Israel Goldfarb

Israel Goldfarb (; c. 1879 – February 13, 1967) was a Galician-born American rabbi, cantor, and composer. He led Congregation Baith Israel Anshei Emes in Brooklyn for more than fifty years, and was a founder of and instructor at the Cantor’s Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He published numerous collections of melodies for synagogue, school, and home use. Goldfarb has been celebrated as the “father of congregational singing” in synagogues, and many of his musical settings became so ubiquitous that they came to be regarded as traditional. He is perhaps best known for his popular setting of Shalom Aleichem. Early life and education Israel Goldfarb was born in Sieniawa, Galicia (then part of Austria-Hungary), the second of eleven children of Nathaniel David and Malye Goldfarb. He immigrated to the United States in 1892 or 1893. As a youth he sang in synagogue choirs and studied music privately. Goldfarb later pursued rabbinic studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, from which he was ordained in 1902. He also studied musical education at Columbia University and music at the Institute of Musical Art (today the Juilliard School). Career While still