A Cantor's Perspective

By Jacob Kamaras

JNS.org

T

he holiest days on the Jewish cal-
endar, Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur, are largely spent in syna-
gogue. Yet prayer isn't usually the focus
when Jews prepare for the High Holidays,
observes Cantor Arik Wollheim.
"Hopefully people go through this pro-
cess of repentance and they give charity,
but what about prayer?" Wollheim tells
JNS.org. "People neglect that. How many
people open the prayer book before Rosh
Hashanah and Yom Kippur and go over the
davening?"
The answer, Wollheim says, is almost
no one. But he is looking to change that.
At Congregation Beth Jacob in Beverly
Hills, Calif., where he is in his first year as
cantor, Wollheim organized a sing-along
preparation event in advance of the High
Holidays, in addition to posting melodies
on the synagogue's website.
During this year's High Holidays at Beth
Jacob, an Orthodox synagogue, Wollheim
will be accompanied by the Maccabeats,
the popular Jewish a cappella group that
burst onto the scene in 2010 with their hit
Chanukkah song "Candlelight"
A student of famed cantor Yitzchak
Eshel, Wollheim — formerly the can-
tor at Congregation Agudath Sholom of
Stamford, Conn., retired U.S. Sen. Joe
Lieberman's synagogue — sat down with
JNS.org to give his perspective on the Rosh
Hashanah and Yom Kippur services.

What are the challenges of trying to
engage a congregation in High Holidays
services?

"For the holidays, together with the
regulars, the people who come every
week, or several times a month, in every
congregation you also have a number
who come only for the High Holidays.
And they are a little bit disconnected with
what's going on throughout the year in
the synagogue.
"The challenge is [figuring out] how
to create a service that makes everybody
happy. My approach is to create a salad
of styles and selections. For instance, I
use classical cantorial music, what I call
`nice oldies' that congregations sing, that
everybody knows. I use Israeli songs. The
most recent melodies that religious music
and the yeshiva world provide. And I use
every form of Jewish music, almost. My
challenge is, what's the balance between all
those different components?
"Especially here in America, and also in

38

September 12 • 2013

JN

Cong reg ation Beth Jacob

For meaningful High Holidays prayer, preparation is key.

Cantor Arik Wollheim of Congregation
Beth Jacob of Beverly Hills, Calif.

Israel, not everybody understands all the
text. Thank God, we have prayer books
with an English translation, but it's not
the same [as understanding the Hebrew],
and people sometimes don't bother to look
at the translations. It's not that they don't
want to, but you're engaged already in the
recitation of the prayer, you don't have
time to also look [at the translation].
"For the High Holidays liturgy, we have
a lot of poems, and many of them were
written during the Middle Ages. It's very
poetic, high language that is not that easy
to understand. How do I create that inspi-
ration?"
How does a cantor prepare for the
High Holidays?
"I'm going through a tremendous
amount of research in order to create that
`salad:
"You have to understand what your
objectives are. Do I want to do congrega-
tion singing? How much congregation
singing do I want to do? What is the mood
that I'm trying to create? There's a con-
nection between one [objective] and the
other. It's like one symphony. You have a
theme, and a theme and a theme, and then
the fillers in between, and the question is:
What do you do with those fillers? How are
they going to work together?
"Preparation is huge. Every year we're
different. I'm not the same person I was
last year. This is the Day of Judgment.
"I think every cantor feels a huge
responsibility because we're praying not
only on our behalf, we're praying on behalf
of the entire congregation. It's a tremen-
dous responsibility, and you go through
the text, and you try to figure out: How
does it resonate with you? What is the
meaning of the text? How can you make it
relevant to you, to your life, to the lives of
your congregants?"

Which prayers do you see as the
highlights of the High Holidays service?

Local Cantors Prepare

"I think without doubt, Unetaneh Tokef
is one of the highlights. First of all, because
of the text. [It includes] the description
of the process that goes on in Heaven. It
gives us an idea of how God examines each
case, so to say. From a musical perspective,
this is your chance as a cantor to really
shine, to show what you can do, especially
because the text is so moving. This is your
moment to try to inspire people, to really
get them to try to feel something.
"No. 2, there's a prayer called the Hineni.
It's the first thing that the cantor says
before Mussaf. The cantor is the only one
who recites that prayer. Basically, it's a
prayer for the cantor, asking, 'God, please
help me in this task, and don't judge them,
my congregation, because of my sins. If I'm
doing it wrong, don't let if affect them: It's
really a personal prayer that reminds us
cantors that this is not about how we sing
and the music and all that kind of stuff.
It's about this tremendous responsibility
that we have of pleading on behalf of the
congregation:'
What do you remember about the first
time you led a High Holidays service?
"I was 14. It was a little synagogue in
the town where I grew up in Israel. I led
the services with my dad. Obviously, I was
nervous, but I felt comfortable because I
started leading services as soon as I was
bar mitzvahed, so already I led services
for a whole year prior to that. So I felt
comfortable, and I knew my dad was next
to me.
"It was a congregation where every-
body knew me since I was born, so it felt
like [leading the service] amongst your
family. It was a very supportive audience.
"I did that for a couple of years, and
that gave me confidence later on, when I
started taking on jobs elsewhere:'
What advice would you give about
how to approach High Holidays prayer?
"The service is very long; we have a
lot of text. If I have one recommenda-
tion to people for the holidays, it's don't
take a prayer as something obvious, that
we've done every year and that's it. Take
the prayer book, take the Machzor, and
go over the text. See what it means to
you. See what prayers resonate with you.
Refresh your memory with some of the
tunes. Read the English translation, so
you'll know what you're saying.
"I can guarantee that if you do some
preparation, you will get much more out
of the service, and this is regardless of
who is leading it."

"After Shavuot, while most people begin to
look forward to the summer, I set my sights
backward toward the previous High Holy
Days. I begin to dissect the services and
critique where and when I or the choir may
have not accomplished, through the music we
used, this task of revealing to the congrega-
tion the content of our historical Machzor
(holiday prayer book) and our relationship to
God through its stories, poetry and prayers.
"I start listening to or reading through
music to see if I can find something to
replace the music that didn't live up to
expectations.
"I also reread the Machzor, which has been
part of my life since childhood, trying to find
something new in the ancient words. I search
not only for a spark to be used to lift my per-
sonal prayer, but also to find new inspirations
for the congregation.
"I practice the many services over and
over again so that when the time comes to
lead my congregation, I will no longer be
thinking of how to conduct the service. I
now just stand at the Amud (lectern) and let
the words and music lead me and the choir
on a spiritual journey,
and do my best to bring
my congregation along
for the ride:'

❑

- Cantor Earl Berris,

Congregation B'nai Moshe,

West Bloomfield

"Teshuvah (return) is such a personal and
ongoing process that involves not simply our
prayers for forgiveness during the High Holy
Days, but also our posture and state of mind
during the entire year.
"As I listen to the call of the shofar
through the month of Elul, I pray that
God will grant me for God's own sake the
wisdom and strength to properly atone for
any incorrect actions words or thoughts.
In keeping with that intention, I approach
those I may have wronged to ask for forgive-
ness.
"Finally, I rely on our beautiful prayers
and traditions to clear my own self-centered
interests from my mind, and allow, as much
as I am able, for my voice
to become simply a vehi-
cle for the words in our
Machzor, and the thirst
for teshuvah and loving
unity in our congregation
and community."

- Cantor Michael Smolash,

Temple Israel, West Bloomfield