Shortly after Rabbi Gordon Freeman arrived at Walnut Creek’s Congregation B’nai Shalom, he put the word out that a cantor was needed to help out with the High Holy Days.
An elderly man showed up in his office saying, “I can help.”
“I said, ‘Let me get a machzor [prayerbook],’ and he said, ‘That’s not necessary.'” In a “deep, sonorous voice…he started chant-ing the service by heart,” Freeman recalled. “The music is very complex, but he knew it exactly. That began our relationship.”
Henry Aaron Gass, who served as a volunteer cantor at the Conservative congregation for more than a decade, died on Feb. 26 in Walnut Creek. He was 99.
Gass was born in Grosulov, a village near Odessa, Ukraine, on Sept. 11, 1903. His father was a wholesale tobacco dealer who suffered a stroke during a pogrom when Gass was only 1 year old. He never recovered and died several years later.
Gass’ singing talent was discovered when he was about 8. Because of his father’s death, Gass became a bar mitzvah at age 12, after which he was frequently called upon to perform as a cantor in other towns and villages.
Gass came to the United States in 1920, and went to the St. Paul, Minn. area, because he had several half-siblings there from his father’s previous marriage.
After a series of odd jobs, he learned the bedding business, and started his own firm, Minneapolis Box Spring and Mattress Co., which manufactured coil springs. Later, he expanded to include mattresses, sofabeds and bus seats, calling his company H.A. Gass Industries. In 1932, he married Minnie, and they had three daughters.
Leah Emdy, one of Gass’ daughters, who lives in Berkeley, surmised that her father never tried to become a professional cantor in the United States because he needed to earn enough money to bring other family members here. He succeeded in bringing his mother and helped other siblings as well.
But Emdy recalled their home was always filled with song. Gass did sing with a choir in St. Paul, and was active in his synagogue and B’nai B’rith Men.
“We all sang around the house, and it was probably led by him,” said Emdy. “He was the kind of person who broke into song spontaneously or hummed all the time.”
Emdy described her father as the kind of man who was “accepting of us as we were, even in the ways we differed from him, particularly in beliefs and lifestyle.” He was also extremely positive, maybe complaining a bit about life’s annoyances, and then “accepting it, adjusting and moving on,” she added.
Shortly after Gass retired in 1975, he and his wife moved to Rossmoor, the Walnut Creek retirement community. And after that visit to Freeman, “he was able to return to the profession he was meant to have,” said Emdy.
Since Emdy lived near her father in the later years of his life, she was able to see the impact he had on his community. “A lot of people would say to me that just talking to him made them feel good,” she said.
When Gass turned 90, he went into retirement a second time. “We made him cantor emeritus to honor him, because he was such a wonderful human being,” said Freeman. “He knew the material backwards and forwards.”
In addition to Emdy, Gass is survived by two other daughters, Edith J. Rein of Louisville, Ky., and Rhea M. Berman of Queens, N.Y. He was predeceased by his wife in 1995.
Donations can be made to Congregation B’nai Shalom, 74 Eckley Lane, Walnut Creek, CA, 94596; the Reutlinger Community for Jewish Living, 4000 Camino Tassajara, Danville, CA 94506; or the charity of your choice.