My Month in the Holy Blossom Archives

My Month in the Archives

By Eli Sol

This July and August, I had the absolute pleasure of working in the Holy Blossom Archives with the committee of volunteer archivists (Susan Cohen, Sheila Smolkin, Susan Mogil, Howard Roger, Michael Cole, Judy Winberg and Ruth Ellen Greenwood). The idea was first pitched to me in an academic context. For the final paper of my “History of the Jewish People” class this past April at the University of Toronto, I elected to write about the influence of lay leadership on Holy Blossom’s musical journey in the early days. The archivists were kind enough to accommodate my research needs and provided all the materials as well as an invitation to work there over the summer.

I travelled to Israel with Birthright in June and July, and once I returned to Toronto, I was ready to get to work in the archives. The main task was digitally cataloguing the mountain of musical materials left to us following Cantor Maissner’s retirement, which laid the groundwork for the new Cantor Benjamin Z. Maissner and Holy Blossom Temple Music Archive and Library. This new section of our archive library includes both digital and physical copies of posters, event programs, photographs, service plans, commissioned works, tapes, CDs, books, folders, pamphlets, and everything in between. The current plan is to store a selection of the physical materials in a designated cabinet of the Max Enkin Library on the main floor.

I had the privilege of interacting with an impressive scope of manuscripts. The materials mostly came from Cantor Maissner’s own 41-year career, not only as Holy Blossom’s cantor, but also as the head of the LACHAN community chamber choir, and a powerful, internationally recognized Jewish musical voice. Two of my favourite sources are Beny’s original, used, and annotated vocal score of Leonard Bernstein’s “Kaddish Symphony No. 3” and a Kabbalat Shabbat service of Hassidic tunes arranged for mixed choir by Sol Zim —the inside cover of which bears a lovely note to Beny from Sol Zim himself.

Many of the exciting musical documents in Cantor Maissner’s library predated him, revealing a wealth of inherited Jewish music dating as far back as the 1880s. Some highlights include:

• a 1961 revival service made entirely of music composed by the Jewish Renaissance violinist and composer, Salomone Rossi;
• Cantor Maissner’s predecessor, Cantor Sheldon Merel’s personal annotated 1955 Union Hymnal;
• two of Sara Barkin’s personal copies of choral arrangements (she was our soprano soloist in the 1950s-1960s and sister to the celebrated Cantor Jacob Barkin who was at Holy Blossom from 1966 to 1969);
• countless collected songs, prayers, and services by the internationally renowned Jewish liturgical composer Ben Steinberg (Steinberg was music director at Holy Blossom before moving on to Temple Sinai; we have an original piece in honour of his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah in 1987 and a piece he dedicated to Holy Blossom’s Rabbi Gunther Plaut);
• Union Hymnals dating back to 1897;
• a 1946 collection of Yiddish folk songs complete with musical score published in Toronto;
• and a 1935 collection of German Jewish folk music for “everyday and festivals” with no indication of how it survived the war or how it ended up in Holy Blossom’s archive.

I would be remiss not to mention Jill Kamin and Gillian Rosenberg’s separate but related venture to digitally scan the complete corpus of Cantor Maissner’s musical career which will soon be housed in the National Library of Israel. Their project has been instrumental in filling out the digital side of The Cantor Benjamin Z. Maissner and Holy Blossom Temple Music Archive and Library and is more than deserving of praise.

If you are curious about exploring this new branch of the Holy Blossom archives, or about our exciting investigations into Holy Blossom’s extensive history, I encourage you to get in contact with our archivists. If you are just looking to dip your toes in, several artifacts of Holy Blossom history are displayed year-round throughout the Schwartz Reisman Atrium for exactly that purpose.