Читать книгу The Making of a Reform Jewish Cantor - Judah M. Cohen - Страница 12
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Seeking the Tradition
In 1996, the American Conference of Cantors and Guild of Temple Musicians had its conference in Toronto. And I volunteered at it.… I walked around with a name tag that said “Cantor Wannabe” on it, as a conversation starter.… It was an incredible experience, because I didn’t grow up with cantors. And I didn’t know, what these cantor people were like. And I went to this convention … to try and find out what cantors were like; to talk to them; to find out what the whole thing was about. And that experience was what made me realize that that’s what I wanted to do.
—L. Doob, Feb. 14, 2000
Who can become a cantor?
By the end of the twentieth century, pursuing the cantorate within American liberal Jewish circles constituted both a calling and a career choice. While the training process no longer required years of apprenticeship, it remained a rarified pathway involving constant cantorial supervision. Aspirants to the cantorate had to recognize (and have others recognize) their potential as religious musical leaders; they had to approach a teacher or teachers who could affirm that potential; and they had to arrange their lives and finances to accommodate their intended training. These preparations, however, served only as a prelude. Once they had put a cantorial support structure in place, they could start their formal application to cantorial school.
Gaining access to cantorial training meant negotiating an application process similar in style and content to that of a graduate school or music conservatory. Aspirants inquired with the program’s director and then applied by sending written materials to a central admissions office. Faculty, in turn, evaluated applicants for their musical and spiritual potential, and then decided as a group to admit, defer, or deny admission. Through this multi-step procedure, established cantorial authorities could assess each student’s readiness to acquire the skills and discourses necessary for embarking upon cantorial training.
Application also served as an initial form of cultural engagement, requiring aspirants to model several of the skills deemed necessary for success in cantorial school. By showing themselves sufficiently compatible with the School’s social, religious, musical, and ideological norms, potential students aimed to convince faculty of their ability to represent both the cantorate and Reform Judaism. Their willingness, meanwhile, to undergo multiple means of assessment—written and spoken, performative and spiritual, intellectual and personal—allowed the School of Sacred Music faculty to preserve the cantorate’s exclusivity, while addressing the expectations attached to becoming a Reform Jewish musical authority. Applicants conversely used the process to determine their own investment in pursuing the School’s form of cantorial identity.
Coming to the Cantorate
Although the School of Sacred Music had long been an organ of Reform Judaism by the time I began my research in 1999, students came to the institution from a variety of Jewish backgrounds. Their respective decisions to apply to cantorial school resulted from a range of personal choices. Even so, however, their narratives seemed to hold important commonalities that illuminated the significance of certain trajectories toward cantorial training.1
Overwhelmingly, students viewed the decision to apply to cantorial school as a career choice. Reinforced by the School of Sacred Music’s status as a graduate/professional program (requiring all students to complete the equivalent of a bachelors degree before matriculation), all but one of the students I interviewed only began to consider the cantorate seriously during or after their years as college undergraduates. Most entered college intending to pursue other paths, and majored in such subjects as biochemistry, psychology, anthropology, and different forms of art music performance. Several also spent time in other professional fields before turning to the cantorate. Each student’s eventual choice to apply to cantorial school thus served as an alternative to other professional careers, and in most cases seemed a fitting path for continuing a liberal arts education.
The decision to attend cantorial school consequently differed substantively from the Golden Age models delineated by Mark Slobin (1989: 13–21) and some of the School’s older alumni.2 Where cantors were once seen to begin their journeys as young children recruited by mentors and trained over many years, applicants to the School of Sacred Music frequently started their cantorial training around the time of their application. Sometimes applicants’ childhood activities, including participation in youth choirs, paralleled the experiences of young choir boys (meshorerim) from the earlier era. Yet these involvements seemed incidental even in retrospect, receiving significance only during collegiate or post-collegiate life reassessments if at all.
From my cantorial student interviews, three contrasting pathways to the cantorate emerged, highlighting different but converging approaches to the meaning of cantorial identity within Reform Judaism.
