Cantor Miriam Eskenasy wants to bring people closer to God through music, and that is just what she intends to accomplish as Congregation Sinai’s new cantor, a position she assumed on Thursday, July 6.
In addition to the new cantor, Congregation Sinai has a new director of lifelong learning, Beth Goldstein, who hopes to get kids involved in synagogue life.
The two women bring different professional and life experiences to Congregation Sinai, but in separate interviews amidst the congregation’s expansion and remodeling project, each expressed enthusiasm and high hopes for the synagogue’s spiritual growth.
After a career in administrative management at a travel agency, Eskenasy fulfilled her dream of becoming a cantor. She was inspired partly by her role counseling others at work. “It was like being a spiritual leader in a corporate environment,” she said.
But the music that brought her to the clergy came from a volunteer Jewish choir in which she was involved.
“I was exposed to a whole new world of Jewish music,” she said, of her experience in the choir. “One thing led to the next, and when my oldest daughter went to college, I went back to school.”
Her experience substitute teaching at a public school in Queens, New York also added to her desire to become a cantor. She said that she enjoyed working with the children, and wanted to continue to teach.
Born in Bucharest, Romania, Eskenasy moved with her family to Israel when she was 10 years old, and to the United States six years later. Joining family in Ohio, she finished high school and entered college before moving to New York. There, she graduated from Queen’s College in 1970, with a degree in romance languages.
But music was always part of her life. She studied opera privately, and performed in various companies after college. After getting married and starting a family, she stopped performing professionally for many years.
She “worked full time, was a full-time mom, and sang” in her spare time during those years. And for 13 years, the time it takes to become a bat mitzvah, Eskenasy dreamed of becoming a cantor.
She received her cantorial degree from Hebrew Union College in 2002 and has since served two East Coast congregations.
“Milwaukee is where I found an awesome congregation and an awesome rabbi,” she said. “Congregation Sinai made me realize what the cantorate is about.”
She plans to teach adults and children — through the synagogue’s adult education program and religious school “I want to turn people on to Torah and Judaism through music.”
She is equally excited about her new home in Milwaukee, which she called “a beautiful Midwestern city, with lots of cultural activities that I’m looking forward to discovering.”
Focus on youth
Beth Goldstein, Congregation Sinai’s new director of lifelong learning, credits Jewish camping as a major influence in her life and career choice. Growing up in Metairie, La., a suburb of New Orleans, Goldstein attended Henry S. Jacobs Camp in Mississippi, the Union of Reform Judaism camp for the southern United States.
Later, she worked at many of the other URJ camps, learning song-leading skills and working with kids.
As a music major and Jewish studies minor at Brandeis University, Goldstein first thought that she would become a cantor. After graduation, she decided to take some time “to explore what I really wanted to do [with] my life.”
She worked at two Reform synagogues as a full-time song-leader and youth programmer. In the two years she worked with those congregations, she revived four struggling youth groups, worked with a junior choir, and “had a lot of fun.”
After spending time with rabbis, cantors and educators, she decided that she “really liked what the educator did,” and entered a three-year program at Hebrew Union College. She received two master’s degrees, one in Jewish education and another in Jewish communal service.
Goldstein hopes to facilitate growth of Sinai’s youth culture, and is expanding the congregation’s Madrichim program, which allows high school students to work as teacher’s aides in Sinai’s religious school.
Although she “never imagined being in Wisconsin,” Goldstein is happy to be in Milwaukee. When she came for an interview at Sinai, she “liked the city and the lake area, and” she added, “the people are so incredibly nice.”
Sinai president Patti Levy said that both Eskenasy and Goldstein are “very easygoing [and] open to working with people.”
Levy said that the congregation is “particularly excited” about Goldstein’s two master’s degrees and the fact that Eskenasy has “pulpit experience.”
“They’re both so open to suggestions, and open to working with lay leaders,” Levy said. “Both come with incredible backgrounds.”
MORE STORIES
Loading ...