Comments (0)A New Song
Today’s music trends are forcing cantors to adapt.
January 9, 2009Johanna Ginsberg
New Jersey Jewish News
At Congregation Beth El in South Orange, N.J., a recent congregational survey to determine what members want out of worship services revealed that they would like more participation and more variety.
The synagogue had already instituted Friday Nite Live!, an instrumental kabalat Shabbat service that incorporates both American music and melodies reflective of the Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach spiritual style.
At the end of a recent Friday Night Live! service, a newcomer gushed, “I just love that service. I don’t know any Hebrew, I don’t know the prayers, but I love the music.”
But that kind of statement makes some cantors cringe.
As congregations seek to engage more unaffiliated Jews, many see music as the key. But to the chagrin of some cantors, the lure is not traditional liturgical music but more contemporary American styles and melodies—sometimes derisively referred to as “happy clappy” music.
After spending as many as six years studying hazanut and nusah, or traditional chanting modes, cantors come to congregations where some members have little knowledge of—and often less appetite for—Hebrew, prayer, or Jewish liturgical music.
All of this leaves cantors asking if they should challenge the congregants by continuing to offer the traditional modes or simply meet them where they are.
Cantor Erica Lippitz of Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange said that musical outreach poses a dilemma. If contemporary music does indeed get “more people in the door,” is that worth “raising a generation of people ignorant of the depth of the traditional service?”
Cantors who rigidly stand their ground will find themselves “on the losing end” of the issue, said Cantor Mark Biddelman of Temple Emanuel in Woodcliff Lake, N.J. Cantor Biddelman uses hazanut—the classic cantorial prayer mode—only on the High Holy Days. At other times of the year, he said, “there’s no way that stuff would go over in my community.”
The problem cantors are facing is actually twofold: traditional chanting styles being supplanted by the sounds of contemporary American music, and cantorial solos giving way to congregational participation.
“This is the issue confronting the Conservative movement right now,” said Cantor Henry Rosenblum, dean of the H.L. Miller Cantorial School at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
“In the last 20 years, there has been an anticlerical move. You see this in the increase in the minyanim
with no cantors and no rabbis. People say, ‘As long as we have tunes we can sing, we’ll be fine,’” Cantor Rosenblum said.
But that approach worries him. The cantor is the keeper of the tradition who leads services based on traditional prayer modes.
Orthodox and Reform Judaism both jettisoned traditional nusah and hazanut during the last century. Today, Orthodox congregations rarely engage a cantor to lead services, relying on rabbis or skilled lay people to lead what is essentially individualized prayer punctuated by congregational singing. (Among Orthodox audiences, hazanut is gaining popularity, although strictly in a concert forum.)
The Reform movement continues to train cantors, but there is little hand-wringing over the issues of style or congregational participation.
“The crisis is over. People realize you have to integrate the styles of all the different groups. My position is it’s all good,” said Cantor Bruce Ruben, director of the School of Sacred Music at the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
His view is underscored by the fact that singer/songwriter Debbie Friedman, whose folksy melodies have long symbolized the rebellion against hazanut, now serves on the faculty of HUC’s School of Sacred Music.
Traditional hazanut enjoyed its golden age from the late 19th century through the 1930s and 1940s, when figures like Yossele Rosenblatt loomed large not only in synagogues but also in concert halls.
Since the 1960s and ‘70s—particularly under the influence of the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary—the sounds of contemporary American music began to be heard in the synagogue service.
The contemporary influence became popular through the compositions of Ms. Friedman, Jeff Klepper, Dan Freelander, and others. Baby boomers went to summer camp, where they were exposed to participatory worship experiences that they wanted to recreate in the synagogue. At the same time, neo-hasidic music, popularized by Shlomo Carlebach, also grew in popularity.
If cantors fret about the loss of nusah, the buzzword for congregations is participation, which they see as key to engaging worshipers in the service.
For its monthly Friday Night Live! service, Beth El adapted a service created in 1998 by Craig Taubman at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, Calif.
Cantors interviewed for this article expressed the desire to have the music they hear in synagogue reflect the meaning of the prayers. For example, Cantor Rosenblum of the JTS cantorial school pointed out, “The prayer V’shamru
used to be a cantorial solo. Now it’s a congregation tune that does not reflect the feeling of ‘Keep the Sabbath.’ Instead it’s snappy and upbeat.”
Among those who have already adapted is Cantor Sheldon Levine. He said he inherited a participatory service when he came to Congregation Neve Shalom in Metuchen, N.J., nine years ago.
But he has taken the model further, reducing the distance between the congregational choir and the worshipers.
“The synagogue’s volunteer choir used to do four-part harmony, and the congregation would sit and listen. I’ve replaced this, little by little, with stuff the congregation can sing along with,” he said.
Rabbi Levine “loves hazanut,” he said, but offers it only in small doses. Still, he refuses to leave tradition behind. “In order to grow, we need to know what came before us and make sure we are not violating those principles.”
Johanna Ginsberg is a New Jersey Jewish News staff writer.