The first pathway, usually experienced by one or two students in each class-year, began with a strong identification with Reform Judaism and its constituent organizations. Students who had taken this path often grew up in families where parents held lay or liturgical leadership roles in Reform congregations; they invariably participated in the movement’s youth group (NFTY, or the North American Federation of Temple Youth); and they spent several years both experiencing and leading music in Reform-influenced Jewish summer camps.3 Noted one:
I grew up in a Jewish household; was Bat Mitzvahed and confirmed; went to religious school for confirmation … And then growing up, I was heavily involved in music and theater activities, both Jewish and secular.… And heavily involved in NFTY. I was a regional board member for a few years. I spent time in a number of different summer camps … as a staff member and music specialist. (Interview)
While undergraduates and post-graduates, these applicants continued to serve in (often youth-oriented) leadership capacities within Reform Judaism, relying on the movement for both spiritual and financial well-being (as paid song leaders, for example). They thus came to the School of Sacred Music seeing themselves as future Reform Jewish clergy, familiar with the movement’s tenets and discourses, and invested in its future.
In part because the cantorate had little to no presence in the Reform youth movement in the last half of the twentieth century, students with strong Reform Jewish backgrounds saw cantors initially as marginal figures in their lives, generally unrelated to their active religious interests. They applied for cantorial school less from an interest in the culture of the cantorate than from a desire to pool their strengths into a professional position within the movement. Said one student:
I was around twenty-five [years old] and I decided: “You know, I look back over all my experience, every summer and I see where I am, and what I love doing. I realize that it’s Jewish music and synagogue life, and Jewish life. And I’ve had all these wonderful experiences that have given me insight into working with people and administrative parts of Temple life.…” And I realized that I needed to be doing something where I can be creative, artistically and musically. Where I wasn’t just doing the same thing all the time, where I wasn’t at a desk all the time, where I was working with people of different ages. And the cantorate really combined all those things and I had an affinity to synagogue life.… [The] pieces just came together. It did. Just became the obvious. And it chose me. Really. (Interview)
Significantly, these students seemed to place a great deal of importance on their identities as Reform Jews when applying to cantorial school. As opposed to many of the other School of Sacred Music students, none of those with a strong Reform Jewish background seriously appeared to consider cantorial schools sponsored by other Jewish movements (such as the Jewish Theological Seminary’s H. L. Miller Cantorial School). Their movement affiliation proved even more significant considering the students’ misgivings about the musical materials and values they saw taught at the School, which seemed different from the musical values they knew growing up:
[I]t’s not like I ever thought of becoming a cantor—people would say “Oh, you should become a cantor.” But I didn’t want to.… The model was not something that I wanted to emulate. The models that I had—people that were cantors where I was growing up, were just … they didn’t inspire me.… (Interview)
Intimate knowledge of the movement’s practices, however, empowered students to apply nonetheless, often in the hope of addressing the movement’s needs more effectively. Immediately after the above statement, the same student added:
[A]nd I began to learn that I didn’t have to be like that.… that I could be more involved than some cantors had been in the past in the community itself. But then [there were also] other aspects of being a clergyperson.… [T]he style of service was changing, and it didn’t have to be a cantor that always did a service [in] an operatic style or always performance style.… There could be more participation and different kinds of melodies. (Interview)
Students from this group bore strong similarities in background to incoming rabbinic students, the majority of whom also grew up in the 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 less-than-major holidays in their faith. And that wasn’t something that I was ready to give up.… I wanted to be—I still want to be—a musician; but I wanna have the stability that doesn’t normally go along with being a musician. (S. Warner. May 3, 2000)
The broader Jewish backgrounds of these students generally led them to consider a range of cantorial schools rather than gravitate to the school associated with one particular movement. All but one explored both the School of Sacred Music and the Conservative movement’s cantorial school. In the end, each chose Hebrew Union College for a different reason: some emphasized taking a liking to the movement’s ideological positions, while others were drawn to the quality of the music education, the pedagogy, and (for women) a perception that the Reform movement had better chances for job placement. None of the students, however, stated they chose Hebrew Union College for reasons having to do with earlier religious affiliations. Rather, their decision to apply seemed based on a desire to attend the “best” cantorial school for their needs.
The third and largest grouping of narratives, comprising over half the students I interviewed, involved students who came to the cantorate as a final, and fulfilling, career choice. Typically well- trained in classical voice and/or instrumental traditions, these students’ decisions to apply to the School of Sacred Music frequently came after years pursuing other musical careers. As with the second grouping, the large majority of these candidates had grown up outside of Reform Judaism, usually within the Conservative movement and educational system. Yet few cited their upbringings as crucial factors in their decisions to apply to the cantorate. Instead, the students within this group tended to describe the cantorate as a professional music career that resonated deeply with their personal aesthetics and ideologies.
