The cleric whom I called “My Hazz”, Cantor Sherwood Goffen, has passed away.

More than forty years ago, it was my honor to pray at the Lincoln Square Synagogue while I lived in New York, where Hazzan Goffen’s sweet voice inspired a generation.

I had first seen the Hazz on an American folk song TV program known as Hootenany in the early 1960’s.

Hazz was best known as the voice that inspired the small fledgeing Soviet Jewry movement.

His followers smuggled his songs into the former USSR.

His songs gave hope to a generation of Jews who would not give up hope that they would beat the kremlin and wind up in Israel.

With more than a million former Soviet Jews now in Israel, sit back wherever you are during the funeral of this wonderful man and listen to melodies from the Hazz which must have been sung in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sherwood+goffen

A personal note: I so much wanted to lead prayers and to learn from the Hazz how to do so.

So I hired the Hazz to give me ten lessons.

And I am pleased that my parents and our oldest children knew the Hazz.

A blessing in our time.

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David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.