Family, clergy, extol Cantor Merel on his 95th birthday

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO – Family members and three fellow clergy saluted Cantor Emeritus Shelly Foster Merel of Congregation Beth Israel  on his 95^th birthday  during a dinner gathering Saturday night, May 18, at the Bay Club Hotel and Marina on Shelter Island.  There were so many speakers that the presentations went on right through dinner, for which guests had the options of chicken, salmon, or vegetarian selections.

If you could think of the succession of speakers who came to the microphone as, in themselves,  providing an oratorical meal, then the hors d’ouevres were speeches by Merel’s two sons, Joshua and Daniel; granddaughter Emily; Rabbis Jonathan Stein and Lenore Bohm, and Rabbi/ Cantor Arlene Bernstein, all of whom at one time or another had served at Congregation Beth Israel, where Merel had been the long time cantor.

The speech by Steve Deutsch, whose late sister Marcie was Merel’s long-time wife, was the entrée, and Merel’s commentary prior to blowing out the candles on a birthday cake was the dessert.

First, it was time for the cantor’s direct descendants to reminisce.

Merel’s oldest son, Joshua, who served as the emcee, disclosed that longevity runs in the family: the cantor’s uncle, Joe, lived to 103 1/2; and his older brother, Maynard, died recently at 99.  Maynard and the cantor had a bet going about who could beat their Uncle Joe’s record.  The cantor still is going strong. “The watchwords, the goals, and the morals  that all of their children and grandchildren learned came from my parents,” Joshua Merel said.

The cantor’s younger son, Daniel, recalled that his father used to “vocalize” before services (Mi, Mi, Mi) and sometimes would march into the family living room, asking, ‘What are you watching?,’ change the channel, and then leave the room.  Daniel didn’t explain exactly why his father did that, but perhaps  stretching one’s vocal chords requires a certain kind of background noise.  Another of Merel’s lovable eccentricities is that when you take somewhere in a car, he continues to give directions, “even though the GPS is on,” Daniel related.  “He will say ‘turn left, turn left,’ but the GPS says turn right!”

The cantor’s daughter, Judith, couldn’t be in attendance but wrote a note read by her niece Emily, who is the daughter of Joshua: Judith wrote, “I hold close memories of growing up and how much fun we had.  Summer vacations, Toronto winter fun, pushing Josh’s car up hill on ice, but most importantly a lot of laughter, a lot of music.”

Speaking in her own right, Emily, who is a student at UCLA Law School, described Merel as “one of the most open-minded people I have ever met.  As some of you know I am planning to become a civil rights attorney and I often challenge my family with my perspectives. I can always count on him to hear me out.  He listens to me in a way where he is genuinely listening to understand where I am coming from and he is more willing to change his perspective than most people my age…”

She added that Merel inspires his family and friends to a higher standard: “Being old is not an excuse for being closed minded, or for not being curious.  It’s not an excuse for not being present, or being just as interested in what’s going on today and tomorrow as what went on yesterday.”

Next came the clergy.

Merel had served as the cantor at Congregation Beth Israel from 1979 to 1991, so he already was retired when Rabbi Jonathan Stein served as Beth Israel’s senior rabbi from 1994 to 2001.  From San Diego, Stein moved onto Congregation Shaaray Tefila in New York and the presidency of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.  However, when he retired, he came back to the warmth of San Diego with his wife Susan.  He now attends Beth Israel as a congregant.

“Every time our paths would cross there was a connection of friendship and growing affection,” said Stein.  “Shelly is many things: kind, warm, engaging, always with a smile, a mensch, a choir singer, and quite a sculptor.”  Merel, he added, is far more than a singer, he is a shaliach tzibur – the one who sends our prayers to God.

During Cantor Merel’s tenure at Beth Israel, Rabbi Lenore Bohm had served there as an assistant rabbi from 1982 to 1985.  She subsequently was hired by Temple Solel as San Diego County’s first female senior rabbi.  Retiring from that full-time pulpit in 1991, Bohm subsequently served as a guest rabbi for congregations in Australia, New Zealand, and China, as well as in such states as Alaska and Utah.  She also served in advisory or part-time capacities for a variety of Jewish organizations, among them, Chesed Home, Jewish Family Service, Waters of Eden, and Seacrest Village – the latter being the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Encinitas where Cantor Merel today resides in an independent living apartment.

Rabbi Bohm recalled the day that she came to Beth Israel to be interviewed for the assistant rabbi job.  “I was so incredibly young, and he was so incredibly mature and he looked at me with tremendous compassion which I really needed at that moment,” she said. “That is how he engaged with me and that is how I have seen him engage with countless others – with tremendous compassion, with rachmonis, with tremendous awareness of what a struggle it is to be a human being, even for those of us who have been so gifted to have the very good lives that we do.”

Bohm added, “I learned a lot about being a listening presence from my time with Shelly and Marcie.  I’m so appreciative of having learned that.”  She cited a well-known statement by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, that “we don’t need more textbooks in Jewish education; we need more text people.”  She said that Cantor Merel “is an example of a text person.  Just by being in his presence, we can learn what it means to be sensitive, to be caring, to be steeped in and profoundly appreciative of Jewish learning and tradition.  What better teacher could there be? What finer role model?”

Rabbi Cantor Arlene Bernstein joined Beth Israel in 1997 as a cantor, a position in which she continues, and in 2011 completed courses to be ordained a rabbi to deepen her Jewish knowledge.  She recalled that she had heard about Cantor Merel long before she met him, saying he was a legend.  He can be well described as a “cantor’s cantor, a cantor’s teacher, a rabbi’s teacher, and the privilege has been mine to have you as my mentor.”