Students recounted extensive classical musical training—usually vocal—throughout their early lives and undergraduate careers. Many also earned their bachelors degrees in music or musical performance. They did not seem to become familiar with the cantorate and synagogue music, however, until later. After graduation, many of these students went on to pursue careers in opera and other forms of musical performance. Others continued singing semiprofessionally, while holding full-time jobs outside the musical field.
Many of the students in this group began to consider the cantorate after substantial professional experience with established cantors. These relationships frequently started serendipitously. Some began with parttime employment in a professional synagogue choir, and expanded to solo and cantorial substitute work upon the recognition of the student’s Jewish identity:
I talked to a cantor at a Reform temple who hired me to be a sub[stitute] for his quartet.… [O]ne night [the cantor] was losing his voice; it was a Friday night service. I was subbing for the soprano; and I was the only Jewish person singing in the quartet. It’s pretty common; [in] all the other temples [I sang in] that had quartets, I was the only Jewish person.… So, [the cantor] turned to me and said: “I know it’s Friday night but, how quickly can you learn a service?” And, so I took the music home and the next morning I came over and sang the service; as the soloist and not in the quartet. And he basically just shuffled me around [during the service]. He’s like “Okay, get up now” and “Walk over here.” He came to the service; he just couldn’t open his mouth. So that was my first experience as a cantorial soloist. (Interview)
Other students came into similar relationships by taking congregational Hebrew School jobs, or simply by approaching the cantor directly. Bearing a resemblance to the “classical” apprenticeship approach to cantorial education, these relationships introduced students to increasing musical responsibilities, while teaching them both the progression of the service as well as the musical choices entailed in leading it. While this learning process seemed to focus more on professional development than on religious interest, students nonetheless gained a specialized knowledge through their activities, leading to an interest in further study.
Notably, only students in this group framed their attraction to the cantorate through a personal connection to the religious musical repertoire itself. Implicitly defining the music as a genre, their comments seemed to reinforce their perceptions of the cantorate as a kind of professional singing career; at the same time, the music seemed to become a vessel for some students to explore their Jewish identities in new and inspiring ways. In one particularly stark example, a student who had held an overall ambivalent view of Judaism described an intangible affinity to “the music” as a strong initial argument for entering the cantorate:
One day I was living in Chicago and I had flown into New York to do the High Holy Days [i.e., to sing as a part of a synagogue choir]. And I was sitting there one day and I thought, “I really wanna do this. Like, I really love this music. I don’t really like [i.e., fully understand] Judaism, but I really love this music. And, so, I have to do something with it. So maybe I’ll be a cantor.”.… I decided to do it on the basis that I was very connected to the music. And I hadn’t figured out why but I knew it was very important. So, I decided to go with it. (Interview)
Upon making their decisions to pursue a cantorial education, these students described leaving unsatisfying occupations. For them, being a cantor offered a more desirable quality of life, even at the temporary expense of financial viability:
I didn’t like my new [opera] colleagues. I didn’t like the way that they lived their lives. It wasn’t that they were bad people—they were great. And I had a great time. But their lives were so much as gypsies; and the woman who was singing the starring role in [my touring company of] La Traviata, she was married to another singer. They had no children. They couldn’t have children; not ’cause they physically couldn’t, [but] because their lives wouldn’t let them. And I didn’t want my life to look like theirs. I saw that and I said “This is not for me. I don’t want this.” And I also didn’t wanna just be “a Mom,” and stay at home. I wanted something that I loved to do that I was good at, and that really meant something to me. And I saw from that experience that opera was not it. And there was a lot of cattiness and a lot of cruelty between people; a lot of unprofessional behavior, as well as some great stuff. But, it wasn’t for me. (R. Lambert-Hayut, Feb. 10, 2000)
Like those in the second group, several students placed great significance on the comparative stability of cantorial jobs; and all hoped this occupational choice would be their last. Several indicated that studying for the cantorate would either cause or clear the way for major life changes and reorientations, including marriage, “settling down,” and “returning” to Judaism. Perhaps the most dramatic—and least pleasant—of these changes involved students who were in serious personal relationships with non-Jews. Though unwritten in the School’s literature, the School of Sacred Music (and all of Hebrew Union College) strongly discouraged students from dating or marrying non-Jews. Mentors thus advised potential applicants involved in exogamous relationships (all of whom were in this third group) not to apply until that situation resolved, since the admissions committee would inevitably reject them.
