WOHLBERG, MOSHE

WOHLBERG, MOSHE (Max; 1907–1996), ḥazzan. Wohlberg was born in Humene in Czechoslovakia. When he was four, his family moved to Budapest, where he sang with the   choir of the Rombach synagogue. He studied in the yeshivot of Nagy Karoly and Szatmar. His family moved to the United States, where he completed his Hebrew studies at the Herzliah Hebrew Teachers' Institute in New York. He studied music with Arnold Zemachson, sang in the choir of the Metropolitan Opera, and held several positions as cantor in the United States. His chief activity was in the field of training cantors, and he had hundreds of students. From 1948 to 1951 he was the second president of the Cantors Assembly. From 1952 he was professor of liturgy at the Cantors' School of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He was considered an authority on prayer rites and published many articles on the history of liturgy. His published compositions can be found in collections such as Chemdat Shabbat and Yaḥad B'kol (Cantors Assembly). A recording of his singing of 19th-century compositions by ḥazzan-composers of the period is available through Musique Internationale Chicago (Akiva Zimmerman / Raymond Goldstein (2nd ed.)