Dec 04 2007
Hazzan Note - December 2007
In August of 1955, the front page of the New York Times reported the story of Betty Robbins, the world’s first female cantor. “Mrs. Sheldon Robbins,” as the story refers to her, was unanimously elected by her Reform temple in Oceanside, NY, to lead the Rosh Hashana evening Service in the fall of 1955. It was the first time in world history that a woman served in this position. Robbins, who had no official Cantorial education, grew up in Poland, singing with the boys’ choir of her synagogue (cutting her hair to please the choirmaster), and spent her career as a Jewish educator and music director. The Times reported that “Robbins carries on all the duties of a housewife,” caring for her husband and four children, as well as fulfilling her cantorial duties. The Times also reported that neither the Reform nor Conservative movements had ever considered the possibility of having female clergy.
We’ve come a long way, baby. Twenty years after Betty Robbins led Rosh Hashana services in Oceanside, the Hebrew Union College invested its first woman cantor in 1975. In 1987, the Times reported another story, not on the front page, about our movement. I reproduce part of the story here:
“Feb. 6, 1987 - The Jewish Theological Seminary of America announced yesterday that it would for the first time certify women as cantors to lead services in Conservative congregations around the world. The move, announced at the seminary campus on Morningside Heights, came two years after the first female rabbi was ordained by the Conservative movement, which occupies the middle of the spectrum of Jewish thought…Eleven women are studying to become cantors at the school’s College of Jewish Music. ‘’All of us feel called to this profession,’’ said Erica Lippitz, who is to graduate in May, ‘’and, in my eyes, God does not look at gender. God has given me the gift of a voice and I am returning this to the community.’’ Ms. Lippitz and Marla Rosenfeld Barugel, who will also finish her studies in May, are to be the first women to graduate the seminary with the degree of Hazzan, the Hebrew word for cantor. Both women, wearing colorful crocheted yarmulkes, said that they had been drawn to the field out of a love for music and a desire to serve the Jewish community …. Unlike rabbis, who are primarily teachers and leaders, cantors represent congregations in prayer. As a result, altering the tradition that only men could serve as cantors involved a more complex theological argument than the decision to allow women to serve as rabbis.”
Barugel arrived to B’nai Israel in Rumson, NJ in 1987 and has been there ever since. Lippitz, one of my own mentors from my school years, has been serving her congregation in South Orange, NJ for 16 years. Since their investiture, there have been over 60 female graduates of the Seminary, receiving a graduate degree in Sacred Music, and benefitting from the fantastic academic offerings JTS has to offer.
To date, JTS is the only Cantorial school for those who wish to serve Conservative congregations. If one has not studied at the Seminary but wishes to join the Cantors’ Assembly, our professional organization, they must undergo a rigorous examination process that takes years of preparation. There are many women Cantors working in synagogues today, yet a small percentage of us have credentials from from the Seminary. We are a tight group of women who are extremely proud of our experience. There is much to celebrate after twenty years.
Together with Women’s League and the Cantors’ Assembly (our professional organization), JTS is sponsoring a Gala concert to celebrate 20 years of women in the Cantorate. Over half of the women who graduated from the Seminary in the last twenty years will perform in the concert, and current students will participate as well. Upper Manhattan will be reverberating with the sounds of women’s voices on the afternoon of December 16th, and I am honored to be taking part in the afternoon’s festivities. The concert’s program will feature all the women Hazzanim, singing in chronological order. We will be performing a program including Hazzanut, Israeli, Yiddish, Broadway, and contemporary Jewish music, and I have been commissioned to compose a piece for all of us to sing as a finale. I have written a Shehechiyanu, the prayer sanctifying special times in our lives. It is a work of Jewish gospel, triumphant and soulful, including celebratory psalms from Hallel, rejoicing in the achievements of women in the Cantorate over the last twenty years. Hopefully a recording will be readily available after the concert to anyone who wants to hear it.
At this 20 year mark, let us be thankful for all the opportunities available to women in our movement, and for the gifts these women have given us throughout the years. May we continue to thrive!