[W]hen I decided to go [to the School of Sacred Music, my partner] and I hadn’t been married yet.… So I called up, and made an appointment to talk to the Dean and I came in and he heard about my [partner]. And [the director] said … “Is [your partner] Jewish?” And I said “No.” And I told him we were getting married. And he said, “Well, you have to understand that you cannot apply; you cannot fill out an application form, unless [your partner] converts [to Judaism].” So I had to go home and tell this to [my partner.].… [A] lot of [my partner’s] extended family is Jewish, so [my partner] has attended many Jewish holidays, with me and with [my partner’s] family. Although [my partner] was brought up Christian. But [my partner] was not foreign to the religion. So, that was a very difficult process, that leaves a lot of resentment, which I absolutely understood.… (Interview)
This circumstance, while emotionally trying, emphasized the compound nature of the decision to attend cantorial school. Even before applying, students had to embrace lifestyle choices amenable to the institution’s ideology.
The concept of becoming a cantor through a graduate program, in contrast, never created internal conflict among those in this group (though some mentioned impatience with the additional years they had to spend in study). Of greater concern was which cantorial school to attend. While ideological and musical issues provided some sway, more influence seemed to come from the affiliations of the students’ cantorial mentors: nearly all the mentors of the students I interviewed in this group had received their training and/or taught at the School of Sacred Music, and all successfully directed students toward the School when they expressed interest in the cantorate.5
While the students comprising all three of these groups grew up in North America, others representing a small but significant international presence within the cohort—particularly from the Former Soviet Union and Australia—offered paths with important narrative variations.
Students recently emigrated from the Soviet Union had matriculated into cantorial school with some consistency (one every couple of years) since the late 1970s, often becoming symbols of American Jewry’s campaign for freeing Soviet Jewish dissidents at the time. By the 1990s, the age of Perestroika had created a somewhat different picture: young Russians began to enjoy greater opportunities to participate in Jewish cultural activities, and the state imposed fewer travel restrictions. Consequently, all the successful applicants to the School spent significant amounts of time in Israel before emigrating to the United States. Several applied to the School shortly after their arrival on American soil; and their decisions to apply appeared inspired by formal musical training in Russia, new freedoms for understanding their religious identities, and a desire to professionalize musicians’ skills within the Jewish world.6 The School of Sacred Music, which tended to place a higher priority on musicality than it did on Judaic knowledge and practice among its applicants (as I will describe later in this chapter), thus offered a space for realizing cantorial ambitions even as students addressed their own religious growth. Noted one student:
Actually, I was thinking about being a cantor in Russia. I taught in two Jewish schools: one every day [a day school] and one supplement[al]. And in [the] supplement[al school] … there [were] twelve girls.… And they had a very strong music background.… And so we had [an] ensemble—but when I left for Israel [on a grant program] and I was doing [Yiddish singing] tours over Russia and abroad.… it mixed up … you cannot direct child[ren] successfully. And so I thought if I could find a job where I could combine [Judaism with music] because I am enjoying working with kids.… There was an attempt to create a Reform congregation in St. Petersburg; but it [didn’t suit my taste].… Here [in the United States] … first I thought “Maybe Conservative [Judaism] will see it for me better.” But it happened that [a Reform cantor] in San Francisco played a big [mentoring] role both as a singer and as a cantor and then she helped me a lot in getting [me to apply to the School of Sacred Music]. And so here I am.…
I became more and more involved with Jewish culture and with Judaism and so it was, like, the next step. I always felt too secular among Orthodox: I had a lot of, and still have a lot of Orthodox friends because we took it very seriously in Rus sia [chuckles] and many people wanted to compensate all they missed [chuckles]. And I always felt too religious among secular people so, I ended up as Reform, I’d say. (L. Averbakh, Feb. 10, 2000)
The Australian applicants, meanwhile, underlined the School of Sacred Music’s status as a prime (if not the only) training institution for Progressive Judaism (an international movement closely related to North American Reform Judaism) more generally.7 Outside the United States, Progressive Jewish institutions tended to hold much less local influence than the more “normative” Orthodox or Traditional groups. Consequently, international cantorial applicants sometimes grew up in more traditional Jewish settings, and came to the movement after undergoing an ideological shift in young adulthood. Their resulting background and knowledge represented a form of Judaism parallel to, but not exactly, American Reform Jewish practices.
