I believe that God speaks to us through song, and that God gives us the ability to sing in order to praise God in return. Music, like God, is everywhere around us, but also far away, lofty, inaccessible. Music is the quiet song following us wherever we go, and the loud dramatic chords and orchestras that sound only at the grandest moments. We can express our innermost yearnings through music. We can connect to other people in our lives through music, and by doing so, to God.

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Music has always been my primary link to religion and spirituality, and many of my most spiritually deep experiences have surrounded it. Music is really a thread that has run throughout my entire life, from early childhood. My mother is a classical pianist who rehearsed, gave concerts and even entered a piano competition while she was carrying me. So the music I heard must have imprinted itself on my cells.

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My Mom grew up Jewish, and my Dad Christian. Yet more than either of these, Music was the religion my parents instilled in me growing up. I saw the way music transported my Mom to another place, when she was playing. The emotional expression it allowed was a form of prayer. The cadences and themes of the great pieces that became familiar to me after so many hearings, was like a liturgy. This love of music never left me and would go on to play out in different ways later in my life.

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Music was a link for me into Judaism – hearing my cousins chanting from the Torah really enticed me to want to do the same thing, although there was never any pressure or expectation from my parents to have a bat mitzvah. It led me back to Judaism again, after not being involved in it from the time following my Bat Mitzvah to my first year of College. I sought out the synagogue again, and the familiar tunes I had learned in Hebrew school helped me connect and feel part of the community.

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As an adult visiting and later living in Israel, I felt a strong desire to learn more about traditional Jewish music. I sought out a teacher, and was fortunate to find one of the greatest scholars of Jewish music alive today, Chazzan Eli Fleischer. He introduced me to chazzanut and I took weekly one on one lessons with him. One time I was practicing a short piece he had assigned from the Kabbalat Shabbat service, from Psalm 29 – the line “kol Adonai Ycholel Ayalot…”  This piece was particularly beautiful and moving to me, especially when the music soared up on the words “Adonai Oz L’amo yiten”. On those words, “Adonai will give His people strength, Adonai will bless His people with peace”, I heard my voice open up as it had never done before and I really felt like I was singing to God. I didn’t even know quite where the sound was coming from, but I was producing it. There was an effortless to it, and an abandonment of control. I felt like I had reached beyond my limited self. This experience, along with my teacher’s encouragement that I had what it took to be a chazzan, pushed me to pursue that goal and become a Cantor.