Leslie Goldberg

Please tell me about your Jewish journey and your journey to HUC-JIR.

I was born into a secular Jewish family and grew up in Palatine, IL, a suburb of Chicago that has only a handful of Jewish families. I was raised with the Jewish values of life-long learning, welcoming guests, and the importance of showing up for family. My journey into the religious aspects of Judaism began at the University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign at both Hillel and Chabad. I remember walking into the Reform service at Hillel on my first Friday night in college and even though I was almost completely unfamiliar with any of the prayers or melodies, I was immediately hooked on the experience of sitting together with these new friends, singing and praying in harmony. When I graduated college and moved to rural Forrest City, AR, I would drive into Memphis to go to Friday night services at Temple Israel. When I moved to New Orleans, I again made Friday night services a priority and found my Jewish home at Touro Synagogue. I loved the stability and comfort of those multigenerational, Jewish spaces. Over the course of ten years there, I became a Friday night regular, a member of the lay-led Torah chavura, a Religious School music teacher, and — after a conversation with the rabbi where I told him I was ready to finally learn Hebrew — a teacher of a 3rd grade Hebrew class. Throughout this time, I was teaching music in public schools and embedding myself into the musical fabric that is New Orleans, playing and singing in jazz, funk, and brass bands, learning from culture bearers and community members, and singing in semi-professional choral ensembles.

My journey to HUC flowed from this wealth of experience, but was precipitated by the volatility of the New Orleans educational system. I had been questioning whether teaching music in New Orleans schools was the right place for me, a white, Jewish woman from outside of Chicago. I had done my best to create culturally responsive curricula and spotlight local voices and culture bearers, but I was feeling a draw towards learning about my own culture and serving my own people. When it became clear that my job was going to get cut (for the second time), I had a long talk with my cantor at Touro. He was open and honest about the challenges and joys of being a cantor, including how cantorial school is 5 years long, requires relocating twice, first to Jerusalem and then to NYC, and costs a significant amount of money. I decided to learn how to code instead. But after the start of the COVID pandemic and six months of struggling to focus as I learned Python, I reached out to HUC and set up an initial Zoom call to discuss cantorial school. I learned that scholarships are available and that being a cantor really does combine much of what I loved about teaching with what I had been doing for fun in my Jewish life. I started working on my cantorial application. I am so very glad that I did.

What is your favorite part of learning at the DFSSM?

My favorite part of learning at the DFSSM is getting to study from and alongside the legends of the Jewish music world and getting to call them my friends and mentors. I have had cantorial coaching with cantorial greats like Jack Mendelson and Faith Steinsnyder who entrust me with the future of this storied tradition of chazzanut and encourage me to make it my own. Professor Joyce Rosenzweig, Elana Arian, and Ivan Barenboim – all giants in the Jewish music world – are our collaborative musicians to support Thursday tefillah (prayer services) at HUC. On top of the faculty, my classmates include brilliant stars like Beth Reinstein, who invited us to sing on her album Shabbos Dreams which she wrote and released as an HUC student, and Iris Karlin, who wrote and staged her opera Yehudit as her senior project. I know this sounds like a lot of name dropping, and before coming here I would not have recognized almost any of these names, but meeting and recognizing the musical, liturgical, and spiritual genius in these and other colleagues has been the greatest joy of this program.

What are your hopes for this school year?

This year, I get to start working on my senior project. I will be drawing from my background in music education and what I have learned during my time at HUC to write a curriculum that makes it easier for cantors and educators in Jewish and secular settings to incorporate music from diverse Jewish communities into their practice. To this end, I am particularly excited about the Mizrachi Piyut elective I am taking this semester, taught by Rabbi Yosef Goldman. Piyutim are liturgical poems/ songs written for prayer and communal religious moments that are influenced by ancient Biblical texts, midrashim, and medieval Arabic poetic forms. Some are already embedded into Ashkenazi and Reform Jewish practice, such as Lecha Dodi and Adon Olam, but many, many more are common in Sephardic and Mizrachi traditions for specific holidays, times of day, times of year, and life-cycle events. Learning about these piyyutim and how they are used will inform my practice as a cantor to craft meaningful prayer experiences that can both reflect the cultural practices of my Sephardic and Mizrachi congregants and open a window to our global Jewish community and traditions.

Will you please tell us about any internship experience(s), such as pulpit work or a chaplaincy?

My first year in NY, I travelled down to Baltimore two weekends a month to serve as cantorial intern at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. My mentor there, Cantor Ben Ellerin, and the rest of the clergy were eager to support my development by giving me opportunities for feedback, safe places to stretch my skills, and guidance when I was confused or concerned. They facilitated my connections to congregants and lay leaders by setting up meals and encouraging me to shadow for life cycle events like baby namings and unveilings. They would take turns driving me back to my hotel, so I got one on one time with them to ask questions and learn about what their life as a rabbi/ cantor has been likes. Although I only spent one year there, I continue to stay in contact with the clergy and religious school director there and think of them and their wisdom often.

Since then, I have been serving as cantorial intern at Congregation Beth Elohim (CBE) in Park Slope, Brooklyn with Cantor Josh Breitzer. I wanted to make the change because I missed being embedded in my Jewish community like I used to be before cantorial school. Working in Brooklyn, where I live, allows me to make connections with my community members and engage in justice initiatives to make my community better through my internship. I also get a lot more time leading services, tutoring b’nei mitzvah students, and participating in life cycle rituals because I am close by. One unique thing about working at CBE is the “Across Brooklyn” and “Brownstone Brooklyn” Jewish holiday events. We partner with several other progressive and egalitarian synagogues and minyanim to make Jewish holidays such as Simchat Torah, Purim, and Selichot special and heightened experiences. The experience I am getting at CBE, working alongside and learning from such incredibly thoughtful, inspiring, and caring clergy people, is absolutely instrumental to how I have developed as a future cantor.

When I was deciding to go to cantorial school, one of the reasons I wanted to get this training was to be able to accompany people at the highest and lowest moments of their life — and actually get training in how to do that! This past summer, I completed one unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) by serving as a chaplain intern at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. I cannot recommend doing CPE enough to future (or even current) clergy. The internship and educational process has given me both skills and confidence for the important work of pastoral care. I learned so much about myself and my own tendencies and biases that have helped me in both my professional and personal life. I also got first-hand experience with the ways our medical, legal, economic, and criminal systems intersect to impact the lives of New Yorkers, especially those living on the margins. I now have a greater understanding of the ways poverty, immigration status, and addiction impact my community members and have greater knowledge about the resources available to New Yorkers to address those problems.