A Chestnut, a Grape, and a Pack of Lions: A Shabbos in Płock with a Popular Synagogue Singer in the Early Nineteenth Century

Normally an encounter involving a chestnut, a grape, and even a single lion would bring no benefit to any of the protagonists. The chestnut and grape would most likely disappear and the lion would hardly notice the difference. The 'chestnut' and 'grape' of the title represent two of the most famous cantors of the nineteenth century: a father with the nickname Kashtan ('chestnut') and his son, who acquired the family name Weintraub ('grape').¹

'A pack of lions' refers to a couple of dozen zealous but undisciplined meshorerim (assistant synagogue singers) and a not especially accomplished local cantor. The former cantered out of control with horrendous cacophony and the latter either could not rein them in or did not see the need to do so, at a particular Friday evening service gone awry in the Polish city of Płock about 200 years ago. The cantor named Solomon and known as Kashtan (c.1781–1829) is probably the best documented of all cantors prior to Salomon Sulzer (1804–90). He became famous through his appearances as a touring synagogue singer in communities from Riga to Budapest, starting in the entourage of the 'Lame Cantor' (lohmer khazn) at the age of 9, when his talent was already recognized, and ending only with his premature death forty years later.

Solomon's life and works are known today primarily because of the efforts of his son, Hirsch Weintraub (c.1813–81;² 'Hirsch' means 'deer'): indeed, as we shall see, in the infamous case of the 'lions', it was the lion king who ran away, the chestnut (Solomon) who blossomed, and the deer and grape (Hirsch Weintraub) who tilled the familial soil to produce the prize crop of a succulent chronicle in the form of a biography of his father, which ran in ten serial instalments in the weekly Hebrew newspaper Hamagid between 7 April and 23 June 1875.³ The fact that these articles appeared forty-five years after Solomon's death attests to the magnitude and duration of his fame in eastern Europe.

After his father's death, Hirsch succeeded him as cantor in Dubno (at that time part of the Russian empire and now in Ukraine), before moving on to Königsberg (then in East Prussia, now belonging to Russia and called Kaliningrad). He preserved his father's music manuscripts and even published some of his compositions, mostly for the festivals and High Holidays.⁴ Subsequently Hirsch's successor as cantor in Königsberg, Eduard Birnbaum (1855–1920), took possession of Solomon's manuscripts and also Hirsch's. After Birnbaum died, the library of the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati acquired his immense collection of synagogue music. Known as the Birnbaum Collection, this treasury includes the manuscripts of Solomon and Hirsch as well as countless other sources that Birnbaum had amassed over the course of his lengthy career.⁵ The fortuitous and timely removal of these materials to the United States prevented their destruction in Europe during the Holocaust.⁶

Solomon and Hirsch were enormously popular in their lifetimes, which together covered a century—from the birth of the former around 1781 to the latter's death in 1881. Although they are universally ranked among the most significant cantors in the history of the synagogue, they are remembered today more by name than for their music.⁷

This article, despite its descriptions of liturgical singing, is similarly more concerned with the singer, Cantor Solomon, than with his music. My topic is predominantly historical, biographical, and literary; we shall briefly taste the flavour of the era in which Solomon and Hirsch were active, and as we visit with Solomon between engagements as well as on the job, we shall gain a glimpse of how a famous cantor lived and worked 200 years ago. I shall translate and discuss the scene with the 'lions' from Hirsch's biography of his father. This is not only a memorable episode in Solomon's life, but...