Cantor David Wisnia, right, joins his son, Rabbi Eric Wisnia, in the sanctuary at Congregation Beth Chaim.
Photo by Marilyn Silverstein
July 22, 2008
One of the community’s most prominent cantors has retired from his longtime pulpit at one of the region’s historic synagogues and is going to a new pulpit in Ewing.
Cantor David Wisnia — child prodigy, Holocaust survivor, celebrated soloist — has left Har Sinai Temple after 22 years in the pulpit there. He has been replaced by Cantor Emily Wigod Pincus, who officially began her tenure July 14.
The move marks another major step for the 350-family Reform congregation since it left its stately Trenton synagogue in the fall of 2007 and moved to a 9.2-acre campus along Route 31 in Pennington. The congregation recently celebrated its 150th anniversary.
For the 82-year-old Wisnia, the moment is a bittersweet mix of cherished memories and disappointment.
“I’m sad. I’m absolutely sad,” he said as he sat with his son, Rabbi Eric Wisnia, at Congregation Beth Chaim in Princeton Junction, where he is the religious leader.
“Har Sinai was my life,” the cantor said. “The children — they were everything to me. The children were my life. I did all the preparations for bar and bat mitzvas, and they flock to me now to do their weddings from all over the place. That I was able to impart the Yiddishkeit, the love to these children is evidenced by the fact that they flock to me. It was the greatest thing in the world to me to impart a little bit of soul.
“It breaks my heart,” he said. “For me, it’s a lifetime.”
“The management,” the cantor said, “decided I was not the future for Har Sinai — forget about the present or the past.”
When questioned about the matter, congregational president Ron Perl said that the temple has not issued an official statement articulating a reason for Wisnia’s decision to retire.
“There is no official reason,” he said. “We got together with the cantor and negotiated a retirement agreement.”
Speaking more personally, Perl had nothing but praise for Wisnia.
“It’s the end of an era,” he said during a telephone interview. “He has served us for 22 years, and he has really influenced the lives of many of our children, including mine. He has contributed over the years to our rich tradition, and he has been a great asset.
“He has been such an outstanding figure. He has a legendary voice and really a tremendous presence,” Perl said. “I have mixed emotions, because I have the highest personal regard for the cantor. At the same time, it represents a new beginning.”
Har Sinai’s Rabbi Stuart Pollack also expressed gratitude for Wisnia’s service and especially for the way he influenced a generation of the congregation’s bar and bat mitzva students.
“He has a charismatic presence and is one of the defining voices in the interpretation of our liturgy — there’s no question about that,” Pollack said in a telephone interview. “He’s quite a formidable figure.
“The temple feels very grateful for his years of service,” Pollack added. “We really cherish those 22 years he devoted to our congregation and the Jewish community. We just see it as a very poignant and defining moment.”
Asked to describe what he feels when he looks back on those years of service, Wisnia pointed wordlessly to a colorful journal published by Har Sinai: “B’Shirah — With a Song: A Tribute to the Extraordinary Life of Cantor David S. Wisnia, in celebration of fifteen years of dedicated service to Har Sinai Temple, June 2, 2001.”
‘A lot to give’
Inside the journal, a biography recounts the remarkable events of the cantor’s life. Born in Poland in 1926, Wisnia was singing in Warsaw’s Nozyk Synagogue by the age of nine. By 13, he was a soloist with the 80-member choir of Warsaw’s Tlomackie Synagogue. Famed cantors Moshe Koussevitzky and Gershon Sirota were his teachers.
When the Nazi onslaught crushed Poland, Wisnia was swept into the Warsaw Ghetto and then to Auschwitz, where an SS officer’s appreciation of the power of his singing voice saved his life. Two songs he composed while imprisoned there, “The Little White House” and “Oswiecim,” are now in the permanent collection of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. He survived three years in Auschwitz, as well as a brutal 1945 death march to Dachau.
Wisnia later escaped from a train transport and was rescued by members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division — the “Screaming Eagles.” He joined forces with the American soldiers, serving as an interpreter and a machine gunner and winning a citation for bravery in action against SS guards at Berchtesgarden, Hitler’s mountaintop retreat.
After immigrating to the United States at the age of 19, Wisnia found work as a sales manager for a national book publisher. He later moved to Levittown, Pa., and resumed his career as a cantorial soloist — first at Temple Shalom in Levittown, then at Tifereth Israel of Lower Bucks County in Bensalem. In 1986, he became the cantor at Har Sinai.
Although he has now retired from Har Sinai, Wisnia was quick to note that he will continue to serve the Jewish community on a professional basis. The High Holy Days will mark the beginning of his tenure on the pulpit at Ahavath Israel Congregation in Ewing. In addition, he will continue to lead Friday afternoon Shabbat services at Greenwood House in Ewing.
As he looked forward to singing at Ahavath Israel, Wisnia said, “I’m going to give some people pleasure. They’re going to hear for the first time a real hazan. They’re going to hear the finest of the finest that I was endowed with. They’re going to hear a service like the great synagogue services of old Warsaw.”
Eric Wisnia welcomes the fact that his father will be of service to the Ewing congregation
“I think he feels he has a lot to give and a lot to do,” he said. “It’s wonderful that Ahavath Israel wants him. Greenwood House wants him. This is just the next chapter in his career.”
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