Israel’s celebrated three octave range tenor, Israeli chazzan (cantor) Naftali Hershtik, has passed away at age 77, his world-renown voice stilled forever.
Hershtik, a resident of Ra’anana, passed away on September 1 of kidney disease, his son Netanel, also a cantor, said in a statement.
The son of Holocaust survivors, Hershtik was born in Salgótarján, Hungary, and emigrated with his family to Israel at the age of three.
Every sitting Israeli prime minister, including Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the Great Synagogue of Jerusalem — where he served for 30 years as Chief Cantor (1982 – 2012) and listened to his glorious interpretation of the prayers.
Hershtik performed throughout the world, including with the London Festival Orchestra, the London Mozart Players, the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, and numerous choirs — among them the celebrated choir of Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue.
The chazzan’s father, Moshe Menachem Hershtik, was the first to teach him the fundamentals of chazzanus, followed by Chazzanim Leib Glantz, Shlomo Ravitz, and Moshe Koussevitzky. He later pursued advanced studies at the Royal College of Music in London, where he also served as the chazzan of the Finchley Synagogue for several years.
Hershtik founded a school dedicated to the cantorial art in 1984 together with Cantors Moshe Stern, Elli Jaffe, and Dr. Tzvi Talmon. Eventually becoming the Tel Aviv Cantorial Institute (TACI), the school became a beacon of chazzanut at which many of today’s leading chazzanim, including Yitzchok Meir Helfgot, Moshe Haschel, Azi Schwartz, and Gideon Zelermyer, were trained.
Baruch Dayan Emet.
