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For Cantor Murray Simon, who is retiring after 14 years at The Jewish Center in Princeton, the best testament to the success of his 46-year cantorate are the enduring relationships he has developed with congregants at all the synagogues where he has served.

"Over the years, in the various congregations I've served, I'm still in touch with people, which I think is one of the wonderful things, the fringe benefits or perks, of being a cantor and touching people's lives, Simon said. "It's the personal contact, the human element, the connections that you make in serving congregations."

The Jewish Center celebrated Simon's tenure and honored him at a dinner in his honor on May 16.

Simon has not only been a cantor and pastoral leader, but he has also been an energetic communal leader and teacher. He has been active in the cantors' professional organizations of both the Reform and Conservative movements. He was national president of the American Conference of Cantors as well as the Cantorial Alumni Association of the Hebrew Union College, and he is currently a member of the national executive council of the Cantors Assembly, where he has also chaired several committees.

"I'm sort of a hybrid, which is unusual -- to find someone who could function in both movements," he said.

For 12 years, Simon was president of the New England Jewish Music Forum, a community-wide group that presented four major concerts of Jewish music each year for the Boston Jewish community; some of the artists they brought in were Theodore Bikel, Jan Pierce, and Joshua Bell. He has also served as vice president of communal affairs for the Princeton Clergy Association. In retirement, Simon will continue to serve as a faculty member at the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York City, where he teaches contemporary repertoire, covering music composed in the 20th and 21st century by people like Debbie Friedman and Shlomo Carlbach. In the program of the May 16 celebration Dr. Ora Horn Prouser, executive vice president of the academy, captured what Simon has brought to his students during his nine years at the academy and in fact to people in every venue he has been part of.

Prouser writes: "His students love learning with him, on one level because they know that what he brings to the table is serious study, a remarkable breadth of repertoire, and tremendous experience as a cantor. If that were all he brought, that would be enough, But, as we all know, he brings more. He brings his heart and soul, his love of Judaism, and love of his students, his humor, and his warmth into everything that he does." And that, she added, is why Simon was named as recipient of the academy's P'nei Torah Faculty Award in May 2009.

Beyond the friends he has made and the organizations he has served, what Simon views as his lasting legacy is his work gathering rare historic film footage of the great cantors of the past in the two-and-a-half-hour two-DVD set he produced in conjunction with The National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University, "Great Cantors of the Golden Age."

Simon grew up in Philadelphia and graduated from Temple University with a bachelor of music in performance. He went directly to the Hebrew Union College's School of Sacred Music, the first cantorial school in the United States, which prepared cantors for all branches of Judaism. Simon studied there with famous European cantors like Moshe Ganchoff and Israel Alter, graduating in 1969. He received a master of music in voice from the Boston Conservatory of Music.

Simon has been leading congregations since his student days. In 1964, he started a four-year stint as student cantor with rabbi Sidney Ballon at the Nassau Community Temple, a Reform congregation in West Hempstead, Long Island. He has since officiated at the marriage of Jane Kagan Giat, who was in his Hebrew class during those years, and the family recently asked him to officiate at her daughter Rebecca's wedding in June 2011.

In 1968, at a bar mitzvah one Shabbat morning at Nassau Community Temple, a woman approached him and said, "I am Mrs. Joachim Prinz. My husband is rabbi of a congregation in Newark, N.J., and we are looking for a cantor. Can I propose your name?"

Simon put in his name and, although still a student, got the job at Temple B'nai Abraham, a huge synagogue that extended over a city block, had a sanctuary with 2,000 permanent seats and a pipe organ, a gym, and a swimming pool. Prinz was vice president and ultimately chair of the World Jewish Congress's governing council. He was also active in the civil rights movement and had the privilege of introducing Reverend Martin Luther King in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial, where he gave his famous "I have a dream" speech.

The congregation was quite prestigious, but many of its congregants were fleeing Newark for the suburbs.

"The problem at that time," said Simon, "was that it was one year after the Newark riots, and the city was still smoldering. We were the last congregation of any size left in Newark."

Even though congregants had to come into Newark from the suburbs to attend services, often with police protection in the parking lot, Prinz felt it imperative that the 115-year-old congregation stay in the community.

"He felt he didn't want to fly to the suburbs," recalled Simon. "But people feared for their safety and at one point his life was threatened by the Black Panthers."

Prinz, he continued, had to be escorted by Federal Bureau of Investigation officers to services, and in 1969 the Black Panthers extorted money from the congregation to post bond for jailed members and firebombed the sanctuary. Simon sang at the 1972 groundbreaking for the synagogue's new building in Livingston, New Jersey.

In 1972, Simon moved to Temple Israel, a German Jewish Reform congregation in Boston, and the largest Jewish congregation in New England. Founded in 1854, it had more than 2,000 families, and before Simon's arrival, it had a music director and a professional choir but no cantor. As the synagogue's first cantor, Simon succeeded Dr. Herbert Fromm, music director and Jewish music composer, who had served for 33 years.

During his 11 years of service at Temple Israel, Simon said he brought a lot of tradition to the synagogue, including chanting of Torah and haftarah with trope and chanting the first two prayers of the Amidah.

"I got the congregation involved in the service," he said. "Before me, they would just sit and listen to the music."

At Temple Israel, Simon worked with Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn, who was a president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and had been a chaplain in the Marine Corps and responsible for dedicating the cemetery at Iwo Jima with a speech titled "The Purest Democracy." During one of Temple Israel's yearly musical services, Simon performed a musical work, written by Martin Kalmanoff, based on that speech.

Simon left Temple Israel to serve the Conservative Congregation Temple Reyim in Newton, Mass., in 1988, returning to his own Conservative Jewish roots. He served there with Rabbi Philip Kieval. Because the congregation was fairly small, Simon spent three days a week as chaplain at a large Hebrew nursing home, Coolidge House, in Brookline.

"It takes a certain personality to go in and be dealing with people who are elderly, and sometimes ill and not coherent, but I enjoyed it," he said.

In 1996, Simon came to the Jewish Center.

"I have been here for 14 years," he said, "longer than any other clergy person and for a quarter of the history of this congregation."

Simon expressed his gratefulness to his wife, Toby, and their daughter, Rebecca, for their support, encouragement, and patience over the years.

Looking back, Simon finds that his own experience with rabbis belies all the stories about cantors and rabbis being like oil and water.

"I have been blessed over the years of working with wonderful rabbis," he said. And indeed, the Jewish Center's Rabbi Emeritus Dov Peretz Elkins wrote in the celebration program, "Simon's wonderful sense of humor, and his warm and inviting smile, makes it a pleasure to spend time with him and Toby."

Elkins also added how important it was for him to be able to share things with Simon.

"Since we had a professional as well as a personal relationship, we both knew that we could speak confidentially with one another about matters that gave us great joy and satisfaction, as well as things that brought frustration and disappointment," he wrote. "I always knew that I could count on Simon to provide an attentive listening ear that was empathic and caring."

When asked about what it meant to him to be a cantor and what advice he had for upcoming cantors, he responded in an email.

"Being a cantor, or hazzan, carries with it the awesome responsibility of standing before a congregation and inspiring them to prayer," he said. "This requires more than just a beautiful voice -- it requires that you approach your task with utmost sincerity and a full heart. Being a cantor means that you have a wonderful opportunity to use your God-given talents to touch other people's lives. If I have accomplished this in my career, then I can feel fulfilled as a cantor."