Cantor Confidential

I handed my credit card to the cashier at the nail salon a few months ago. “Cantor Audrey M. Kessler,” she read out loud. There was silence. “Cantor?” she questioned. “I thought your name was Penny.” “Um, no,” I responded, “Penny is who I am [ed. note: "Audrey" is my legal name], Cantor is what I do.” She politely nodded, an unmistakable visual sign that she had NO idea what “cantor” meant. She’s not alone. When I am asked “what I do,” I often find myself tongue-tied, Moses-like, tripping over my words as I explain the difference between my work and that of a rabbi’s. I have tried humor, as in, “the synagogue clergy equivalent of Ginger Rogers, who did everything Fred Astaire did but in heels and backwards.” I have explained carefully that I am the Jewish clergy who specializes in Jewish music and prayer. I have read dictionary definitions Periodically I am told of the many virtues of someone’s church cantor, a musician – not a clergy person – who leads a church choir. And ev...

There are a lot of things I do on a daily basis beyond the usual personal hygiene chores of tooth brushing, showering, etc. One thing I have long wanted to do - but have never given myself the drive or discipline - is do what the words above the entrance to my synagogue say I should do: Aseh torat'cha keva ... set a fixed time for study. The online study opportunities have always seemed out of my intellectual reach and I have become overwhelmed by the amount of work involved. So it was with some hesitation but lots of determination that I joined a group called "Sefer Ha-Bloggadah." It's a two-year daily study of Sefer Ha-Aggadah (The Book of Legends) organized by participants at the National Chavurah Committee. Compiled by the Hebrew poet Hayim Nachman Bialik and the editor Yehoshua Ravnitsky, it is a collection of thousands of stories and folklore from the Talmud and throughout rabbinic literature, from the creation of the world to the world to come. At the end of th...