Some called him Reverend Abrahamson. Others called him Cantor. My father called him Chazzan and bristled at the other names: evidently those other names were too cold and distant to identify our Chazzan. However you would call him, Chazzan Abrahamson was the oldest person I knew, at least he seemed that way.
He was small and walked with slow, deliberate steps. His wife would always walk with him to synagogue, even Friday nights when no other women came for services. She was sure-footed and I sensed even then that she was somehow protecting him.
He had old world manners. Delicate and compact in speech and deed and presumably in thought also, he was unfailingly polite. A yekke, such people were called in the old country.
He wore a silken, rising six inches above the head hat and a suit which bemused me even then. He draped his tallit gently over his shoulders.
None of us children had much to do with him. Nor do I remember many adults having much conversation with him beyond respectful salutation.
He would stand on the platform in front of the Ark when the Torah was being taken out. He led the congregation in the Shema, reciting each word forcefully, with a controlled emotion.
A number of years ago, I heard that he came to Nashville from the old country, arriving in the Twenties, I believe. He was looking for work and even with a sharp eye for stones and the steady hand of youth he had a hard time landing a job. Eventually, he would work eleven hours a day, six days a week.
"If you don’t work Shabbat," replied the only person who had offered him a job, "don’t bother coming in Monday." The genteel personality, so appreciated in the South, looked at his potential employer.
“I will die in the streets of hunger before I work on Shabbat.”
It wasn’t until decades later that he became Chazzan, cantor, of my father’s synagogue. Personality, I guess, is only so deep, beneath that is primordial essence. When you’re not hostage to your personality, the mores around you or anything else, then you can be true to your essence.
Now, I stand before the congregation and the Ark, holding the Torah and leading the Shema. I hope that somehow, with something beyond me, I am conveying something more than the tune. Something the Chazzan conveyed without ever articulating it. That nicety should be a proper setting for the stone but never overpower it. That polish should enhance the metal, but never make you doubt the metal. That underneath it all must burn a fire that can never smother. That enveloped in a silken personality must be an iron will that in the face of multiplicity, division, even duplicity, the cry will ring clear, precise and dramatic: Hashem Echad!
Rabbi Shimon Posner is the director of Chabad of Rancho Mirage, California.
