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Last week I returned from the Cantor’s Conference held in Israel. While we typically meet in cities around the U.S., every 7 years the conference takes place in Israel. As you might imagine, this conference was very much about October 7th – both the event itself and the aftermath of where Israel is today. While our rabbis have all been to Israel since that ominous day, this was my first opportunity to go.

The trip had many highs and lows. As professional musicians, the trip had many curated experiences that catered to our unique talents and roles within our congregations. We visited the Rimon School of Music (the Berklee of Israel), we participated in a recording of a piece of music with an interfaith orchestra, we participated in services in Tel Aviv with Beit Tefilah Yisraeli and sang Eili, Eili as the sun set on the Mediterranean, marking the beginning of Shabbat. We were treated to a myriad of Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) musical performances with their unique instruments and rhythms (some of which made my brain hurt trying to clap them out loud). I led services with the clergy from Kol HaNeshama in Jerusalem at an Israeli-Palestinian Arts Center called, Feel Beit.

However, one of the most moving parts of the trip was the moments after we heard the painful accounts of October 7th survivors and hostage family members. As cantors we are used to offering blessings as part of our jobs. After many of our encounters with people in deep pain we offered spontaneous blessings, and our way of blessing them was to sing. When words escaped us, when there was no way we could have possibly articulated empathy and hope, we resorted to our love language of song. When we heard from the brother of someone still in captivity, we sang a Mi Shebeirach, when we (all 60 of us) were served a meal by someone whose house still had a mortar shell in the living room “compliments of Hamas,” we sang Brich Rachamah, the blessing after a meal. When we met with the woman who is a liaison to the UN, we sang a traveler’s prayer. When we served dinner to soldiers on an army base who were headed to Gaza the next day, we sang Oseh Shalom. Over and over again, the soaring harmonies enveloped people truly in need of prayer, and over and over again we all shared tears of love and hope. It was an affirmation of my role as your cantor that music really matters. It is not just the regularly chanted liturgy that we need as a community, but also the songs and blessings offered at deeply emotional moments that help us live in a state of great joy or great pain and not feel alone. I am truly honored to serve in that capacity and to share those times when words may escape us, but music can hold us together.

While I was away, my tenure with Temple Sinai began a new chapter. I truly look forward to sharing the next few years with you marking those spiritual moments – the fun ones and the hard ones, in prayer and in song.

Shabbat Shalom,

Beth