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chapteR t en Cantors for Hire In most synagogues, an individual from the congregation or the rabbi led prayer services on weekdays and Sabbaths; only a few of the large congregations employed a cantor year-round. Certain synagogues had choirs, which usually performed only on holidays. Thus, for example, the authorities learned in 1958 that the choir members of the Kiev synagogue were receiving a monthly wage of 250 rubles, sparking worry as to whether these were employees of the congregation or ordinary worshipers. Permanent cantors who drew a wage were considered “ritual service providers” and were required to be registered, as were the rabbis.1 Cantors brought in only for the holidays, and who made a living most of the year by other means, were not. Leib Spector worked as a permanent cantor in the Vinnitsa synagogue until the congregation’s dispersal in 1949. The closure of the synagogue forced Spector to leave town for Simferopol', where he worked as a cantor and shochet (ritual slaughterer). During the thaw he returned to the Vinnitsa district, settling in the town of Gaisin, where he served as a cantor in one of the minyans and also continued to work as a shochet. Given his commitments, we can understand his rejection of the offer to lead High Holiday services in 1958 as a cantor for the Bershad' synagogue.2 An especially popular cantor was Paltiel Grinberg (b. 1918), who had worked as a musician in Chernovtsy’s doctors’ club and until mid-1948 was also a regular cantor in the city’s synagogue on Barbius Street. In 1948 he left that synagogue and became the cantor of the Wilson Street synagogue: a short while later, however, the administration replaced Grinberg with Mendel Malkin as cantor, sparking a dispute within the congregation. In response, Grinberg’s supporters threatened—according to complainants’ testimony—to use physical force against the congregation’s administration. The SRA representative supported the hire of Malkin and stated that “[Malkin] is registered . . . and he has permission to conduct religious services . . . while Grinberg isn’t registered and is nothing but a fraud.” Despite not being registered, Grinberg continued to work as a cantor and occasionally filled this function at the Odessa synagogue, too, as well as later in Zhitomir, where he was the synagogue’s cantor from 1954 to 1957. In the late 1950s, Grinberg again found himself at the center of a dispute in which one faction, led by Rabbi Yosef Diment, wanted to continue employing Grinberg while another, led by congregation head S. P. Orach, 134 Between Private and Public Spheres sought to have him replaced by C. Y. Kleiner, then the permanent cantor of the Kiev synagogue. Rumors of Kleiner’s pending departure from Kiev’s synagogue seem to have inspired opposition there, and information was passed to the district SRA representative stating that Kleiner was set to receive large sums of money in Odessa as well as revealing that he plied his services in minyans. Using this information, the Kiev district SRA representative turned to his Odessa counterpart and sought to block Kleiner’s employment application there. However, the security services in Odessa had an interest in advancing Orach, so they made sure Kleiner was given a residency permit (propiska) in Odessa and signed to a year’s contract at 20,000 rubles. The tension between the two congregations, Kiev and Odessa, played into the authorities’ desires to reduce religious activity as much as possible and to select people in the congregations who could be easily manipulated. Once Kleiner left Kiev, the congregation considered hiring Grinberg as its permanent cantor, and he was invited to lead the services for Passover 1959. But the cantor and the Kiev congregation didn’t reach an agreement, and Grinberg ended up signing on with the Leningrad congregation for an annual sum of 65,000 rubles as well as 25,000 rubles for travel expenses.3 In 1957, Yaakov Yankelevich (b. 1894) moved to Tashkent to serve as the synagogue’s cantor for an annual salary of 18,000 rubles.4 Because permanent cantors were considered ritual service providers, as the antireligion struggle intensified the authorities tried to pressure them to abandon their occupation. One approach used by the regime, similar to that used against the rabbis, was the tax grinder. Thus, for example, finance officials in Kiev filed suit against the city synagogue’s cantors, S. S. Glazman and C. Y. Kleiner, charging that in 1960–1962 they had supplemented their...

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