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Voicing
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LIGZON
41
The area's only full-time Orthodox cantor,
David Neumark teaches by inspiration.
Photos by Krista Husa
LYNNE MEREDITH COHN StaffWriter
D
avid Neumark didn't even con-
sider becoming a cantor until
the day he was ordained as an
Orthodox rabbi.
Kind of ironic, as he is now the only
Orthodox cantor in the area, working
full-time for Congregation Shaar
Hashomayim in Windsor.
"We had an open house to celebrate
my smichah," he recalls. Some guests
10/24
1997
14,
brought giftsi-including a record set
called "The Yiddish Dream."
"I didn't know much abotit Jewish
music," says Neumark, now in his 40s,
who was long a "soft rock" fan. But he
listened. And listened. And eventually
found "a lot of inspiration listening" to
the voice of Jan Peerce.
So Neumark began buying recordings
of opera and cantorial music; when he lis-
.
tened to Moishe Koussevitsky, he
thought, "Maybe I ought to give' this a
try.
Neumark; a Chicago native, was hired
at- Anshe Sholom synagogue in. Chicago
as a ba'al koreh, Torah reader; the shul
had no cantor. "I never thought I had any
kind Of voice," so in 1983, he started tak-
ing secular voice lessons. Then it dawned
on him that he should convert the
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