Cantors to Pay Tribute to Mentor

Six cantors who got their musical start at a Valley Village temple will return there Sunday evening to pay tribute in song to the man who inspired them to join the Jewish clergy.

Temple Adat Ari El has turned out nine professional cantors due in large part to the late Cantor Allan Michelson, a master teacher who was friend, mentor and disciplinarian to hundreds who sang in the children’s choir.

“It’s quite unusual. One student or two students in a generation might come out of a synagogue [and become rabbis or cantors], but to have nine -- it’s extraordinary,” said Ron Wolfson, a vice president at the University of Judaism in Bel-Air.

In addition to developing many lay cantors, Michelson is credited with creating a singing, participatory worship environment during more than three decades at the 900-family Conservative congregation.

“He produced an inordinate number of people that became Jewish professionals. He did it through his love of music and prayer,” said Nathan Lam, Adat Ari El’s associate cantor from 1969 to 1973 and now cantor at Stephen S. Wise Temple in Bel-Air. “It’s an incredible legacy.”

Lam will be among those performing in Sunday’s concert that will include not only Jewish music but Broadway tunes.

Other cantors singing are Mindy J. Harris of Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills, Joseph D. Gole of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, Daniel Friedman of Temple Beth Sholom in Las Vegas, Jaime Shpall of Congregation Beth Israel in Austin, Texas, and Robert Scherr of Temple Israel in Natick, Mass.

Former students say Michelson, who died in 1991, was steeped in ancient Jewish tradition in which cantors conveyed the liturgy by singing or chanting prayers and songs.

Shpall isn’t alone when she says that without Michelson’s tutelage, she wouldn’t have become a cantor.

“When we sang, he would stand back and beam with pride. He would let us shine. We never got the feeling that he was trying to grab the limelight,” said Shpall, 33, who grew up in Sherman Oaks and joined the children’s choir in kindergarten. “At my synagogue, I use so many of the melodies I learned at Adat Ari El.”

A native of Latvia, Michelson loved children, said Ira S. Bigeleisen, the temple’s cantor since 1993. “He spent a lot of time with the kids, sometimes even taking them to the beach. There were stories in the ‘50s and ‘60s, before seat belts were required, about him driving around with 10 kids hanging out the windows. He loved them,” said Bigeleisen.

Harris said she’s excited about returning to her childhood synagogue, a place of many happy memories. “I have so many sentimental feelings about that shul. I was at that temple more than anywhere else when I was a kid,” she said.

A Time for Singing: The Legacy of Cantor Allan Michelson begins at 7 p.m. Sunday at Adat Ari El, 12020 Burbank Blvd., Valley Village.