My mother`s side of the family was the musical side. My grandfather was a Hebrew teacher for 50 years and my mother and aunt instilled in me a feeling for Jewish music. I grew up hearing records of Yiddish and Hebrew folk music and I started playing the guitar and singing when I was in junior high.
At the age of 11 I got involved in the temple choir when we were living in Pasadena, Calif., and discovered I had a more mature voice than the average kid. I was very shy and intense and music was a tremendous outlet for me. In those days I thought I`d become a performer like Joni Mitchell or Judy Collins.
My mother taught me a lot of songs and we started doing programs together in high school. She`d do the Yiddish folk song and I`d sing the American equivalent. I also did a few programs by myself but it took me until college to gain confidence in myself. We moved to San Diego and by 12th grade I was very interested in music. I liked to close myself up in my room and play my guitar and sing for hours.
After graduation I decided to study music at San Diego State. I wanted to be a singer. As a freshman I took flute and clarinet. It was the only time my father ever said, ”don`t practice.” I started taking classes in the drama department even though I wasn`t supposed to be doing that. I really loved the classes I took there. I felt what I was learning in acting and interpreting was more important than what I was learning in the music department. I got involved in some musical productions and I changed to joint majors in music, drama and literature.
At that time I was also singing in a temple choir. The cantor resigned and the rabbi asked me if I would be interested in the job. I said
”absolutely not.” I didn`t think being a cantor would satisfy my hunger to perform.
After five years of being at college I felt the education I was getting was light years away from what I wanted to do with my life. I saw my friends getting married and becoming high school band directors. I felt there had to be more to life.
In June, 1979, I decided to go to a small town in Colorado with some friends from the drama department and do summer stock theater. It was with a colorful band of people and I was the only Jewish person within miles. I enjoyed the constant performing even though it was a hand-to-mouth existence. I was doing what I thought I wanted to do.
I worked through December and decided my voice wasn`t refined enough. I also thought I was stagnating, not being able to study. I had a friend who was an actor living in San Francisco and I decided to move there. I got a voice teacher and became a student at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. I really started to hone my skills. And it was there I decided I wanted to be an opera singer. I loved the acting part of it.
I enjoyed the conservatory and started working in the office. Someone called and happened to talk to one of my friends. The person wanted to know if the conservatory had anyone who could sing for the Jewish High Holy Days at a new congregation being formed. I was one of the only Jewish students there and my friend asked me. I decided to try it.
I did the holidays and found out it gave me more satisfaction than I ever would have dreamed. They asked me to keep singing with them for the Sabbath services. I did it for two years. I was 27 at the time and I thought I would still go into opera. At auditions, though, I started noticing that no one would look up from their pad of paper while I was singing.
Meanwhile people from the congregation would come up to me and say: ”You really made the service for us.” I realized I was really communicating with these people. The opera stage started appealing to me less and less. Everybody was bitter and jealous of each other`s opportunities. I knew I didn`t want to live like that. I was becoming more drawn to the synagogue and increasingly turned off by the opera scene.
Within a month of graduation I decided I wanted to be a cantor fulltime. For the first time I felt this is what I really want to do. I would be getting the best of both worlds. I felt for the first time I was connected to something Jewish. I had always felt being Jewish had set me apart from other people and made me feel I didn`t belong. Now I wouldn`t have to feel guilty about performances on Yom Kippur. I talked to the rabbi I was working with and I found there was a school in New York that trained cantors, Hebrew Union College.
It was too late for me to apply that year, so I decided to continue at the conservatory and get my master`s degree.
In the spring of 1983, I went to New York for my first preliminary audition (for cantor school). I knew this was the only school I could go to because the reformed movement is the only one that has rejected any professional distinctions between men and women. I couldn`t allow myself to think of the possibility that I wouldn`t get in.
I got so worked up about it I got a terrible case of the flu. I was beside myself. I really should have postponed the audition but I couldn`t. I wanted to do it. I concentrated so hard on getting my voice out I wasn`t able to worry about singing flawlessly. It must have been destiny. I was accepted to the school and moved to New York.
It was a four-year program. School became my whole life. The first year I commuted to Harrisburg, Pa., twice a month to lead Friday night services and taught music on Sundays in Westchester. The last three years I worked for a congregation in Lynbrook, N.Y. I worked a lot with children and found such satisfaction because I never imagined it would be such fun. I loved my work and what I was doing. I knew I couldn`t live with myself doing anything else. This was it.
I graduated in May, 1987, from Hebrew Union College at the age of 33. I wasn`t worried about getting a job but I wanted to be near a big city. I woke up one morning and realized that with everything else happening, my life had taken a different turn than I expected. I had wanted to get married. But I hadn`t gotten around to it. So I wanted to be in a community where there were single people.
While there are about 50 Reform female cantors in the country, a friend mentioned that the only problem I might have was that others might be bothered that I was a woman. In interviews some would even ask me if I was a feminist. I didn`t get into those arguments. I don`t look for a fight.I don`t think of myself as a ”woman” cantor unless someone points it out. But I guess it is still a relatively unusual position for a woman.
The hardest thing is to find role models. You question yourself during auditions like: ”How am I going to make an impression? Will they take you seriously? Can I do the job?” I was fortunate to have a friend, Ellen Math, who is similar in appearance and personality, who is beloved by her congregation, as an image to look up to.
But being a cantor is a liability socially because you`re a woman who has gone into primarily a man`s field. If you`re single, men feel you`re the kind of woman who wants to have a man`s job. That`s not attractive to them in a relationship. Yet it`s so contrary to the person I am.
When I interviewed earlier this year with Temple Sholom, which is a fairly large congregation with 1,700 families, the first thing they said was that they wanted someone with a strong voice and then someone who would work with the children and adults. They wanted a coordinative force behind their music program. The job sounded perfect and I accepted it.
Since I started in July it`s been a tremendous amount of work. But it`s constantly exciting and surprising. I found myself through my singing. All along I wanted to be in a field where I could be human and be appreciated. This job let`s me be me.
