Jossele Rosenblatt

Jossele Rosenblatt (1918)

Josef "Jossele" Rosenblatt (born May 9, 1882 in Belaja Zerkow , Ukraine , then Russian Empire , † June 19, 1933 in Jerusalem ) was a chasan and composer. He is considered "the greatest of the cantors" and was called "King of the Chasanim".

Life

Josef Rosenblatt was born as the tenth child (and first son) of a Jewish family in the Ukrainian shtetl Belaja Zerkow. He learned musical notation from his father, who was in Kiev Khazan. His other relatives included the important Chasanim Jerucham ha-Koton (1798-1891) and Nissan Spiwak (also: Nissi Belzer, 1824-1906). Two of his uncles were also Khazanim. Jossele Rosenblatt sang in his father's choir from an early age and traveled through many synagogues in Austria-Hungary as a child prodigy . At the age of eight he moved with his parents to Sadagura , where he moved in the vicinity of the Hasidic rabbi , whose retinue also included his parents. At 13 he was a trained chasan.

He quickly became a star of synagogue music because he had a beautiful two and a half octave tenor voice and a flexible falsetto , could seemingly sing coloratura effortlessly and sang perfectly from sight due to his theoretical training. At the age of 18, after six years of acquaintance, he married Taubele Kauffman, shortly afterwards he became Chasan in Munkács , which was then Hungarian . He then prevailed against 56 competitors for the post of Chief Cantor in Bratislava , where he stayed for five years and published compositions of synagogue music for the first time. He also recorded his first record there in 1905. His next stop was Hamburg , where he worked for six years. Thanks to his records and participants in the Hamburg Zionist Congress in 1909, his reputation quickly spread to North America.

In 1912 he accepted an invitation from the First Hungarian Congregation Ohab Zedek in New York City , for whom he successfully sang. He soon had his wife and children join him. In addition to the cantor's office in the community, he sang at numerous other events; to a charity event for European Jews at the Hippodrome Theater , it drew over 6,000 listeners in the war year 1917. The success of this concert, which was also featured in The New York Times , spurred the organizers on a charity tour of 30 cities. The Chicago Opera even offered Rosenblatt the role of Eleazar in Halévy's La juive . Despite a tempting contract that would have allowed him to keep his beard and keep the Sabbath , Rosenblatt could not choose to appear on an opera stage because it would have violated the dignity of the cantor. After a concert in front of the New York Public Library , the most famous opera singer in the world at the time, Enrico Caruso, kissed him . Rosenblatt became a star of the New York cultural scene, his congregation paid him a record annual salary of US $ 10,000 to keep the crowd puller, which was also in demand by other congregations, and Rosenblatt was able to support his family, which now has eight children, as well as charitable organizations not only help with benefit concerts, but also with donations.

Rosenblatt recorded many records in the USA, the most successful of which was his interpretation of Psalm 126 / Shir Hama'alot (the melody of which was composed either by Rosenblatt himself or by the cantor Pinchas Minkwoski ). His more than 180 records, mostly recordings of his own compositions, made him known throughout North America. After an investment in a dubious Yiddish newspaper did not go well, he went on a tour of the US vaudeville theaters to pay off his debts. In 1925, however, he even had to declare bankruptcy. While tinkering through the variety theaters, he preserved his dignity as a chasan by only playing on an empty stage without being distracted by dance performances or the like. sang. In 1926 he gave up his position as cantor in the Ohab-Zedek congregation and sang on festive days in Chicago for a huge salary of US $ 15,000.

In 1927 he appeared in a small role under his real name with a Yiddish song in The Jazz Singer , the first sound film in feature film quality at all. He had turned down the offer to play the larger role of the cantor Rabinowitz (the father of the main character), despite the prospect of an exorbitant fee of US $ 100,000, because he did not want to sing the liturgical Kol Nidre in an entertainment film.

He became Chasan again in 1927 when the Anshe Sfarad Congregation in Brooklyn, New York hired him for an annual salary of US $ 12,000. Due to the Great Depression , however, the congregation was no longer able to pay him in 1929, so he moved back to his ancestral congregation in New York for a short time. Because of his debts, however, Rosenblatt remained impoverished until the end of his life, and the Jewish communities in the USA could no longer afford his services, so that he ran into acute financial difficulties.

In 1933, Rosenblatt accepted an offer from the Palestine-American Film Company to travel to Palestine to shoot the semi-documentary film Halom Ami (also known as Dream of My People ) . Rosenblatt should sing thematically appropriate compositions of their own at the biblical sites. In addition to his work for film, he gave concerts and sang in synagogues in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, among others. Rosenblatt wanted to settle in Palestine and planned a concert tour through Europe in order to earn enough money. On June 17, 1933, he sang farewell in the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem. The next day, at the age of only 51, he died of a heart attack that he suffered while filming at the Dead Sea.

At Rosenblatt's funeral on the Mount of Olives , led by Rabbi Kook , over 5,000 people said goodbye to him. Scenes of this were also shown in the film, which was not yet completed when Rosenblatt died. A few days later, around 2,500 people attended a memorial service in New York's Carnegie Hall , at which two hundred Chasanim Rosenblatt sang works.

Rosenblatt's recordings are still being re-released in various compilations on LP and CD.

His son Samuel Rosenblatt (1902–1983), born in Bratislava, lived in the USA from 1912, where he became a rabbi and lecturer in Jewish literature and oriental languages.

literature

• Samuel Rosenblatt: Yossele Rosenblatt. The story of his life as told by his son . Farrar, Straus and Young, New York 1954. (biography)
• Anon .: Jossele Rosenblatt. In: The Israelite . No. 26, June 29, 1933, pp. 10-11. ( sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de PDF; 9.86 MB)
• Velvel Pasternak: The Jewish Music Companion. Tara Publications, 2002, ISBN 1-928918-24-7 , pp. 84-88.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Encyclopaedia Judaica . Volume XVII: Ra-Sam. 2nd Edition. Keter Publishing House, 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865945-9 , p. 441.

Web links

• Sound carrier by Josef Rosenblatt in the catalog of the German National Library
• Jossele Rosenblatt: Selected recitatives (sheet music)
• David Olivestone: Standing Room Only. The Remarkable Career of Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt. ( cantorsworld.com ( Memento of December 17, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) accessed on May 17, 2018)