That’s how Irv Weinstein felt when he was singing. He made others in New Haven feel that way too.
Weinstein sang his heart out well into his 90s. He also gave his heart to people, tirelessly.
Weinstein was remembered as “a man of few words” but many high notes at a graveside funderal Monday at Adas Israel cemetery on Jewell Street. He died Saturday at the age of 95.
Weinstein was the kind of do-er who nurtures the soul of a community, a gentle man with whom the idea of arguing seemed preposterous.
He was a fixture at the West River Senior Center, an oasis on Chapel Street for elderly people who had trouble making it downtown. From his “office,” a card table in the center of the main room, Weinstein served as president of the center for 27 years, up until his 93rd birthday. Under Weinstein’s calm guidance, the center (whose members successfully revolted when City Hall tried to close it this year) was alive with stimulating discussions and fun group activities. Weinstein organized trips for the seniors to the Catskills, to shows in New York. He trained a choral group there which performed for seniors at area convalescent homes and synagogues.
He was a fixture, too, of the nearby Berger Apartments, a racially mixed senior housing complex where he lived on Derby Avenue.
Weinstein also made things happen at his synagogue, first Congregation Keser Israel, then, after a merger, Congregation Beth El Keser Israel (BEKI). He was an active volunteer there for 50 years, responsible for much of the music that helped people soar above the trials of workaday existence. For 20 years he served as cantor leading Friday night Kabbalat Shabbat, the most tune-filled service of the week that transports observant Jews into the sabbath’s spiritual realm with a series of psalms. There could be just 10 other people singing along with Weinstein in the subdued, cozy BEKI chapel. Yet if you closed your eyes you could imagine hearing trumpets blaring, drums pounding, a choir harmonizing, and clouds parting above the robed mystics atop the hills of Safed, as Weinstein pleaded for his soul to be cleansed or as he boomed the final crescendo of Adon Olam. Long after he retired from his volunteer cantorial duties, that image — and that spirit — revisit the synagogue chapel to accompany the psalms each Friday night.
“When I’m up there singing I feel like I’m in God’s hands,” Weinstein once said. “I’m facing the altar. Everything comes out nice and smooth — most of the time. He’s up there with me.”
Despite the dramatic flair of his delivery, Weinstein never felt like a performer. “I’m doing a service for people — and with people,” he said.
That musical devotion to community service was a tradition Weinstein inherited from his father.
His father, Abraham, was a “kopplemeister” back in Minsk — a bandleader employed by the czar. When revolution took care of the czar, Abraham came to join a brother in New Haven in 1911. So did his wife, Anna. They were part of a historic wave of eastern European immigrants. Anna gave birth to Irv in 1913 — along with triplet siblings Faye and Harold.
Abraham continued performing music in between his jobs as a carriage-maker and fish-and-fruit peddler. Irv emulated his father by singing in choral groups beginning at age 9 and by taking up the trumpet.
By 16, all the Weinstein triplets were performing in a band. They played weddings at the old Dorman’s Hall on Rose Street as well as at local synagogues. Harold played slide trombone, Faye, French horn. Irv, like Abraham, blew the trumpet — and, of course, served as kopplemeister.
Irv continued singing in his adult years while he managed the old Barker’s discount store in Orange, then the Corvette’s in Trumbull. “They went out of business, and I retired.” He retired from paying work, but devoted more time than ever to his senior center and his synagogue. He continued to do so for decades. The west side of New Haven was a richer place for it.