Cantor Naftali Hershtik, the chief cantor emeritus of the magnificent Jerusalem Great Synagogue, is descended from a long line of chazzanim and ba’alei tefila. At the tender age of six he had already gained a reputation as a prodigy, able to interpret complicated cantorial recitatives with phenomenal skill. His musical education has been wide and varied, and he owes much to his first teacher, his late father. He also studied under Cantors Leib Glantz, Shlomo Ravitz, and Moshe Kossevitzky, and graduated from the Royal College of Music in London. Cantor Herstik possesses a rich and heartwarming tenor voice of rare quality, but the dominant characteristic of his interpretative originality lies in the unity of music and words. He has earned a worldwide reputation as a superb concert artist with rare elegance and class, and has sung with some of the most famous orchestras and finest choirs in the world. A number of these distinguished groups can be heard on his numerous recordings. Cantor Herstik is also the director of the Tel Aviv Cantorial Institute.
