A Cantor's Tale

Erik Greenberg Anjou's documentary about Brooklyn-born and -raised cantor Jack Mendelson is both a biographical portrait and an exploration of the tradition of Jewish liturgical music in America. Mendelsohn is a filmmaker's dream, the embodiment of the term "larger than life." A big man with a deep, resonant voice and an outgoing and approachable manner, Mendelsohn grew up in Borough Park, Brooklyn, during the 1940s and '50s, when it was a largely Jewish neighborhood and when cantors — whose rich, melodious voices preserved a sacred musical tradition that led worshippers in prayer and connected immigrant Jewish communities to their European roots — were as ...