Adat Ari El’s Well-Known Cantor

It is a gross omission that the article (on the anniversary of Adat Ari El) fails to mention the pivotal role that the cantorate has played at this stalwart synagogue.

For more than 30 years Cantor Allan Michelson occupied the cantorial pulpit with distinction, following the tenures of Cantors Paul Discount, Max Gardiner and Julie Blackman. Michelson created a singing, participatory worship environment, trained children to become B’nai Mitzvah, inspired and instructed lay and professional cantors, attended to the life cycle needs of more than a generation of Adat Ari El families, concertized and recorded extensively and established a national reputation for himself and the congregation.

It would have been accurate for writer Ira Rifkin to report that the religious identity of Adat Ari El was shaped by both Rabbis Wise and Rothblum and by Cantor Allan Michelson.

That he failed to do so is both unfortunate and a denial of the life’s work of a devoted and talented human being.

DAVID SILVERSTEIN

Cantor, Adat Ari El Synagogue