The students who decided to apply to cantorial school thus converged through several pathways, all requiring them to think about their religious and musical identities within particular forms of professional training and Jewish ideology. Once decided upon their paths, students faced their next task: gathering materials and preparing profiles that would prove their worthiness for commencing study.
The Application Process
Applying to the School of Sacred Music brought candidates through a months-long, multi-step evaluation process that assessed musical skill and “talent,” Judaic knowledge, and moral character. As self-appointed gatekeepers of the cantorial tradition, the School of Sacred Music’s faculty used these criteria to mediate between several cultural systems—Western academic convention, the “secular” musical world, Reform Jewish identity, and a self-propagated Jewish musical culture—in order to determine which applicants qualified for cantorial study.
The 1999 publicity pamphlet for the School of Sacred Music listed three admissions “prerequisites” for prospective students. “Musical Competence” included “a trained voice,” “sight reading,” and “keyboard harmonization.”8 “Hebrew Competence” comprised “the equivalent of at least one year of college level [Modern] Hebrew.” “Personal Characteristics,” finally, served as a measure for determining readiness for a life of Jewish spiritual service (HUC-JIR SSM [1999]: Inside cover). Taken together, these abilities provided a clear basic format for the discussions that accompanied a student’s candidacy. Applicants and members of the admissions committee echoed these categories in one form or another while describing the admissions process, suggesting their significance as a common reference for mapping preparations and progress.
Students who made the decision to apply to the School of Sacred Music generally did so after much deliberation, and frequently with the assistance of other Reform cantors; they usually, as a result, had knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses in relation to the program’s expectations. By the time they arranged preliminary interviews, therefore, many had already started seeking instruction in their weaker areas: usually voice, Hebrew, or music theory. Their first meeting with the School’s director consequently represented an official declaration of interest, and opened the opportunity for additional guidance about whether and how to prepare for the next parts of the evaluation.
Whenever possible, Cantor Israel Goldstein, the Director of the School of Sacred Music during the time of my fieldwork, conducted the preliminary interview in his office at the New York campus of Hebrew Union College. According to Goldstein, each interview took about forty minutes, and comprised three parts: a dialogue about the student’s religious affiliations and practices, a short vocal and musical evaluation, and a discussion of the student’s chances for admission. “After I’ve met with a student, if I feel that this student has a chance of being accepted by the admissions committee, I will then give them an application,” explained Goldstein (I. Goldstein. Dec. 27, 2000). For aspirants unable to come to New York for an interview, the School would either make arrangements for another cantor to interview the student locally, or accept the recommendation of the applicant’s cantorial mentor. A positive outlook in any of these cases would lead the School to send out the formal application.9
While the preliminary interview helped establish a meaningful dialogue between the student and the School, the paper application required a wide breadth of written information in order to gather a detailed portrait along the lines the School’s director had described informally. Its emphasis clearly fell on the side of character and life experience rather than musical achievement, and closely resembled the application for the College’s parallel rabbinical program.10 Applicants to the School of Sacred Music thus had to satisfy a profile as potential clergy as much as they had to showcase their musical abilities. Entering into a seminary in which they would learn and interact alongside the movement’s future rabbis and professional educators, potential students needed to express their commitment to a career that involved teamwork and a common spiritual language in addition to showing their growth as musicians.11
One part of the application aimed to document the applicant’s history, lifestyle, and upbringing. Aspirants needed to submit high school, college, and graduate school transcripts along with scores from the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) as proof of their academic achievement. To verify religious identity and upbringing, prospective students had to list the occupations, birthplaces, and religious affiliations of their parents and “spouse/fiancé(e)/partner”;12 they needed to provide information about their current rabbis, cantors, and “home congregations,” in addition to a “date of conversion [to Judaism]” for those not born Jewish. A page-long chart allowed students to enumerate their “Jewish Education” according to the types of religious schools they had attended and rites of passage completed. Elsewhere, the application asked for a list of the applicant’s “Cultural & Extra-Curricular Experience,” including “Plays seen, concerts heard and books read in the past year.” Six confidential recommendations from a mix of academic, Judaic, and personal acquaintances (one of whom had to be an alum of the School of Sacred Music) were configured to address the qualities desired in Reform religious leadership, as well as exhibit a level of community involvement expected of potential Reform clergy. Most importantly, applicants had to submit detailed narratives describing their paths to the cantorate and their reasons for applying to the School of Sacred Music. These materials, taken together, helped inform the admissions committee about each applicant’s sense of Jewish commitment, intellectual curiosity, and moral compass.
