Moshe Nathanson

http://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/25/obituaries/moshe-nathanson.html

MOSHE NATHANSON

Published: February 25, 1981

Moshe Nathanson, cantor emeritus of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism at 15 West 86th Street in Manhattan, died yesterday at his Manhattan home at the age of 82.

Cantor Nathanson, also a composer of liturgical music, had been with the society for 48 years and retired in 1970. Born in Jerusalem, he came to the United States in 1922 and studied law at McGill University. He left to study music at the Juilliard School in Manhattan, graduating in 1926.

He is survived by two daughters, Deena Starr of Manhattan, and Naomi Brettler of Scarsdale, N.Y.,; a son, Yaron of Dumont, N.J., eight grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.

http://jewish-music.huji.ac.il/content/moshe-nathanson

MOSHE NATHANSON

Cantor & composer

1899-1981

Moshe Nathanson, son of Rabbi Nahum Nathanson, was born in Jerusalem in 1899. Until age 10, Nathanson attended a traditional heder (all-boys religious school) in the old city of Jerusalem. Moshe left the heder to attend Bet Sefer Lemel, the elementary division of the Ezra School in Jerusalem, where Abraham Z. Idelsohn was the director of the choir. Sheldon Feinberg, in his book “A Song Without Words” claims that Idelsohn assigned his students to compose words to the niggun that Hava Nagila is based off of. Feinberg asserts that Moshe Nathanson was in fact responsible for the lyrics that have become so popular today.

In 1922, Nathanson immigrated to Canada, where he studied Law and Music at McGill University. Mid-degree, Nathanson decided to transfer to the Institute of Musical Art in New York (now the Julliard School of Music). In 1924, he became the cantor for the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (Mordecai Kaplan's Synagogue in New York, and the founding community of the Reconstructionist movement in the United States), a post he held for over forty-six years. One of Nathanson’s most important contributions to the field of Jewish music is his compilation of liturgical melodies, Zamru Lo (4 vols.), which is still widely used in the USA today.

Aside from his work at the SAJ, Nathanson was involved in a number of projects to promote Jewish and Palestinian folk music. For example, Nathanson was the one of the main contributors to the “Voice of Jerusalem,” a weekly WMCA radio program to promote Hebrew culture and song. The first broadcast was released a month before Passover 1931, with support from sponsor Horowitz-Margarten Matzoh company. Many of the songs aired on the program were performed by a choir directed by Meyer Machtenberg. “Voice of Jerusalem” aired for ten years in all. Nathanson also became involved in a special project sponsored by the Bureau of Jewish Education to teach 'Shirei Eretz Israel' (Israeli folk songs) to Jewish Day Schools and after-school teachers, so that they could impart the tradition to their students. Nathanson’s collaboration with Dr. Judah Lipson lead to his involvement with the Bureau’s summer camp, Achvah, where he served as the musical director for many years.

Nathanson passed away in February of 1981, survived by his three children: Deena Starr, Naomi Brettler, and Yaron Nathanson.

http://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/legends-of-jewish-music-remembe...

Nathanson followed Sam Goldfarb at the Bureau of Jewish Education. Raised Orthodox in Jerusalem, he studied choral music with the musicologist Abraham Z. Idelsohn. One day, Idelsohn came across a Sadiger chasidic melody and gave his students the assignment of finding suitable lyrics. Nathanson, 12 years old, came up with the “nagila” verse from Psalm 118, and so was born Hava Nagila (though Idelsohn claimed credit for the final shape of the lyrics).

Moving to New York, Nathanson became the cantor at the Reconstructionist’s Society for the Advancement of Judaism, and worked as the music counselor at Camp Achvah, the first Hebrew-speaking sleep-away camp. One day, after lunch, the story goes, one bunk started singing the Bentching’s Oseh Shalom verses to the lively Woodcutter’s Song from the Hansel and Greta operetta. In that spirit, Nathanson tried writing a lively camper-friendly melody for the first paragraph of Bentching. Campers took to it. It was published in 1939, but Cantor Zim said Nathanson’s melody “was already familiar” from camp, placing the date of Nathanson’s composition in the summer of 1938.

When Camp Achvah closed, its cultural baton — and its Bentching — was passed to the Modern Orthodox Camp Massad, which in 1941 became the second Hebrew camp. In 1947, the Conservative movement started Camp Ramah, the third Hebrew camp, with many staffers coming from Massad. The Bentching came, too.

That it was sung with an increasing number of camp jingles and ditties, led even Rabbi Lookstein, who took the text very seriously, to have fun with it, singing the verse “U’vineh Yerushalayim” to the tune of “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow,” when he might lead Bentching at bar mitzvahs or weddings. “You could do that,” he said, the lightness of spirit was already established in Nathanson’s first verse. Nathanson’s melody was “just a ditty,” said Rabbi Lookstein. “It takes your mind off what you are saying, the juxtaposition of words and melody is just crazy. If you want to understand the meaning [of Bentching], you have to recite it, not sing it. Nathanson’s song was a great way to memorize the Birkat HaMazon, but in the process we lost the grandeur.”

Nathanson, a Reconstructionist, was also a teacher at Orthodox schools such as the Yeshivah of Flatbush and the Crown Heights Yeshiva. By the 1950s, said Rabbi Eliach, “They were singing it in all the yeshivas,” complete with summertime shtick. The Oysvorf, a charedi blog, recently mused, “how amazing it [is], that not one Jewish singer… has come up with a new niggin [spiritual melody] to benching… . Those of us who had some camping experience remember that we banged the tables and created the first ever stomps … . The girls come home with all sorts of hand gestures … .”