Doctor of Humane Letters
“Yeshiva University is the most unique in the world; there is no institution anywhere in terms of these extraordinary professors, rabbeim and students.”
A highly regarded tenor, Cantor Joseph Malovany has served as cantor of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue since 1973. “I sweep the entire congregation up with me: they get swept up in prayer and you will hear me singing the solos and the congregation singing,” he says. “I love the feeling.”
He began singing at the age of 7 and studied at Bilu Synagogue School in Tel Aviv. His musicality was so profound that he became director of the choir at the age of 12, and his mother sold her wedding ring to pay for the piano. Cantor Malovany holds diplomas from the Music Academy in Tel Aviv, the Royal Academy and Trinity College of Music in England, where he is also a Fellow. He holds the Joseph Malovany Chair for Advanced Studies in Jewish Liturgical Music at the Philip and Sarah Belz School of Jewish Music, a division of Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.
Cantor Malovany is also dean of the J.D.C. Moscow Academy of Jewish Music, which he helped establish in 1989 with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He tours extensively throughout the world, singing with major international symphony orchestras, and traditionally sings memorial prayers at Holocaust commemorations at Madison Square Garden and the U.S. Capitol. An honorary president of the Cantorial Society of America, he is a former chairman of the board of the American Society for Jewish Music.
He is the first Jewish cantor to receive the Poland Legion of Honor and also a recipient of the Poland/UNESCO International Prize for Tolerance in 2007. He and his wife were honored in 2006 at the Israel Bonds Dinner.
Cantor Malovany was born and raised in Tel Aviv. He and his wife, Beatrice, a painter, are the parents of Ellis, who graduated from Yeshiva University High School for Boys in 1986 and from Yeshiva College in 1980. Their grandchildren, Naftali Benjamin, Sophia Rose and Aria Lauren, all like to sing but Naftali may be the one most like his grandfather. “He’s 5,” says Cantor Malovany, “and he’s very fond of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.”
An honorary degree from Yeshiva University is the culmination of Cantor Malovany’s relationship with YU since he came to the United States more than 35 years ago. “We are a part of YU and YU is a part of us,” he says. “YU is exactly the expression of our philosophy of life, of one filled with both Torah and madda, and exactly what our life is all about. Yeshiva University is the most unique in the world; there is no institution anywhere in terms of these extraordinary professors, rabbeim and students.”