Beimel, Jacob, 1880-1944

Jacob Beimel was an American cantor, composer and musicologist. Beimel was an early, influential figure who helped return America's twentieth-century synagogue music to its traditional roots. He was born October 11, 1875 in Parichi, a village in Minsk province. At the age of twelve he became a choir singer with cantor Nissi Belzer (Nissan Spivak) of Berditchev. Beimel relocated to Berlin in 1903. A year later he began studies at the Royal Academy of the Arts in musical composition with Professor Friedrich Gernsheim (1839-1916). He graduated in 1910. While in Berlin, Beimel served as music director at the synagogue "An der Potsdamer Bruecke"; conducted the Mendelssohn Chor; and had folk song arrangements published in "Die Welt" and "Ost und West," 1907-1912. He relocated to Copenhagen in 1911, serving as cantor and choir conductor at the Orthodox Synagogue there, as well as conductor of Hasomir, a secular Jewish singing society that he founded. Beimel emigrated to the United States in 1915. He was cantor at Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan's new Jewish Center, from 1918-ca. 1920. Around this time, Beimel published songs in Yiddish and Ukrainian as well as synagogue music. He made one recording for Columbia Gramophone Co., ca. 1919. From 1920-1929 Jacob Beimel was both cantor and choir conductor at Philadelphia's Temple Adath Jeshurun. Beimel returned to New York City. In 1932 he published fifteen hymns in the Jewish Reform movement's Union Hymnal. He published his own journal, "Jewish Music," from 1934-1935. In New York, Beimel taught private cantorial students and freelanced as cantor and choir conductor. He died on November 17, 1944.