the organist found an appropriate place in the music to end, and slowed to a satisfying conclusion. The echoes trailed off.
From my place in the side balcony, I could differentiate between the degree candidates in each program with relative ease. Nearly all the twenty-eight rabbinic candidates had prayer shawls (tallitot) draped over their graduation robes, presumably to denote the spiritual gravity of their anticipated leadership positions. Of the ten cantorial candidates, in contrast, only three wore tallitot; the rest, to signify their completion of the Master of Sacred Music degree, wore pink master’s cowls.2 Such attire offered a symbolic window upon the students’ expectations as together they commenced a “Service of Ordination and Investiture,” the ritual by which they would gain official status as religious leaders in American Reform Judaism (Service 2000).
The service, led by rabbinic and cantorial faculty from Hebrew Union College, differed significantly from the standard Jewish prayer ritual. Instead of moving through the normative parts of the Jewish liturgy, those gathered progressed through a series of readings, addresses and musical selections, all based around the ceremony’s chosen theme of “Light.” Written specifically for the occasion by a designated committee from the graduating class, and issued in booklet form to the graduates and attendees, the service outlined an emotional ascent, leading the congregation on a spiritual journey that would broadcast and reinforce Hebrew Union College’s values while adding meaning to the graduates’ impending titles. Participants recited lines emphasizing their devotion to Jewish history and teachings, heard cantorial and choral music setting key religious texts, and listened to warm greetings from Reform Judaism’s national leadership.
Once the preliminary prayers ended, the graduates rose, turned around to face the congregation, and intoned a responsive reading thanking family, friends and teachers for their roles in helping them reach this day. The faculty of the Hebrew Union College, seated right behind the graduating candidates, symbolically accepted their students’ imminent transitions into colleagues by completing the reading, as they declared together: “Arise, shine, for your light has come” (Service 2000: 6). With all but the final step completed, the graduates resumed their seats in the pews, silent in anticipation. The President and spiritual leader of Hebrew Union College rose from his place on the pulpit, came to the front of the raised platform, briefly addressed the assembly on the meaning of the graduates’ new responsibilities, and then commenced the annual ritual of “Investiture and Ordination.”
The President, alone, walked toward the back of the pulpit, climbing several steps to reach an imposing and majestic holy ark—the holding place for the synagogue’s Torahs, and the spiritual center of the sanctuary. He slid open the doors to reveal a number of ornately dressed Torah scrolls in a brightly lit vertical compartment. He bowed his head in silence for about a minute. Then he turned and descended the steps, ready to commence.
The cantorial students received their spiritual sanction first. Rising from their seats as a group, the graduates prepared for investiture, a process titled intentionally to express both similarity to and difference from rabbinic ordination.3
Cantor Israel Goldstein, Director of the School of Sacred Music, came to the reader’s desk at the front of the pulpit. Using a formal and tradition-laden term for “cantor,” he ceremoniously presented to the President the members of the graduating cantorial class, “who are to be invested as chazanim in Israel.”4 Goldstein called the candidates up by name, one by one—first in Hebrew, then in English. As each mounted the steps on the right side of the pulpit, the organist began playing music specifically requested by the student. Their choices ranged from Franz Schubert’s “An die Musik” (1817) to a selection from Ernest Bloch’s Sacred Service (1930-1933), to a setting of Czech composer Ilse Weber’s Holocaust-era song “Ich wandre durch Theresienstadt.” Wafting softly throughout the entire sanctuary, the music reflected an intensely personal sonic environment. Only the cantorial students, their teachers, and their close friends and relatives could understand the meaning of what might otherwise have been construed as generic background sound.
Once on the pulpit, each student walked over to the President, who in turn led him or her by the hand up the steps to face the open ark. When they arrived, the two turned to each other, and the President placed his hands on the student’s shoulders. A larger than life and deeply intimate moment unfolded: even with the entire congregation witnessing the proceedings, students recalled the moment afterward with little memory beyond their immediate surroundings. Standing as if in tableau, the President spoke softly to the candidate, his words masked by the organ music.
For about forty-five seconds, the President and student maintained their silhouetted pose; perhaps during this time the candidate would nod his or her head minutely. Then the President turned his hands upward, firmly but tenderly holding the base of the student’s head. After around half a minute, he leaned forward, touching foreheads with the candidate. About fifteen seconds later they broke the tableau and embraced. The President led the newly invested cantor back down the stairs, where Goldstein, waiting, gave the graduate a diploma and a warm handshake. The new cantor would cross to the left side of the pulpit and descend back down to the floor level as the next candidate came up.
Several students returned to their seats in tears. Others openly showed a mix of gravitas and revelation, dwelling in the spiritual moment. Several hugged each other upon returning to the pew, having reached the final stage of a long journey.
All had been transformed. Culminating at least four years of intense study, they had gained the right to call themselves invested cantors, with all the responsibilities the title entailed. Together they had been embraced by the College—and, by extension, the Reform movement—as official representatives of the musical traditions of the Jewish people.
At a reception held afterward in the basement of an Upper East Side synagogue, family, friends, former instructors and current cantorial students congratulated the new School of Sacred Music graduates, proudly calling them by their long-awaited title of “Cantor.” It was a sign of respect, admiration, and accomplishment.
In the following years, these new cantors would explore the meaning of their spiritual labors. They would use their training to lead religious services, instruct congregants, and perform pastoral duties at the synagogues and other organizations that employed them. They would also build reputations as authorities on Jewish music through local concert appearances, special synagogue presentations, and performances of original, Jewish-themed works. Throughout, they would address questions first introduced during their years at the School of Sacred Music: What did it mean to be a vessel of Jewish music, particularly in a society that, they frequently found, held different ideas about the sounds of Judaism than what they had learned? How did their training prepare them for careers as pastoral leaders within liberal Jewish life? And perhaps most significantly, What had they become after their time at the School of Sacred Music?
In this book, I intend to explore that musical becoming—the process by which students learned, internalized, and then assumed the knowledge and abilities necessary to become communal, recognized, musical authorities.
Ethnomusicologists have long looked to musical authorities as crucial sources for understanding musical cultures: they have studied with them, marking musical growth under their tutelage as key parts of the participant observation process; and they have often used the knowledge and opinions obtained from these authorities as lenses for evaluating broader questions of musical style, structure, and social activity. Yet despite their centrality to the concerns of ethnomusicology, musical authorities have received relatively little critical scrutiny as figures who themselves had to undergo their own forms of musical transformation. Fieldworkers treated them as idols of sorts: the faces of musical practice, active symbols of musical tradition (often in opposition to modernity, external political and financial influence, or commercialism), and gatekeepers of musical knowledge. Ethnomusicology’s major figures included them prominently in their conceptions of the field: Alan Merriam devoted an entire chapter of his seminal 1964 book The Anthropology of Music to establishing these authorities as “specialists” (1964: 123–144), and Mantle Hood, in his textbook The Ethnomusicologist, emphasized finding and working intensively with teachers as a first priority for fieldworkers (1982[1971]: 212, 230–246).