Notes from Cantor Avima

From Moment Magazine

After Jimmy Carter's 1977 inauguration as
President:  “No rabbi at Inauguration; over 20-Year Tradition Broken.”

Indeed, Jimmy Carter was the first president who did not include a prayer by a rabbi as part of the official proceedings of an inauguration ceremony since the tradition began in 1949. That’s when Harry Truman, a Democrat who was Carter’s favorite president, invited Rabbi Samuel Thurman of St. Louis.

But there was more to the story in 1977.

No rabbi for President Carter. But he had someone whom no other president has ever included in an inauguration: a Jewish cantor. A Holocaust-surviving Jewish cantor.

Isaac Goodfriend was born in 1924, the same year as Jimmy Carter. His birth date was January 20. Yes, that means he sang at Carter’s inauguration on his birthday, his 53rd.

Goodfriend was born into a Hasidic family living in a small town in Poland, south of  Łódź. At age 16, he was interned at a Nazi labor camp in Piotrkow. In 1944, he escaped from the camp and found refuge at the home of a Polish farmer. He was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. 

Cantor Isaac Goodfriend at President Carter's inauguration