Applicants for all Hebrew Union College programs also needed to submit forms pertaining to their physical and psychological health—including a doctor-signed physical form and a release authorizing a “psychological examination consisting of an interview and various psychometric examinations.”
The School of Sacred Music’s applicants had to submit two additional forms. One required a detailed account of academic, extracurricular, and professional musical experience, with a special focus on “Jewish Music Education.” The other sheet required signatures confirming three statements. One of these statements confirmed the student’s official “intent of application,” and clarified the rest of the application process while providing an estimate of tuition costs. The other two statements, meanwhile, spoke deeply to the values and structures of the Reform cantorate, and provided clear glimpses into the School’s expectations for musical and academic integrity.
One statement, titled “Employment,” required matriculating students to maintain good academic standing in the program before taking on any public, paid cantorial responsibilities. Accepted candidates, moreover, had to make all arrangements for cantorial employment “either while a student or after graduation” through the School’s central Placement Office. Though perhaps obvious to students entering the program, the statement set the standards for adherence to the Reform cantorate’s professional norms: both representing the process through which students would receive future student pulpits, and hinting at the procedures involved in post-graduation placement as an invested cantor. The need to sign the statement even before holding a formal audition evinced the gravity with which the School (and the American Conference of Cantors) enforced these standards.
The final statement offered a strongly worded paragraph regarding students’ use of “cantorial curriculum material” (primarily sheet music) distributed over the course of the program. Successful applicants had to agree in advance to use this material for themselves only, distributing it to no one “save only students and graduates of aforesaid school,” under penalty of “immediate and automatic dismissal from [cantorial] school.” Though obliquely invoking intellectual property laws, this statement also projected an advanced portrait of the cantorate as a kind of confraternity. Those within the group had the authority to handle a certain repertoire of material, and exchange it freely; outside the group, for reasons the applicant would learn later, it was necessary to practice caution. By requiring applicants to sign this statement, the School clearly emphasized the boundaries of cantorial identity, as well as the responsibility of people looking to join the confraternity to maintain those boundaries.
Only about half the students who received applications actually completed and submitted them to the School, according to its registrar. Matriculating students described the intensity of the process: collecting and composing the necessary application materials proved lengthy, complicated, and time-consuming. Once they had submitted their paperwork, however, applicants could proceed to the final series of evaluations.
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While formally called the “audition” or “interview,” the last stage of application in fact encompassed several activities required for acceptance to the School, including Hebrew and music theory competency exams as well as a psychological evaluation. These all took place at and around the School of Sacred Music’s campus in New York City, usually in January and March—or whenever the School’s admissions committee could meet together for an extended period. Applicants needed to show satisfactory results in each category of testing to achieve admission. Of these various criteria, however, both applicants and evaluators placed particular emphasis on the relatively brief face- to-face meeting students had with the admissions committee to display vocal skills and hold a short, personal discussion. Thus, the rhetorical label of “audition” or “interview” given to the entire visit provided a telling perspective the committee’s own view of the process.
As opposed to the preliminary interview, applicants could audition only in New York, and had to make housing and travel arrangements at their own expense. Students usually described this time as an anxious one, spurred both by insecurity over whether their various preparations (Hebrew, music theory, vocal training) had been sufficient, and by the perceived formality of the proceedings. A number of students had checked with Cantor Goldstein several times in the period leading up to the interview to report on their progress and ask for feedback. Such behavior suggested the heightened level of commitment required for application to the program, especially regarding aspects outside the musical realm such as Hebrew knowledge. At the same time, the stated emphasis on the personal audition during this time underlined the extent to which the process mirrored that of a conservatory (or opera company) audition, with which many students had some familiarity.
