By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
Joseph Frankel, former cantor for Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation and founder of Herzl-Ner Tamid’s religious school, died on Thursday, Jan. 3, 2008. He was 91 years old.
“Cantor Frankel was a great man…He touched the lives of people in our community in an extraordinary way. You could sense his impact in the way that people say his name today — there’s a reverence, there is an affection, there is an admiration,” said Herzl-Ner Tamid Senior Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum in his eulogy at Frankel’s funeral on Jan. 4.
Frankel was born June 12, 1916 in Hamburg, Germany. His father died when he was just five years old, leaving his mother alone to raise him and his three older brothers while working full-time as the proprietor of a restaurant and boarding house.
Frankel developed a love of music at a very young age and was a member of his synagogue’s choir from the time he became a Bar Mitzvah.
A bright young man and a good student, Frankel was none the less barred from attending college because of Nazi persecution. Instead, he went to a trade school to become a machinist.
In 1937, while he was in school, Frankel met Ruth Jungster and they became engaged.
On November 9, 1938, during Kristallnacht, the Nazis went to the student housing in Frankfurt where Frankel was living and rounded up all of the Jewish students, including Frankel, who was taken to Buchenwald.
“He had survived Kristallnacht and Buchenwald, yet it did not harden him,” Rosenbaum said.
Frankel was fortunate, however, and after four months, the Jewish Federation of Frankfurt was able to get him out of the camp and helped him to get a visa to go to England. From England, he made his way to New York, and in 1940 he joined Ruth, who had escaped Europe shortly after their engagement. The two were married shortly thereafter.
Their marriage was a strong one and friends and colleagues remember Frankel as a devoted husband. Herzl-Ner Tamid Executive Director Nadine Strauss said she had always seen Frankel’s marriage as an example of what a healthy, loving relationship should be.
“His relationship with his wife, Ruth, was nothing short of epic. The love that they openly showed was enviable and something we can all aspire to,” Strauss said.
While in New York, Frankel found a job as a machinist, attending Fordham University at night to earn his degree in education. But his education was once again interrupted, when, in 1943, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Alaska.
Before being shipped to Alaska, however, Frankel was stationed briefly at Ft. Lawton in what is now Discovery Park. While he was there, he fell in love with Seattle. When the war ended, he and Ruth moved west, joining one of Frankel’s brothers who was already living in Seattle. While working at the shipyards in Bremerton, Frankel finished his degree at Seattle University. He then went to work for the Seattle School District, which he would serve in varying capacities for 30 years.
Frankel never forgot his childhood love of music, however. While in the army he had served as an assistant chaplain, which helped him develop his cantorial skills. Shortly after his move to Seattle, Frankel took a job as the cantor for High Holiday services at a temple in Centralia, and, as a result, was invited to audition for the job at the former Herzl congregation.
“What people fell in love with first, of course, was Cantor Frankel’s voice,” said Rosenbaum.
In his 32 years at Herzl-Ner Tamid, Frankel worked not only as a cantor, but also a teacher and principal at Herzl-Ner Tamid’s religious school, which he helped to establish not long after he was hired in 1949. Today, the school bears his name, as does the Frankel Library and the Frankel Scholarship, which benefits teacher education.
Cantor Bradlee Kurland, who took over for Frankel in the early 1980s, said it was Frankel’s influence as an educator that impressed him most about his predecessor.
“He was so proud of all the young people he worked with,” Kurland said. “Joe and Ruth used to invite students to their home to study. He very much wanted to make Judaism come alive. And for many people, he did.”
Even after his retirement, Frankel remained an active and respected figure within the congregation, mentoring younger staff members like Rabbi David Rose, who came to Herzl-Ner Tamid in 1983.
“I was straight out of rabbinical school and he was the cantor emeritus, but he always treated me as an equal,” Rose recalled.
According to Rosenbaum, Frankel’s long tenure at Herzl-Ner Tamid guaranteed that he touched the lives of almost everyone involved in the congregation for the last 60 years.
“For so many of us here, Cantor Frankel performed our wedding, officiated at our children’s naming, Bar/Bat Mitzvah’ed our children, and then married our children, and was present at the birth of their children, too,” Rosenbaum said.
Frankel is survived by his wife Ruth, his brother Robert, his daughter Betsy Babani, three grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.