The Making of a Reform Jewish Cantor. Judah M. Cohen
this path often grew up in families where parents held lay or liturgical leadership roles in Reform congregations; they invariably participated in the movement’s youth group (NFTY, or the North American Federation of Temple Youth); and they spent several years both experiencing and leading music in Reform-influenced Jewish summer camps.3 Noted one:
I grew up in a Jewish household; was Bat Mitzvahed and confirmed; went to religious school for confirmation … And then growing up, I was heavily involved in music and theater activities, both Jewish and secular.… And heavily involved in NFTY. I was a regional board member for a few years. I spent time in a number of different summer camps … as a staff member and music specialist. (Interview)
While undergraduates and post-graduates, these applicants continued to serve in (often youth-oriented) leadership capacities within Reform Judaism, relying on the movement for both spiritual and financial well-being (as paid song leaders, for example). They thus came to the School of Sacred Music seeing themselves as future Reform Jewish clergy, familiar with the movement’s tenets and discourses, and invested in its future.
In part because the cantorate had little to no presence in the Reform youth movement in the last half of the twentieth century, students with strong Reform Jewish backgrounds saw cantors initially as marginal figures in their lives, generally unrelated to their active religious interests. They applied for cantorial school less from an interest in the culture of the cantorate than from a desire to pool their strengths into a professional position within the movement. Said one student:
I was around twenty-five [years old] and I decided: “You know, I look back over all my experience, every summer and I see where I am, and what I love doing. I realize that it’s Jewish music and synagogue life, and Jewish life. And I’ve had all these wonderful experiences that have given me insight into working with people and administrative parts of Temple life.…” And I realized that I needed to be doing something where I can be creative, artistically and musically. Where I wasn’t just doing the same thing all the time, where I wasn’t at a desk all the time, where I was working with people of different ages. And the cantorate really combined all those things and I had an affinity to synagogue life.… [The] pieces just came together. It did. Just became the obvious. And it chose me. Really. (Interview)
Significantly, these students seemed to place a great deal of importance on their identities as Reform Jews when applying to cantorial school. As opposed to many of the other School of Sacred Music students, none of those with a strong Reform Jewish background seriously appeared to consider cantorial schools sponsored by other Jewish movements (such as the Jewish Theological Seminary’s H. L. Miller Cantorial School). Their movement affiliation proved even more significant considering the students’ misgivings about the musical materials and values they saw taught at the School, which seemed different from the musical values they knew growing up:
[I]t’s not like I ever thought of becoming a cantor—people would say “Oh, you should become a cantor.” But I didn’t want to.… The model was not something that I wanted to emulate. The models that I had—people that were cantors where I was growing up, were just … they didn’t inspire me.… (Interview)
Intimate knowledge of the movement’s practices, however, empowered students to apply nonetheless, often in the hope of addressing the movement’s needs more effectively. Immediately after the above statement, the same student added:
[A]nd I began to learn that I didn’t have to be like that.… that I could be more involved than some cantors had been in the past in the community itself. But then [there were also] other aspects of being a clergyperson.… [T]he style of service was changing, and it didn’t have to be a cantor that always did a service [in] an operatic style or always performance style.… There could be more participation and different kinds of melodies. (Interview)
Students from this group bore strong similarities in background to incoming rabbinic students, the majority of whom also grew up in the movement. This shared experience, which helped temper their concerns about the cantorate, led these students to feel a sense of community at Hebrew Union College that students with other pathways to the school did not initially share.
A second grouping—perhaps the most diverse of the groups discussed here—comprised applicants who decided to apply to the School of Sacred Music during or just after their undergraduate years, thus making the cantorate their intended first career. The majority of these students grew up in other religious movements (mostly Conservative Judaism); those who grew up in the Reform movement, however, had little exposure to Reform Jewish youth culture, and generally held a weaker Reform Jewish identity than those in the first group. To these students, seeking the cantorate appeared largely a matter of professionalizing their existing activities.
Upon entering college, many in this group initially saw their religious identities as peripheral to their undergraduate studies. Most students, for example, chose their colleges with little concern for the quality of Jewish cultural life on campus. As their time as undergraduates progressed, however, students typically gained a much stronger interest in Jewish religious activities and philosophies. In some cases, this interest came directly from inter-religious discussions with other students:
… it was a little after my freshman year that I started getting interested in religious topics. One of the reasons was conversations I was having with a friend of mine—a Christian friend—who was at that point battling cancer in his life. And the experience brought him closer to God and Christianity, so he felt the need to so-called “preach the gospel.” And I [again] started thinking about my relationship to God and Judaism. And I just started to think more and more ’bout it as I approached my senior year of college.… Then, as I was finishing up my senior year I started to think more and more about the cantorate: combining music and religion, which were really starting to become my two great passions in life. (J. Rosenman, Feb. 14, 2000)
In other cases, students attended extra-curricular programs and events—sometimes reluctantly—that caused them to reinvigorate their interest in Jewish activities:
While I was [at college] I met Rabbi ___________. Who is a phenomenal rabbi. And he takes out all the freshmen individually … So I went out to lunch with him, cause I thought my parents would like if I went out to lunch with the rabbi. [laughs] And I told him that I was practicing Wiccan, and to my great surprise he knew all about what it was, and started talking to me about it, making comparisons between Wicca and Jewish mysticism, which I knew nothing about at all. And then he invited me to [the college’s student] Shabbat dinner, and the food was really good, and so I kept going back. And before you know it I was thinking, “Well, you know, if I’m going to dinner, I should probably go to services just once.” And that was my great surprise: I went to these services, and the people that were there wanted to be there, and they were all enthusiastic and spiritual and really into it. And it was not like Jewish experiences that I had before.… I found the services to be such a wonderful, spiritual experience that I was interested; I was intrigued. So I started taking classes.… And before I knew it, I was “Miss Jew On Campus.” (Interview)
Their increasing activity in Jewish events eventually led students in this group to take up local positions of Jewish leadership, either on campus or in the surrounding area. One student served as a cantorial soloist at a local synagogue; another became the high holidays musical leader at the campus Hillel chapter;4 another led Friday evening Sabbath services at retirement homes; and still others served as assistants and substitutes for local synagogue cantors.
… a friend of mine who was graduating that year had been—and I had no idea—had been working as a cantorial soloist at a nearby congregation, like a half an hour away. She was graduating, and … basically they said they need Jews who sing. [laughs] Forget the cantorial experience. Jews who sing. And so she asked me … “Would you be interested? And would you be the cantorial soloist there?” … And so I was a cantorial soloist there for a couple years; I worked in the religious school and taught; I basically did services Friday and Saturday—a couple of lifecycle rituals, but basically I did services. And then I guess started thinking more and more about: “Hm. This could be an interesting career choice.” (A. Frydman, May 19, 2000)
As opposed to the first