@cantorzoeFRS has been my home since I was three, so I felt incredibly lucky when the community invited me to join the team as the first ordained Reform cantor in the UK. Together, we worked out what it meant to add a different type of clergy member to the team, and alongside my colleague and friend Rabbi Miriam Berger, we built a new model of collaborative spiritual leadership.
I first fell in love with Jewish music as a participant at FRS Summer Scheme and then later on at RSY-Netzer's summer camps. This enthusiasm was cultivated and nurtured at the URJ Kutz Camp Leadership Institute in New York, where I learned about the art of songleading, and then more formally for five years at HUC's School of Sacred Music Cantorial programme (in New York and Jerusalem) where I was ordained in 2009.
Four years in New York gave me the chance to learn from exceptional clergy and educators: I’m so grateful to the extraordinary clergy team at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue, and the smaller team at Or Chadash in Flemington, NJ. Both congregations taught me so much whilst I was their Student Cantor.
I was thrilled to be able to establish 'Shirei Chagigah', our biennial Reform Jewish music conference, back in 2011. Over the years we have learned with some of the greatest Jewish musicians, cantors, rabbis, and choir directors from North America, Israel, and the UK. Personally, I take any opportunity I can to attend services, conferences and classes with teachers and friends around the world, so it is a gift to be able to bring those teachers to our community, too.
But my greatest inspiration comes from the beautiful sound we all make together at FRS – whether it is the awe and majesty of a thousand voices at the High Holy days, the joy and familiarity of our Shabbat services or the intimate harmonies of 'Shira', our monthly informal song session.
If you've not sung with our community before, I do hope you'll join us at a service or event in the future!
To hear more from Cantor Zöe and our FRS musicians, click here.
