The new full-time cantors who began working in two Milwaukee-area synagogues this month made very different journeys to this town. For one of them, coming here is going literally to another country; for the other, it is returning home — at least to the home state.
Yet Cantors Ruth Berman Harris of Congregation Sinai and David Barash of Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun have an amazing number of things in common besides their profession. Most remarkably, both have international marriages with one partner from the U.S and the other from Argentina.
Harris, 30 and an alto, was born in Buenos Aires and lived there until she was 25. She started going to Jewish day schools when she was 2, trained for her bat mitzvah and “just never left” the synagogue.
“I believe in bashert, in destiny,” she said in an interview. A cantor “is just what I was born to be. It was a natural thing for me and it still is.”
She got her first job as cantor when she was 15 and a student at the local Solomon Schechter high school (Conservative). She became one of the first students in the cantorial program at the Rabbinical Seminary of Latin America in Buenos Aires and after graduation served Temple Emanu-El there.
In November 1995, she met at that synagogue a visiting educator from Lafayette, Calif., Lawrence Harris, who had worked for and was friends with a rabbi from Argentina. Though she then spoke little English and he little Spanish, they hit it off and in a year knew they wanted to marry.
They moved to Israel, married there in 1997, and their three children were born there. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Bible from Bar-Ilan University and served three different Reform shuls as part-time cantor.
But with the Reform movement being so small in Israel, she had no opportunity to become a full-time cantor; and she generally “felt not respected as a Jewish woman…. I didn’t have a place to be me there.”
So the Harrises decided to come to the United States. Five different synagogues, four in bigger communities than Milwaukee, wanted to hire her. Harris chose Sinai partly because she wanted to raise her children in a smaller city, partly because “it was important to find a [rabbinical] partner” with whom to work “as a team … whom I can admire and learn from and who will let me be me. It is also important to find a warm, caring and loving community. I already have a sense of that here.”
The congregation may have a similar sense about Harris, says Sinai’s spiritual leader Rabbi David Cohen. “She’s a very warm and direct person,” he said in a telephone interview. “I was intrigued by her unusual background … and I was moved when I heard her sing. She has a very soulful voice.” Moreover, Harris “has a way about her that is already winning many of the hearts of the congregants.”
With her congregation, she wants to work on “opening the door” to spirituality, to “help each congregant grow in a spiritual way, even those who think they have no spiritual life.” She also wants to “be open, explore, take risks.”
Return of the native
Cantor David Barash, 36 and a tenor, grew up in Madison. He also discovered at his bar mitzvah, in his case at Beth Israel Center (Conservative), that synagogue life was for him.
“I consider myself a teacher of Jewish music and Judaism,” he said. “I’ve been in that mode since my bar mitzvah.”
He continued to be active at the synagogue through high school. He also said he enjoyed the services at Camp Ramah in Eagle River, where he was a camper and counselor.
But Barash also had interest in music for itself. He had studied piano as a child, and he sang in choirs and performed in musicals in high school. He majored in music (vocal performance) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison — and simultaneously did an informal “internship” as acting cantor at Beth Israel Center — before entering the H. L. Miller Cantorial School of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.
There, he met Susana Trias of Buenos Aires, a scholarship student in Jewish studies in the combined Columbia University-JTS program. They married in 1991 and have two sons.
After graduation in 1992, Barash served Congregation Beth Shalom, a “fairly liberal” Conservative congregation of 1,200 families in Kansas City, Mo. When asked what accomplishments he was proudest of there, he mentioned three, all of which he would like to bring to Emanu-El:
• Teaching Torah reading. He said about 25 members of the synagogue could chant Torah when he started. When he left, there were more than 300. “It is one of the things I love teaching,” he said.
• A biennial concert series, “A Salute to Song and Spirit,” featuring guest cantors and himself.
• A recording of “Big Jewish Songs for Little Jewish Kids” that he made with pianist and composer Barbara Katz.
Barash also is looking forward to living near family members in Milwaukee and Madison, and to working with the congregation and with Emanu-El’s spiritual leader, Rabbi Marc Berkson. “He’s open-minded, willing to try new things, and has a traditional side that is attractive to me,” said Barash.
And Emanu-El has the same feeling, according to Berkson. “We heard wonderful things about him from where he was before,” said Berkson in a telephone interview. “Everyone was very impressed…. He has a deep knowledge of and commitment to Judaism that will enhance what goes on in our congregation…. It just looked like a wonderful match [and] I look forward to a long association with him.”
In addition, Congregation Beth Israel (Conservative) announced in its bulletin that it has hired Cantor Jerome Padorr as interim cantor to serve for one year while it searches for a full-time cantor.
According to the bulletin, Padorr is b’nai mitzvah and Hebrew school teacher at Congregation Solel of Highland Park, Ill.; and is a tenor with international operatic and concert experience.
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