COVER STORY: Female cantors come into their own

Aviva Chernick, cantorial soloist at Shaarei-Beth El Congregation of Halton, Ont. After decades fighting for legitimacy, there are three times more women than men at liberal congregations

In January 1989, the backlash to a cantorial concert at Toronto’s Temple Emanu-El made front page news in the Globe and Mail

The performers, female cantorial soloists, had formed the choral group Kol Nashim (Voices of Women). The members – Phyllis Angel Greenberg, Ruth Slater, Lis Manson, Linda Segal, Elizabeth Bolton (now Rabbi Bolton) and the late Esther Ghan Firestone, Canada’s first female cantor – had been leading prayers at liberal congregations in the Toronto area, which, at that time, was uncharted spiritual territory for Canadian women.

The Toronto Council of Hazzanim’s (TCH) flagrant disapproval of the Kol Nashim concert at Temple Emanu-El sparked considerable media interest. The TCH (the council of cantors) did not recognize women in the cantorate in 1989, recalled Angel Greenberg, a cantorial soloist at Congregation Darchei Noam since 1981. “The male cantors went berserk… The media attention was quite thrilling.”

The late CBC host Peter Gzowski interviewed Kol Nashim members on national radio about the legitimacy of female cantors, and Rabbi Bolton even debated the issue with a male cantor on CTV, Angel Greenberg recounted.

Fast forward 26 years, and today there are three times as many women as men (15 compared to five) holding cantorial positions in liberal congregations across Canada.

Cantor Tracy Kasner Greaves of Congregation Etz Chayim, Winnipeg

Angel Greenberg said acceptance of women in the cantorate by the TCH has also shifted significantly. After a female cantorial concert in 2008, the TCH invited her and the other performers to join the council. “Many of the people who objected to Kol Nashim in1989 were now welcoming us.”

Almost all the women doing cantorial work in Canada started out in other occupations, or they’ve had dual careers. In 1995, Rachelle Shubert was a singer in a band and music director at Temple Emanu-El-Beth-Sholom in Montreal, when Rabbi Leigh Lerner (now rabbi emeritus) asked her to become the cantorial soloist.

The work was very gratifying, she said. “It’s a magnificent feeling to connect musically on a soul-to-soul level with the congregation.”

Shubert returned to Toronto last year to become cantorial soloist at Temple Kol Ami so that she could live closer to her family.

Aviva Chernick, ba’alat tfillah (prayer leader) at Shaarei-Beth El Congregation of Halton, Ont., since 2007, is taking a sabbatical year.

She has served regularly at other congregations in Toronto, where she focuses on innovation in prayer, and she has been a guest prayer leader at synagogues across North America. She is also the founder of Tehilah, an annual conference in Toronto that celebrates the music of prayer.

Chernick is probably best known as lead singer of Jaffa Road, the award-winning world music ensemble, but she stressed that her spiritual work is equally important for her. 

After studying dance and theatre, Chernick became a yoga teacher. “Through various other spiritual practices I found my way back to Jewish practice.”

She said her knowledge of prayer was rekindled through study with Cantor Benjamin Maissner, music director of Holy Blossom Temple. He encouraged her to lead services.

Like Chernick, Naomi Taussig has a dance background. The cantorial soloist at Temple Sholom in Vancouver is a certified Israeli folk dance teacher.

Cantor Heather Batchelor of Montreal

Taussig started along the cantorial path by teaching Hebrew at Congregation Har El in West Vancouver, where she occasionally led prayers. When she agreed to sing Kol Nidre for Yom Kippur one year, she said she didn’t realize she’d been “invited” to co-lead the entire High Holiday service.

“That was a long and huge learning curve. It took the better part of a year. But when the time came, chanting the holiday service was a tremendous experience.”

The congregation subsequently raised money for Taussig to be the cantorial soloist for five years. She later freelanced at Temple Sholom and was hired there when the cantor retired.

Cantor Katie Oringel works closely with Cantor Charles Osborne at Temple Sinai in Toronto. She is the youngest by a generation in comparison to many of the other women doing cantorial work in Canada, and unlike the others, Oringel has never had another career.

She traced her interest in liturgical music to her experience at a Reform summer camp. “That’s where I fell in love with Jewish music and I felt what it was like to lead a community in prayer…

“I realized that’s what I wanted to do with my life.”

After receiving her undergraduate degree, the Texas native enrolled in the intensive five-year master’s program at the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music (formerly, the School of Sacred Music) at Hebrew Union College (HUC) – Jewish Institute of Religion, the main seminary for Reform clergy.

Oringel started working at Temple Sinai right after her ordination in 2009. 

By that time, almost two generations of female graduates had preceded her. In fact, 2015 marks the 40th anniversary of women in the cantorate. The investiture of the first female cantor took place at HUC in 1975.

Of the 500 cantorial graduates from HUC since 1975, 230 have been women. The school also runs a four-year certification program for cantorial soloists, which is recognized by the American Conference of Cantors, the professional organization of Reform cantors.

