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 group, which involved itself primarily in youth settings, these students served mainly in adult congregations, and consequently acquired a different sense of Jewish religious musical dynamics and aesthetics.
Despite their increased involvement, however, students initially continued to view their jobs as temporary and avocational. Only over time, and with the help of proactive role models, did these students begin to recognize the cantorate as a possible professional career. They frequently described such realizations as sudden and revelatory:
I always thought about being a cantor and a rabbi. Always. But … I never saw it as a profession for some reason. And then I went to a … convention [for Jewish educators] the year before I started college.… I was going to start college when I got back and for some reason I signed up for [the] Political Science [major].… I just didn’t see [the cantorate] as a profession—it was more like a life.… When I got back from [the conference], I was sitting on my mom’s bed [talking to her, and I said]: “Wait a minute. I can be a cantor, as a profession. This can be my life! Why go and major in Political Science?” So from that point on I … changed my major to Music [and] got prepared. (G. Arad, Sept. 8, 1999)
To some students who grew up outside Reform Judaism, the academic nature of a cantorial school seemed problematic at first, at odds with the more apprenticeship-based but less “official” cantorial education prevalent in the students’ local area. One student, for example, decided to continue cantorial studies as an avocation while pursuing a more “conventional” degree and career in college, even after experiencing the revelation that he could one day “be a cantor”:
I remember one moment that I was in [my cantorial teacher’s] office, and we were studying something and he says, “… you know one day when you’ll be a cantor and you’ll have your congregation …” I was like “Wait a second, what am I doing here? Oh, I guess I never thought of it. Why, why don’t I think about possibly going to school to become a cantor?” But at that time based on the tradition that I grew up in, it wasn’t necessarily customary for people who wanted to be cantors to go to school and get a degree for it. I have numerous friends who grew up in the … area and they studied with people like [my teacher] and other local cantors, and they just went and applied for a job after.…
So I thought: “Maybe I’ll go to law school, and I’ll become a cantor on the side.” Cause the cantor of my synagogue happened to own a big kosher, chicken type of establishment in [the area]—he has the monopoly [on] kosher chicken. So I thought maybe I can be a cantor on the side like him. But, as I thought about that more and more it just, it wasn’t enough. I needed to give myself fully to this; it couldn’t be a part-time thing. It needed to be something that I could give my whole heart to. (Interview)
Other students training to pursue professional performance careers began to find the cantorate as a tempting way to pre-empt what they increasingly saw as unfulfilling job prospects. Cantorial careers, they began to notice, offered space for personal and religious fulfillment, while allowing them to maintain the sense of worth they acquired through their musical training:
I knew that—as I saw the classmates who were a couple years ahead of me coming back in order to visit the college—that, none of them were really happy.… [T]hey would be on the road fifty weeks out of the year, and they weren’t making any money; they were unhappy. And that’s not what I wanted. I didn’t want to be unhappy; I didn’t want to have to compete; I didn’t want to have to go to auditions the rest of my life. [I]n addition, the number of people that I met who were touring with these groups or whatever, they had no time. Many of them were non-Jews but they had no time for services in the morning on Sunday, or to observe
