The Pulpit Isn’t a Pedestal

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Rabbi Cantor Angela Buchdahl pulls back the veil on many ways in which sermons speak a community. Rabbi Cantor Angela Warnick Buchdahl serves as the Senior Rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York City and is the first woman to lead Central’s Reform congregation in its 180-year history. Rabbi Cantor Buchdahl first joined Central Synagogue as Senior Cantor in 2006. In 2014, she was chosen by the congregation to be Senior Rabbi.

Rabbi Cantor Buchdahl was invested as a cantor in 1999 and also ordained as a rabbi in 2001 by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York where she was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. She earned a bachelor of arts in religious studies from Yale University in 1994. Born in Korea to a Jewish American father and a Korean Buddhist mother, Rabbi Cantor Buchdahl is the first Asian American to be ordained as a cantor or rabbi in North America. Prior to her service at Central Synagogue, Rabbi Cantor Buchdahl served as Associate Rabbi/Cantor at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York.

Rabbi Cantor Buchdahl has been nationally recognized for her innovations in leading worship, which draw large crowds both in the congregation’s historic Main Sanctuary and via livestream and cable broadcast to viewers in more than 100 countries.

Rabbi Cantor Buchdahl has been featured in dozens of news outlets including the Today Show, NPR, and PBS and was listed as one of Newsweek’s “America’s 50 Most Influential Rabbis.” She serves on the boards of the AJC, the Asia Society, the New York Board of Rabbis, and the Yale University President’s Council. Rabbi Cantor Buchdahl and her husband Jacob Buchdahl have three children.