Cantor Katie Oringel of Temple Sinai in Toronto

In 1987, the first female cantors graduated from the HL Miller Cantorial School and College of Jewish Music of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS), the academic training centre for rabbis and cantors in the Conservative movement. 

Women in the Conservative cantorate are still a minority, according to Cantor Nancy Abramson, director of HL Miller. The school has graduated 70 female cantors since 1987. 

Today 160 women belong to the 580-member Cantors Assembly, the international association of cantors affiliated with Conservative Judaism. 

In the United States, job prospects for JTS cantorial graduates are equal for both genders, but Cantor Abramson noted that no female graduates have been hired by any Canadian Conservative congregation. “Canada tends to be more conservative with a small ‘c.’”

In this country there’s only one female cantor working at a Conservative synagogue. Cantor Tracy Kasner Greaves has been leading prayers at Congregation Etz Chayim in Winnipeg since 2002. 

She’s also the artistic director of the Sarah Sommer Chai Folk Ensemble. 

The Winnipeg-born cantor had been studying music for many years, when she was hired at the age  of 15 to be a program assistant at the Conservative Shaarey Zedek Congregation, she said. “At the time, I didn’t realize that this would be my life’s work.” 

Cantor Sanford Cohn trained her for this position, which she held throughout her undergraduate years. 

A year after Cantor Kasner Greaves moved to Calgary, Etz Chayim recruited her. “They knew my voice and my way of davening,” she explained. “They wanted my voice to be the voice of the congregation.”

Noami Taussig, cantorial soloist at Temple Sholom in Vancouver

Cohn mentored her during her intensive preparation for the cantorate, she said. “I’m a product of my community. I’m not sure my experience could be translated to another community.”

Indeed, Cantor Heather Batchelor, a JTS graduate, is hoping to find a Conservative pulpit in Montreal. 

She pointed to some Conservative congregations that promote egalitarian Judaism, but are still not considering female candidates for the clergy. “There’s a real disconnect.” 

Nevertheless she plans on staying in Montreal, because she loves the city.

Originally from Minneapolis, Batchelor moved to Montreal in 2010 when she was offered a three-year contract with Congregation Dorshei Emet, a Reconstructionist synagogue.

She said the Reconstructionist approach to prayer was very different from her Conservative training, so for now, she leads High Holiday services at a number of U.S. congregations.

Cantor Deborah Staiman has also served at both American and Canadian synagogues. She is now taking on a range of responsibilities at Shaarei-Beth El Congregation, while Chernick is on sabbatical. 

Staiman has the distinction of being one of the first Canadian women to be ordained in the cantorate.

She is also a singer with a large repertoire of Yiddish music. At concerts this year, she debuted two new shows – Molly Picon: the Darling of American Yiddish Theatre and The Big Four of Second Avenue.

Staiman started out as an opera singer. She studied in London, Rome and New York City, but during those years she also sang professionally in a number of congregational choirs.

She enrolled in HUC’s intensive full-time cantorial program in 1987. “It was a huge commitment,” she said. “I left for Israel for a year and hit the books.”

Staiman said people are not always aware of the depth of training and knowledge that ordained cantors bring to their work.

Cantor Anna Trubashnik is another performer who has moved from the operatic stage to the bimah. The Russian-born cantor was a child prodigy. When she was a teenager, she lived and trained with opera great Marilyn Horne in New York City.

Trubashnik’s foray into the cantorate was serendipitous, she said. The late composer Srul Irving Glick, a family friend, recommended her to Temple Emanu-El in 1990. 

“I was seven months pregnant at the audition. After I finished singing, there was silence. Two months later, I began rehearsing for the High Holidays.”

Trubashnik also completed the certification program through HUC. “I had three small kids and the workload was huge.”

She said being a cantor is a privilege. “You’re uplifting people through music. You’re feeding their souls.”

Lisa Kent, a music teacher and a trained jazz singer, studied with Trubashnik, when she became the cantorial soloist for the Danforth Jewish Circle (DJC) in Toronto.

“I always loved singing, but performance did not come naturally to me,” she said. “Cantorial work is different. It’s not about performance. It’s about going inside oneself to help people connect spiritually.”

Kent helped launch Aviva Rajsky’s cantorial career, when she invited Rajsky, a former lounge singer with an extensive Jewish education, to sing at the DJC for High Holiday services. 

“The first time I sang Kol Nidre and Avinu Malkeinu, I was hooked in terms of leading prayer,” Rajsky said. Since 2011, she has been the cantor at Congregation Habonim, where she served with cantor emeritus Ghan Firestone, until Ghan Firestone’s death at the end of May.

When Rajsky co-led High Holiday services at Habonim for the first time, she described that experience as life altering. “It was amazing. I felt like Moses coming down from the mountain. I was glowing. I realized this is what I’m supposed to do.”