Rav Avrohom Lopes Cardozo was appointed Chazzan of Congregation She’eiris Yisrael, the historic Spanish and Portuguese shul in New York City, in 1946. The congregation had been founded in 1654 in Lower Manhattan by the first Jewish settlers in North America. Rav Cardozo was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 1914, the great-grandson of the Chief Rav of the Sephardic community in Amsterdam, and attended Yeshiva Etz Chaim in that Dutch city. His was a rabbinical family that traced its origins to the Iberian Peninsula in the fifteenth century, when the Jews were expelled. In 1939, he was appointed by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands to be the Rav of the Sephardi community in Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana, now Surinam, and in 1951 he married Irma Robles of Surinam. Soon after he left Amsterdam, the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, killing tens of thousands of Jews, including Rav Cardozo's parents and siblings. Rav Cardozo published several books of liturgical music, including Music for the Sephardim and Sephardic Songs of Praise and maintained the position of Chazzan at Congregation She’eris Yisrael for forty years, continuing there until 1986. On June 7, 2000, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands presented him with the decoration of Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau, for his work in preserving Dutch Jewish culture. At the age of ninety-one, on February 21, 2006, Rav Cardozo passed away in Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, New York, after a sudden heart attack.
