Excerpt from The Cantor From The Mishnah To Modernity by Rabbi Wayne Allen

Viewpoints Contributor Rabbi Wayne Allen recently published The Cantor From The Mishnah To Modernity (available for purchase from Amazon through this link).  Rabbi Allen traces the evolution of cantor from the third century to the present day based on textual sources as well as Jewish lore, and speculateson the future of the position.  The following is an excerpt from pages 9 -10:

By the time of the Geonim, the number of cantors who suffered a lack of punctuality (thus diminishing the professionalization of the office) made a legal ruling necessary. The Geonim generously held that lateness was not a disqualifying fault even though it was surely a cause of communal dissatisfaction and frustration.  The Geonim did not seem to consider lateness to be a severe infraction. This was the first—but certainly not the last—rabbinic defense of questionable cantorial conduct. Rabbi Hai Gaon was prepared to forgive cantors who were adulterers, robbers, or liars, provided they were repentant. Rabbi Isaac al-Fasi permitted a repentant cantor to continue to serve even though he had sworn falsely. Like the Geonim, twelfth century rabbi Joseph ibn Migash set aside a cantor’s bad reputation so long as he was repentant. Maimonides ruled that a penitent cantor would be forgiven his drunkenness. Thirteenth-century German rabbi Meir of Rothenberg ruled in favor of a spiteful cantor. His Austrian contemporary, Rabbi Isaac ben Moses, permitted a cantor who had committed manslaughter to continue to serve in his appointed office. Turkish rabbi Elijah ben Abraham Mizrahi allowed an apostate to serve in a cantorial capacity. Though Rabbi Isaac Bruna understood the Talmud to mean that a cantor should not serve even when a member of his household was tarnished by a bad reputation, he nonetheless permitted a cantor whose daughter’s reputation was impugned to lead the congregation in prayer when there was no one else capable to do so. It also seems that Rabbi Nahman of Breslov was prepared to accept a cantor suspected of adultery. Polish authorities of the nineteenth-century refused to bar a cantor who had committed ritual infractions unless there was a broad consensus to do so among the members of the entire community. Even repentant mercy-killers were allowed to lead prayers. And in the twentieth-century, Sabbath-violating cantors were also allowed to lead prayers.

What led rabbinic authorities to tolerate, defend, and protect cantors more than the local rabbis and congregants who were too often dissatisfied with them was the value they invested in the office more than the worthiness of the individual cantor. Rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Vienna, for instance, wrote that the cantor is essential to sustaining the Jewish community through his prayer, teaching, and guidance. Rabbi Menahem Ha-Meiri went further. He claimed that the cantor alone had the power to “save” the Jewish community. Rabbenu Asher ruled that if the Jewish community could afford to pay the salary of only one professional and the community had to choose between hiring a rabbi or hiring a cantor, the community should hire a cantor—unless the rabbi was an exceptional scholar. The office of the cantor was preeminent because, as Rabbi Moses Alshikh explains, the cantor had the ability to “refresh the soul.”