Retired Cantor Michael Braudo sang a preview of this evening's solemn Kol Nidre chant at the Jewish Family Service College Avenue Senior Center, housed at Beth Jacob Congregation.

____________________ The Jewish Citizen          by Donald H. Harrison

Some Kol Nidres to remember

SAN DIEGO—Kol Nidre came a lot earlier today at the Jewish Family Service's College Avenue Senior Center—about 60 years earlier, it seemed.

This was because the entertainment for the day was the showing of the Danny Thomas/ Peggy Lee version of The Jazz Singer, set in Philadelphia just after World War II.

Made in 1952, the movie was considerably different—and more upbeat—than the original  1927 version starring Al Jolson,  according to presenter Dr. Lawrence Baron, an SDSU history professor whose specialty is the depiction in cinema of the Jewish experience.

As in the 1927 version, which was an early "talkie," the 1952 movie was about the conflict between a son who wanted to go into show business and a father who wanted him to follow him into the life as a cantor. 

But there were important differences. In the Jolson movie, the immigrant generation of Orthodox Jews living in New York City was depicted, with the father so bitterly resisting assimilation he appeared mean.  In the Thomas version, seven generations of Golding men had been cantors in Philadelphia since 1790, and they were Reform. The father was nothing if not gentlemanly.

Whereas resisting religious assimilation was a major theme in the Jolson movie, it was not a factor in the Thomas movie.  The son's girlfriend was also Jewish. 

The movie's ending was different too.  In the Jolson movie the son at last returns to the synagogue and sings Kol Nidre as his father is dying.  Hearing him, the father expires.  In the Thomas movie, the ill  father asks his son's forgiveness for trying to force him to be something he didn't want to be.  Then the son sings Kol Nidre across the courtyard from his father's window.  But instead of dying, the father recovers and subsequently attends his son's triumphal musical revue.

Baron said he chose to show the Thomas version over the Jolson version because he figured that fewer of the seniors had seen the Thomas version. Furthermore, he said, he anticipated that the Thomas version might remind them of their own lives.

And well it might have!  About an hour before the video was shown, seniors who lunched on kosher brisket at the senior center were treated to a strong performance of Kol Nidre by
Cantor Michael Broudo, whose career had taken him to many places in the United States before he settled here.

Now 87, when Broudo sang, his voice was strong and profound, and one could imagine how in the majesty of a synagogue on Kol Nidre evening his deep voice might have enthralled his congregation. "The man still has one nice set of pipes!" I commented to lunch table companions Gloria Rimland and Marlene & Herb Greenstein.

Following the showing of the movie, most seniors were anxious to get home perhaps to make preparations before the traditional Yom Kippur day of fasting or perhaps to take an afternoon nap.  But a few lingered to discuss the movie,

Hyman said she didn't because she was brought up Orthodox. 
Smitzer said she didn't either, because she was raised in a secular home.

But the mother, portrayed by Mildred Dunnock, who quietly supported her son while not opposing her husband, resonated with them.  "She was like my mother," said Hyman.  "When I wanted to go away to college, my father said 'no—a Jewish girl she goes and gets a job after she graduates high school and then she gets married.  But my mother talked my father into letting me go."