Cantor Schechtman "Sings The Blues"
"New Orleans Style"

at the
2005 American Conference of Cantor's Convention
New Orleans, Louisiana

Cantor Jodi M. Schechtman & Cantor Don Croll
sing
"I've Got A Crush On You"
by George & Ira Gershwin
1930

with the
Original Liberty Brass Band

featuring
Dr. Michael White
on Clarinet

and special guest
Jason Marsalis
on drums

New Orleans, Louisiana
March 2005

JOSPEL MUSIC
Cantors sing with a little bit of soul

Thursday, March 17, 2005

By Bruce Nolan
Staff writer

In a small meeting room of the Wyndham Hotel, where chamber music wafts quietly through the nearby lobby, Lisa Levine was rocking at the microphone, snapping her fingers as robust music swelled from two dozen throats singing heartily around her. She beat an imaginary tambourine against her hip and led her fellow Jewish cantors reading off their handouts:

"Hallu, hallu, hallu, halluyah! Halya chad. Hineih, hineih mah tov umahnaim!"

That's the sound of Jewish Gospel music.

Hebrew meets Mahalia Jackson. Psalm-funk.

Indeed, at any point during the day at the Wyndham this week, business travelers consulting informally over their laptops in the lobby may be distracted by the sudden swelling of choral music from some meeting room.

It's what happens when 250 Jewish cantors and temple musicians meet in one place to schmooze, talk shop and try out new music.

Cantors sing as naturally as others talk.

Like other conventioneers, members of the American Conference of Cantors and a related group, the Guild of Temple Musicians, drift through the lobby in jeans and slacks and comfortable shirts.

They wear name tags and carry convention-issued totes. They meet old friends not seen since the last meeting, compare restaurant destinations and cherry-pick their way through the program of events.

In the evenings over drinks they gossip about what job might soon open up at what temple, and sometimes -- we are not supposed to know this -- about rabbis.

And they sing.

Three times they offered evening concerts in New Orleans this week: a program of patriotic music at the National D-Day Museum on Wednesday night, a concert of liturgical music at Temple Sinai on Tuesday night, and an evening of secular music at Touro Synagogue on Monday wickedly named "Jazz, Blues and American Jews."

As it happens, these cantors and musicians are from Reform Judaism, the liberal wing born in the 19th century determined to retain a core of Jewish identity while opening its arms to modernity, new intellectual currents, even pop culture.

Thus Levine's willingness, with her rabbi at Congregation Oheb Shalom in Baltimore, to experiment with the soulful power and exuberance of African-American gospel music. "

Jospel music," she calls it.

Levine and her rabbi, Stephen Fink, encountered gospel music during a visit to an African Methodist Episcopal church a few years ago. The power and jubilation flowing out of that church's gospel choir changed her forever, she told her colleagues.

In a partnership that developed between church and temple, she began adapting Jewish music to the gospel style. She also began composing new gospel-style pieces for her temple and the church choir as well, such as the one incorporating English and Hebrew she had the cantors singing in her workshop.

Gospel-style music, although foreign to the Jewish tradition, powerfully enhances the experience of prayer, she told her colleagues.

"We're a very paper-bound people. Let's get out of that and let the music teach us to how pray," she said, although she cautioned, with chuckles from the audience: "When you're in temple, you do have to cut it down a bit."

Levine's workshop was nearly filled for a couple of reasons.

Cantors are more than mere song leaders for their congregations. As graduates of five years of seminary that includes Torah study, they are prayer leaders as well.

In Jewish tradition, "the cantor prays to God for and with the congregation," said Joel Colman, cantor of Temple Sinai in New Orleans. Indeed, the Hebrew term is shaliach tzibur, or representative of the congregation.

"We say that God hears prayers through the cantor," said Amy Lefko of Congregation Keneseth Israel in suburban Philadelphia. "It's not always easy to talk to God. The cantor makes it easy -- and not only easy, but joyful and accessible."

So it is, many said, that cantors are always interested in new music -- new ways to pray -- a standard feature of each conference and another draw for cantors.

In addition to Levine's session on Jewish gospel music, for example, there were sessions on Latin American melodies and even rock, R&B and jazz.

In the past couple of decades, these conferences have changed in one significant way: Women are surging into the profession, observed Alane Katzew, a staffer employed by the Union for Reform Judaism, an umbrella group for American Reform congregations.

Women now represent half or more of all cantors, and Lefko said some recent classes have been nearly all women at cantors' common school, the School of Sacred Music at Hebrew Union College-The Institute of Religion in New York.

Like men in the profession, they seem drawn by the common calling of cantors, said Lefko: a love of music, outgoing personality, a strong sense of compassion and a lively sense of service.

"It's not a career you choose for narcissistic glory," said Jonathan Comisar of Community Synagogue of Rye, N.Y.

"You've got to want to serve your community, serve God and want to carry on the tradition.