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From Russia with music;
emigre to become cantor
NEW YORK—A Jewish emigre
from the Soviet Union who came
to this country in the summer of
1976 is now completing his first
year as a student in the School of
Sacred Music of Hebrew Union
College-Jewish Institute of
Religion, preparing for a career as
a cantor.
He is Mikhail Manevich, an
honors graduate of the Leningrad
Conservatory of Music whose
diploma from the Soviet State
Examining Board states that he is
“qualified as a choir conductor and
a teacher of choir subjects.”
Now 25, Mr. Manevich is
experiencing his first formal
exposure to Judaism as he studies
Jewish music, Hebrew, cantil-
lation, liturgy and other subjects
that comprise the sacred music
curriculum.
At home in Leningrad, says Mr.
Manevich, he had a minimal
Jewish education. Neither his
father, Lazar, a photographer, nor
his mother, Rashel, knew much
about Judaism, its rituals or its
holidays. “We celebrated Jewish
holidays,” he says, “but we did not
have an understanding of their
meaning or significance. They
were like parties.”
His wife, the former Ema
Karlin, who emigrated with him, is
now a student at the City College
of New York. Upon enrolling, she
took courses in Jewish studies and
shared the knowledge she acquired
with her husband. She also shares
a birthday with him, April 17. He
was born in 1953, she in 1957.
Aided “enormously," almost
from the day he arrived here, by
the New York Association for New
Americans (NYANA), Manevich
became interested in Hebrew
Union College as the result of
counseling by the late Cantor
Arthur M. Wolfson, to whom he
had been sent by NYANA. Cantor
Wolfson, who died last July, was
the cantor of New York’s
Congregation Emanu-El and a
longtime teacher and once faculty
Why wine
on infant’s lips?
by Rabbi Samuel Fox
Why is it customary to put some
wine on the lipa of the infant
during the prayers which follow
the act of circumcision?
Since the prayers and
benedictions which are recited
following the act of circumcision
are for the sake of the child,
putting some wine to his lips
involves him in the ceremonial.
Others connect this with the
custom of pronouncing the phrase
“Through your blood shall you
live” when touching the wine to the
lips of the infant. First, this is a
means of praying that the surgery
shall be an omen oflifetothe child.
Second, one is reminded of the
circumcision which Moses, Aaron
and Joseph performed on the
Israelites when they were in danger
of being punished in the
wilderness, so that if they should
die, they would not die
uncircumcized.
By comparison, this circum
cision now performed over the
infant is for his life rather than for
his death. Thus the wine is used
and touched to the lips as a symbol
of life.
Mikhail Manevich
chairman at the college’s School of
Sacred Music.
“I had a curiosity about Jewish
music and Judaism in general at
home in Leningrad," Manevich
said, “1 had heard Jewish music at
weddings and on records, and it
stimulated something within me.”
Cantor Wolfson encouraged this
leaning by proposing a cantorial
career. Manevich responded
eagerly to this suggestion.
Manevich discovered that he
would have to acquire a knowledge
of the Hebrew language in order to
enroll. “So one year after I started
to study English, I began to learn
Hebrew,” he explains.
To earn his way while he is a
student, Manevich sings each week
in a synagogue choir and holds a
position at the Queens Central
YMHA in Forest Hills, where he
works with teenagers who are
emigres from the Soviet Union. He
also finds the time to serve as a
volunteer teacher and music
director at the Katherine Engel
Senior Citizens Center in
Manhattan, where some of those
he instructs emigrated from czarist
Russia, many years before he was
born.
Although the parents of both
Mikhail and Ema were denied exit
visas when the young couple
departed from the Soviet Union,
the senior Manevichs were
permitted to emigrate early this
year and they arrived in New York
in February. They are living with
their son and daughter-in-law in
Long Island City. To date, Mrs.
Manevich’s parents have been
refused exit visas.
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