Being involved in the arts is said to allow adults to remain child-like in certain ways — playful, creative, exploratory, experimental, humorous.
Cantor Norton Siegel — who served Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue from 1959 to 1993 and who died March 15 in Delray Beach, Fla., at the age of 75 — was that kind of person. He was a big man with a big bass baritone voice, who always seemed to exude playfulness.
One could see this in his performances. For example, he usually would end his set with a charming and playful “Gut Yontif” song, whose lyrics were a long set of Hasidic-sounding “Ay-ay-ays” with a “gut yontif” at the end — and he often would lead the audience in singing along.
He also had a ready sense of humor, according to everyone who knew him. “He always had stories to tell and a joke to tell,” said his daughter Sandi Gardenier of Milwaukee. “That’s a big part of who he was.”
This is probably among the reasons that the children in Beth El’s religious school classes “adored him,” said his daughter. Moreover, “He was cool…. For many years, he drove convertibles…. He dressed sharp and was a total pushover with the kids as a teacher…. He was very easy-going.”
What the audience may not have realized is that while “Gut Yontif” sounds like, and uses motifs from, Yiddish/Hasidic folk song, Siegel actually composed it himself.
In fact, according to Lorraine Cohen — long-time Milwaukee-area Jewish musician and accompanist and former president of the Wisconsin Jewish Music Council — Siegel “composed many of the melodies that continue to be sung at Beth El.”
Yet “he was very modest about [his composing],” Cohen added. She had been a member of Beth El’s adult choir from the time he joined the staff, but she didn’t know that he had composed some of the melodies until she started accompanying him, she said.
And that was just one aspect of his creativity. Siegel was also a talented artist who also “did programs and invitations for the Jewish Music Council and for his synagogue,” said Cohen.
For all this, however, Siegel was completely serious about his dedication to Beth El. “If you really love your synagogue,” he told me for one of the first articles I wrote about him (1984), “you get yourself involved in other activities [besides cantorial duties]. There are all kinds of little things that you want to make sure get done.”
And according to his daughter, “He was always helping,” doing everything from shlepping music and choir books to helping move the synagogue into its Mequon building in 1984, “whatever needed to be done.”
This trait apparently helped make for an exceptionally good rabbi-cantor relationship, according to Beth El’s spiritual leader emeritus, Rabbi Louis J. Swichkow, who served the synagogue from 1937 to 1985.
“No combination of cantor and rabbi that I know of had a more harmonious relationship,” Swichkow said in a telephone interview from Florida. “He was always anxious to cooperate not only with me, but anything the synagogue wanted or needed in music, he was always there.”
Siegel, the son and grandson of rabbis and cantors, was born in Chicago and grew up, as he put it, “steeped” in synagogue music as a young choir member and an intermittent yeshiva student. He did not initially want to become a cantor, however; and after service in the U.S. Air Force he took a variety of odd jobs in the Chicago area.
In 1952, he was invited to sing at a Hadassah function and made such a good impression that he soon was offered a cantorial position in a Chicago synagogue. While there, he studied at the Spertus College of Jewish Studies, the Hebrew Theological College and Roosevelt College.
He continued private voice lessons while serving his second congregation in Edmonton, Canada, beginning in 1956. He returned to Chicago in 1959 and there heard about an opening at Milwaukee’s Beth El.
In addition to his daughter Sandi (Robert) Gardenier, he is survived by his wife, Faye Siegel (nee Kesselman); daughter Sharon (Daniel) Langer of Milwaukee; sons Martin (Diane) Siegel of Chicago and Bruce Siegel of Milwaukee; sister Anita (Martin) Pawlow of Buffalo Grove, Ill.; brother Mordy (Marilyn) Siegel of Delray Beach; and three grandchildren.
The funeral took place March 18 at Beth El, with Rabbis Gideon Goldenholz and Nachman Levine officiating. Burial was in Mound Zion Cemetery.
Memorial contributions to Beth El or the Milwaukee Jewish Day School would be appreciated by the family.
MORE STORIES
Loading ...