Shalom, everyone.
While my podcast has been on hiatus over the past year plus, due to my work responsibilities, I wanted to return today to pay my honor and respects to my teacher Cantor Israel (“Izzy”) Goldstein, of blessed memory. Cantor Goldstein passed away on Saturday, July 31, 2021, and was a constant in my education at the NYC campus of HUC-JIR Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music between the years of 2002-2006.
The ‘theme song’ of my podcast is an excerpt from Cantor Goldstein’s setting of “And you shall love,” his setting of the V’ahavta text (in both Hebrew and English), and is a favorite of mine. It is lyrical and in its treatment of the text, it pays close homage to the original trope while turning it into a musical delight. When I originally created this podcast and knew I needed an intro and outro melody for each episode, I looked no further than Cantor Goldstein’s setting to know that it was the perfect complement to what I had to share on Tropeful.
The V’ahavta, including Cantor Goldstein’s arrangement, was my topic of conversation on the episode I created for Parashat Va’etchanan in 2017/5777. This is the portion in the early part of the Book of Deuteronomy which includes the Sh’ma and V’ahavta. Listen to it here.
I do hope to find the time to once again return to Tropeful one of these days, and when I do so, I will carry forward Cantor Goldstein’s beautiful melody once again.
Until then, my friends, be tropeful.