Hazzan Goodman (Bill) Aronson

1944 - 1959
5583 Jeanne Mance

Audio: Hazzan Goodman (Bill) Aronson sings "Va’ani T’filati" (And I Am My Prayer), a declaration made by King David in Psalms, recited before reading the Torah. Composed by Y. Subar.

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Hazzan Goodman Aronson was born in Montreal on March 27, 1915. After studying with Cantor Gorochofsky, he served in several Montreal synagogues. Aronson’s long resume included synagogues that spanned a diverse spectrum of Jewish denominations and liturgies, which would have required any cantor to be tremendously open to learning new styles of services. His openness extended to experimentation with an array of popular musical styles outside the hazzanut tradition, as heard in the above track.

In 1939, he held his first position at the Pinsker Shul, which was an Orthodox landsmanshaft congregation for Jews from the region of Pinsk, Belarus. He was then cantor at the Shevet Achim, an Orthodox synagogue, for two years in the 1940s. Following that, he served for fifteen years at the Nusach Ha’ari, a synagogue connected to the Lubavitch Hasidic movement, which used a unique Kabbalah-inspired liturgy more similar to Sephardic versions of the service. For eight years in the 1960s, Aronson was cantor at the Shearith Israel Synagogue, which followed a Spanish and Portuguese-influenced liturgical style. He completed his career in the 1970s at Temple Beth Sholom, a Reform synagogue, which featured yet another and (this time) less traditional style of service.

Aronson also participated in the Council of Hazzanim of Greater Montreal as its secretary and performed with the popular theatre group, the YMHA Minstrels. In 1978, he ran for public office in the municipal riding of Snowdon, the first Jewish clergyman in Montreal to do so. He passed away in 1991.

Compiled by Stephanie Tara Schwartz, Zev Moses and Arie Subar

Links

Liens

Cantors of Greater Montreal
Radio Shalom - Cantor's Corner with Cantor Sid Dworkin
Traces of the Past

Sources

40 Years of Hazzanut in Montreal 1957-1997. Council of Hazzanim of Greater Montreal. Israel Music, 1997. CD.

Paperman and Sons, phone communication, October 1, 2012.

Subar, Cantor Arie Leib, ed. Hazzanut in Montreal. Montreal: Council of Hazzanim of Greater Montreal, 1971.

Tauben, Sara Ferman. “Aspirations and Adaptations: Immigrant Synagogues of Montreal, 1880s-1945.” Masters Thesis. Concordia University, 2004.

Tauben, Sara Ferman. Traces of the Past: Montreal’s Early Synagogues. Montréal: Véhicule Press, 2011.

*Images courtesy of Cantor Arie Subar and Canadian Jewish Congress Charities Committee National Archives.

Media

Media