Volunteer of the Month: Cantor Penny Kessler

Penny Kessler is a graduate of HUC-JIR DFSSM. She has been at her pulpit at United Jewish Center in Danbury, CT, since 1995. 
 
In what capacity have you volunteered for the ACC? Did someone approach you, or did you volunteer on your own?  

I started on the Social Action Committee through my desire to get the ACC as active in social justice issues as other URJ affiliates. I was asked to chair the Social Action and Justice committee, and was one of the ACC’s representative to the URJ Committee on Social Action. I was invited to sit on the Committee for Ethics and Appeals. Until this past July, I chaired the Communications Committee, editing and coordinating Koleinu in its various formats and working to coordinate and develop different protocols for communications, including social media and special-interest chavurot. I’ve also chaired and co-chaired publicity committees for several ACC-GTM conventions. I’ve been honored to serve on the Executive Board, and I currently chair the ACC Hadrahah mentoring program, an effort that helps me branch out into new territory.
 
What is the most rewarding for you in volunteering for the ACC? 

Being able to affect change for the growth of Reform Cantorate, watching initiatives that I’ve recommended or worked on with other people come to life to benefit cantors and the cantorate, learning and being part of such a healthy organization. And honestly, the most valuable part of being a volunteer is feeling useful, something that comes from volunteering for the ACC, no matter how seemingly insignificant the effort. 
 
What is the best part about being a cantor? 
 
Singing, leading services, all the things that pulpit cantors get to do. I wouldn’t give up any of those things.  But especially with long-term pulpit experience (18 years so far) and maintaining great relationships with people from my student pulpit, the best part is when people come up to me years later and say, I’ve never forgotten that hospital visit, I’ve never forgotten our conversation, and I’ve never forgotten that smile that we shared during the Shabbat service. It’s being able to bring Judaism in a real visceral way to people for whom God and Judaism may not be up there on their radar. It’s being able to give Torah and learn Torah through this unique thing that we call music and sensitivity and teaching, the heart-to-heart Jewish connection that only a Cantor can bring to a hospital bed or a shiva minyan or a funeral or even rolling around on the floor with a bunch of kindergarteners; these are things I can do as a Cantor that no one else can do. 
 
What is the biggest challenge facing cantors and the cantorate, looking into the future? 

It’s already there: the biggest problem of organized liberal religion which is the growing sense of people who believe that they don’t need community, at least not face-to-face community. I think the Pew study got it right: Fewer people feel the need to affiliate with an organization, and fewer and fewer people feel a need to spend money on an affiliated community. I struggle as a cantor about what to do with myself if I’m not part of a synagogue community. Add to this the problem that so many kids have parents who want their kids involved in every activity so that spirituality and religion take back seats. Years ago, the parents who would be so open about it were few and far between; but those attitudes are becoming the norm now. Too many teenagers, millennials and Gen-x’ers certainly don’t feel a need for a formal connection. It’s amazing how these attitudes have been picked up so quickly by the baby-boom and older generations. It’s so sad. That leads to a lack of a need for a Jewish community that Jews have an obligation to support. I have congregants who leave our congregation saying, “ I don’t use you anymore.” What is it we’re not providing that people get that sense that ‘I don’t need you anymore.’ How do we bring them in? How do we build a community for them? How do we change the way we are doing things so that we can touch Jews who on the one hand say they don’t need a synagogue but on the other hand seem to be crying out for more spirituality in their lives? I wish I had good answers. 
 
Why did you become a Cantor? How’d you get into the business? 

I had no cantorial influence as a kid, but my being a cantor is an outgrowth of singing in a synagogue volunteer choir. My family joined the Reform synagogue in our community when our daughter was born because there was a choir, and I wanted to learn and sing Jewish music. By the way, I am now the cantor of that same synagogue. Sam Radwine was the Cantor at that congregation at the time. I was a professional musician, a singer, and I wanted to sing in their choir. Sam welcomed me with open arms. He was doing a lot of travelling and he asked me if I would cover for him on some Friday evenings, which was pretty terrifying. After he left, we had a student cantor, Alan Leider. I looked him at him and said, “Ah, you go to school for this sort of thing.” Eventually he moved on, and the synagogue hired Don Roberts. And I said to him, “I want to do what you do. How do I do that?” So I spoke to Sam, Alan, and Don, and I realized that I wanted to go HUC-JIR. My twin sons were a year old maybe, and I said to my husband that I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life: I wanted to be a Cantor. It was the blend of music and Judaism (which had become very important to me). I knew the year in Israel was going to be a non-starter; my husband was/is a dentist, and I knew that leaving for a year would be detrimental to my family. I applied and was accepted at HUC-JIR SSM; and with the great support of Cantor Izzy Goldstein and Don Roberts and the faculty at HUC-JIR – and almost two years of private study – I exempted out of the year in Israel. I commuted 4-5 hours round trip each day from my home in Connecticut for the three years I was at HUC-JIR. It was pretty exhausting, but I wouldn’t have changed it. 

By the way, my becoming a cantor is where the pull of community comes in: When my daughter was born, we wanted to have her named but my husband and I believed you didn’t hire a rabbi without joining the congregation. So we first found the congregation, then asked the Rabbi; and the rest really is history. 
 
Tell us one thing about yourself that we might not know that you would want us to learn about you. 

 I’m on Facebook; I talk a lot; my life is an open book. But by nature I’m extremely shy. I’ve learned over the years how to ask people for help, to reach out to make relationships. It’s very hard for me to do; and I dare say that most people who know me would say, “Are you kidding?”