Cover Story

Cantor Harold Orbach performs
internationally, but his roots at
Temple Israel go back 40 years.

SHELLI LIEBMAN DORFMAN
Staff Writer

E

t4X

10/12

2001

30

is voice can be heard on more than a dozen
albums and compact discs, his concerts have
taken him from New York to Japan, and he
has been lauded in the New York Times and
the Metropolitan Opera News.
But the professional role closest to Cantor Harold
Orbach's heart is the one that keeps him in the synagogue.
An Oct. 7 celebration at Temple Israel honored his 40
years at the West Bloomfield synagogue and brought a
reflection of what led him into the sanctuary and to the
cantorate 50 years ago.
As a child, his family escaped Nazi Germany, arriving
in America with memories of Kristallnacht and of
watching the townsmen storm the local synagogue to
save the Torah scrolls.
The young Harold and brother Gerald escaped
Dusseldorf, Germany, to England via the "kinder" trans-
ports. His late father, Eugene Orbach, was imprisoned for
six weeks in Dachau and he and wife Herta were reunited
with their children in England prior to coming to America.
"One of the first places of welcome was Temple Beth
Emeth of Flatbush, where Walter Davidson was the can-
tor," Cantor Orbach says of his New York City residence.
"I felt so at home there every Saturday morning. I would
dress up in a suit and tie, and take a trolley to services
where all of the regular worshipers made a big fuss about
the only child who came regularly each week."

Becoming A Cantor

With no cantorial colleges in the United States at that
time, 15-year-old Harold found himself the cantorial
soloist in a Teaneck, N.J., synagogue.
"I soon learned the warmth of relationship and commu-
nity that a congregation offers its clergy," he says.
By the time he was 18, he had attended the Juilliard
school in New York City, where he won the Katherine
Long Scholarship presented by the Metropolitan Opera,
and had begun a classical concert career of singing and
touring throughout the country.
"I discovered I needed community, I needed a purpose
and I needed a challenge," he says.
That's when he entered Hebrew Union College of
Sacred Music in New York City, graduating as a cantor in
1952.
While a student there, he held a pulpit at Temple Israel

•

Evelyn Orbach
is about to
congratulate
her husband
at Sunday's.
celebration.