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Cantor, Musician Paul Frimark Dies at 69
OB ITUARY
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
FORMER OHEV SHALOM
of Bucks County cantor and
Jewish musician Paul Frimark
died at his Langhorne home on
Dec. 24. He was 69.

Frimark died from large
B-cell lymphoma.

The Bucks County resident
served as cantor of Ohev Shalom
for 18 years but played in Jewish
bands for longer than that. His
groups, N’shamah and Shir
Chadash, performed thousands
of times between 1971 and 1998,
according to a bandmate.

Frimark also was a devoted
family man, leaving behind
a wife of 39 years, Arlene
Frimark, and two daughters,
stepdaughter Kim Whitman
and Bara Frimark. People who
knew Frimark repeated the
same theme about him. When
someone dies, it’s easy to forget
all of their negative character-
istics. But with Frimark, there
truly weren’t any to harp on.

“He was a first-class mensch.

What you saw was what you
got,” Ohev Shalom Rabbi Eliott
Perlstein said. “He liked people.”
In the 1970s and ’80s,
Frimark worked day jobs as
an accountant, including as
a controller for the Jewish
Exponent at one point. But at
night, he would lead his band
around the region for gigs.

Frimark was a singer and
keyboard player. He could both
hear music and then play it
back and read music.

The future cantor, though,
didn’t just focus on the tunes.

He served as band manager,
booking agent and, as his friend
and bandmate David Seltzer put
it, “schlepper,” meaning he lugged
the equipment around, too.

Through hustle and energy,
N’shamah and then Shir
Chadash grew into “the preem-
inent Jewish simcha band” in
the Philadelphia area, according
to drummer Fred Z. Poritsky.

The group played annually
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM at the Soviet Jewry Rally at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art
and at the Israel Independence
Day parade on Independence
Mall. It also performed at
weddings, b’nai mitzvahs and
other Jewish celebrations.

By the end of its run, the
band was traveling as far north
as Massachusetts and as far
south as Virginia.

Yet through it all, despite
the extra work he did, Frimark
insisted that band members
take the same cut for their gigs.

“He was just completely
selfless,” said Seltzer, who lives
in Huntington Valley. “He
could handle a multitude of
tasks and personalities with a
great deal of grace.”
Despite his band’s success,
though, Frimark suffered
from a midlife crisis about not
fulfilling his childhood dream
of becoming a cantor.

Already an Ohev Shalom
member in the early 1990s, he
was a regular part of a men’s
group meeting with Perlstein.

One night, the rabbi asked the
men what dreams they had.

“Paul said to become a
cantor,” Perlstein recalled.

At the time, Frimark’s
musical ability made him quali-
fied enough to fill in as cantor
whenever Ohev Shalom needed
someone. But Perlstein never
knew the desire ran so deep.

“We had never had a conver-
sation where he told me he
wanted to become a synagogue
cantor,” the rabbi said.

Just months later, Ohev
Shalom’s cantor left, and
Perlstein asked Frimark to
fill in on an interim basis. He
already knew all the Shabbat,
holiday and High Holy Day
melodies and thrived in the
new role.

After a few months, Ohev brass
made the no-brainer decision to
bring Frimark on full-time.

From 1993 to 2011, he
helped Perlstein lead services;
he helped kids become bar or
Cantor Paul Frimark helps a bat mitvzah girl. 
Courtesy of Ohev Shalom of Bucks County
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