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FEBRUARY 4, 2021
JEWISH EXPONENT
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



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Longtime Cantor
Sidney Karpo
Dies at 93
OB ITUARY
ANDY GOTLIEB | JE MANAGING EDITOR
CANTOR SIDNEY KARPO,
whose 55-year career began in
1952 and spanned two organiza-
tions and hundreds of students,
died Jan. 18. He was 93.

Karpo spent 11 years at the
Yeadon Jewish Community
Center, then was installed as
the cantor of Congregation Ner
Zedek-Ezrath Israel-Beth Uziel
(now part of Congregations of
Shaare Shamayim) in 1963, where
he served for the next 44 years.

In a 2007 Jewish Exponent
article about his retirement,
Karpo, who sang in his South
Philadelphia Hebrew school’s
junior choir, said he knew he had
a good voice, but never dreamed
of being a cantor. It was his late
wife of 71 years, Sylvia, who
convinced him to do it.

“I could have been anything,”
said Karpo, the youngest of 10
children of a fruit huckster and a
mother who lost her sight by the
time he was born. “My wife is a
very musical person, and I’d sing
her songs. So she talked me into it.”
Daughter Lynn Karpo-
Lantz said she believes her
father, who studied with noted
cantor Moishe Oysher, was
gifted with such a strong voice
to compensate for his mother’s
blindness. Daughter Shelia Banner said
her father possessed a dramatic
tenor that made the words he
davened meaningful.

“He had a passionate voice
— a cry,” she said. “His high
notes were glorious.”
Karpo had a love of teaching
that many of his former
students never forgot. Years
after bar and bat mitzvahs,
his one-time pupils checked in
with him, often asking him to
preside at their weddings.

Karpo-Lantz recalled her
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Cantor Sidney Karpo in 1962
Courtesy of the Karpo family
father setting up a table outside
the Hebrew school classrooms
so his charges could have
cookies, doughnuts and choco-
late milk before they started.

“He made learning fun,”
son-in-law Dr. Ronald Banner
said. “Education was one of
the most important things in
his life. The concept of how to
live a Jewish life ... he instilled
in his bar and bat mitzvah
students by his daily activities.”
Shelia Banner said her
father was especially skilled
at working with students not
particularly interested in the
bar and bat mitzvah process.

“He helped them under-
stand what the bar mitzvah
would mean to them and in the
future,” she said.

“He gave them confidence they
could do it,” Karpo-Lantz said.

Aside from his duties at
Congregation Ner Zedek-Ezrath
Israel-Beth Uziel, Karpo served
for a time as president of the
Philadelphia Region Cantors
Assembly. He was honored
with a doctor of music degree
at a convocation at the Jewish
Theological Seminary in New
York, for having served the
Conservative movement and the
Jewish people with distinction.

He also was a Mason and served
in the National Guard.

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See Karpo, Page 23
JEWISH EXPONENT
FEBRUARY 4, 2021
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