energy can often inspire worshipers to pursue a spiritual connection with God. Much of the richness of Judaism is contained in the songs sung during services.

“We can use the best of Hollywood as something to look up to,” Mizrahi said. “Every cantor should have the goal of a good actor.”

Trying to create a beautiful spiritual experience in the service, he said, “it can make a big difference.”

The 44th Cantors Assembly begins today and ends Thursday. Tickets for the events range from $15 to $100. For more information, call (818) 981-4400.