When Steve Deutsch came to the microphone to talk about the 67 years that he and Merel have known each other, he led the assemblage in singing Hinei Matov , a song about it being good when brothers sit together.  It was apropos, given that Merel and Deutsch are brothers-in-law.  He noted that Merel’s family had lived in the Bronx, their home atop a steep hill.  The Deutsch family lived nearby, and both families attended an Orthodox shul where Deutsch’s uncle served as the rabbi.  Merel met Marcie at a wedding at which she was helping her parents, who were kosher caterers.  When they married, he was 28 and she was 19.

“At the Merel table, you didn’t take a number –but you had to wait your turn to tell a joke,” Deutsch recollected.  “And everyone was eager to tell a joke.  That experience prepared Shelly to be the master of ceremony at the Shawonga Lodge.  The summer he was employed at the lodge a group, including Imogene Coca, were collaborating on what was to become Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar.”

When Deutsch was still a boy, then living in Brooklyn, Merel took him to visit the Hayden Planetarium in Manhattan.  “I looked up and was amazed at the night sky, and turned sideways to Shelly,” Deutsch recalled.  “He was asleep.”

After the Merels moved to South Bend for his first cantorial position (Oakland, Toronto, and San Diego would follow), Deutsch visited his sister and brother-in-law.  “You could find Shelly and me in the attic of his rented apartment.  I was feeding him lines in an opera.  I would read, he would sing.  Shelly was studying voice and considering a career in opera.  Ultimately he discounted that choice, and we all have benefited from his decision.”

On another visit, this time to Oakland, “Shelly taught me two very important skills.  He taught me how to iron my clothes and to drive a 1954 Chevy with a three speed on the column.  Two very important life lessons.”

When Cantor Merel came to the podium, he proved he still can belt out a tuneful prayer, singing the Shehechiyanu in thanks to God for allowing him to reach this moment.

“My voice has been the core and driving force in my life and career,” he said. “It took many years to cultivate and achieve ease of production and proper use of my body for support.  I am grateful to my teachers and coaches in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Their guidance and my years of performing has enabled me to still sing to this day…”

He said there were three levels to his career.  “The first and basic level was singing liturgical music in the synagogue.  The second was to introduce innovative programs of Jewish music from various ethnic Jewish communities.”

In that regard, “I pushed the envelope and produced one-act pulpit operas.  The first was with a cast of four about the fictional Jewish city called Chelm whose people are naïve and funny,” Merel recalled. “Following its premiere, we were invited to perform it in the Oakland Auditorium on the same program as the rising star pianist Daniel Barenboim. …”

“On a more serious side, I produced a one act pulpit-opera called God and Abraham, just before Abraham was about to sacrifice his son.  I sang the tenor role of Abraham and I invited my colleague, Cantor Ray Edgar from Buffalo to sing the baritone role of God.  The first performance was at Holy Blossom Temple [in Toronto] and we later repeated it at Ray’s temple in Buffalo.  After I received a grant from the Ontario Music Council, I commissioned a local composer to write music with words from the biblical Shir Ha Shirim, Song of Songs, arranged for a quartet of sopranos and tenor with instrumental quintet.

“With another grant I commissioned the same composer to write music to be choreographed by a dance group portraying the Jewish legendary story of The Dybbuk, a play by S. Ansky originally performed in Yiddish.  It is based on the mystical concept from Hasidic folklore of the dybbuk, a disembodied human spirit that because of someone’s sins, wanders restlessly until it invades the body of a living person.”

The third level of his career, he said, was bringing music lectures and recitals to colleges, universities, churches and social organizations.  “These programs were not beyond my pulpit but were extensions of my pulpit,” he said.  “My first venture was at Notre Dame in South Bend,” in response to which the Catholic university’s dean wrote to thank him for “identity through music of a world we know too little about at Notre Dame University.”

Similarly, following a concert at the Shakespeare Music Festival in Canada, a newspaper in Ontario wrote: “Cantor Merel opened worlds unknown to the majority of non-Jews.”

Merel said he continued such outreach in San Diego, performing Ernest Bloch’s Sacred Service at the East County Performing Arts Center.  Prior to that performance, “I invited a guest church choir to join our choir on Friday evening, and we repeated the program at their church on Sunday morning.”

He said he reached the pinnacle of his interfaith career with “two unique interfaith concerts in 1990 and 1991 at Symphony Hall.

“I invited guest choirs from Black, Protestant, Catholic, and Unitarian Churches,” he said. “At the finale, 200 singers from combined choirs assembled on risers behind the orchestra to sing Hinei Ma Tov, and closed with “God Bless America.” It was a thrilling moment.”

There were many other such thrills throughout his 40 years as an active cantor, he said.

His late wife Marcie “was always at my side, not only as my accompanist in early years, but my partner, lover, mother of our three children, grandmother, my best critic, listener and editor.  She traveled with me from city to city, like the heroine in the Book of Ruth.  She left careers behind in each city and re-invented new ones.”

It remains for me, as the editor of San Diego Jewish World, to add that Cantor Merel remains active.  He is a columnist for this online publication, covering both musical productions and stage dramas, along with news of  occasional happenings in his new community of Encinitas, where Seacrest Village is located.  Cantor Merel’s performances of Jewish melodies can be easily accessed on our archive site by clicking here.  Everyone at San Diego Jewish World who has worked with him is proud to be able to call him a colleague.

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com