Sing along with (Hazzan) Mitch

New Beth Israel cantor wants congregants to join in

When Cantor Mitchell Joshua Martin recently led a service in the chapel at Congregation Beth Israel, he didn’t just stand in front and sing. According to spiritual leader Rabbi Paul Kerbel, Martin wandered around the room “encouraging the children to join him in the prayers.”

That embodies both the approach Martin, 49, takes to being a cantor in a contemporary Conservative synagogue and “the kind of outreach” that Kerbel said Beth Israel was looking for in a cantor.

“My approach to services,” Martin said in a telephone interview Tuesday, “is that services are not a spectator sport, but a participation sport. I want active participation. I’m not there to prove that I can sing, but I’m there to uplift [the congregants] and encourage them to participate with me in the prayer experience. I like to involve everybody.”

This approach also influences the kinds of music he will bring to the services. “I will use everything from [classical cantor] Yossele Rosenblatt to [contemporary Jewish songwriter] Debbie Friedman, as long as they adhere to the nusach, don’t unnecessarily repeat words and are designed to encourage people to participate,” he said.

He also seems to be the kind of person who emphasizes the positive. The projects he said he would like to do at Beth Israel, where he started Aug. 15, include not only revitalizing the music program, expanding the choir and reinstituting the youth chorus, but also “I want people to feel comfortable with yiddishkeit without guilt,” to emphasize “not what people don’t do, but what they do.”

Martin thereby seems to have the sort of personality that attracts people quickly. “You wanted to be his friend right away,” said Joyce Altman, CEO of the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music and co-chair of CBI’s cantor search committee with Gayle Weber Rakita. “It was one of those connections that was just made instantly…. He was by far the best candidate in terms of musical experience and personality.”

Martin certainly doesn’t need to prove to a congregation that he can sing; he has been proving that since he was a child. Born and raised in Toronto, he was singing in his Conservative synagogue’s choir since he was about 8, and rose to become conductor of the group.

He is musician enough to have been accepted at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, where he studied piano and voice. But he also knew from early on that he wanted to be a cantor.

This was partly from the inspiration of the cantors he worked with in Toronto, whom he called “wonderfully positive role models.” The impulse also partly came from his “community-minded” family; his late mother at one point was director of all the Jewish nursery schools in Toronto and was a founder of the Toronto Jewish Hearing Impaired Society.

But it also came from his own movement to a greater level of Jewish observance. Being a cantor for Martin is “a way … to be able to function and give back to the Jewish community and not have the conflicts other professions would have given me in being observant.”

After graduation from the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Cantors Institute, Martin served congregations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York — and Miami, where his congregation included Rabbi Herbert Panitch, spiritual leader emeritus of Beth Israel. When Martin decided he did not feel “professionally fulfilled” in his previous post in Long Island, Panitch encouraged him to apply to Beth Israel.

“I see a great deal of potential in this congregation,” Martin said of Beth Israel. “It is a beautiful facility in a wonderful area.” Furthermore, he and his wife Harriet (nee Widawski) were looking for “a nice, comfortable life style, calmer than the rat race of New York, where we could be part of a cohesive and well-organized Jewish community,” and the Milwaukee area seemed to fit.

Harriet, who currently works as outreach manager for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, will be looking for employment once the family fully moves here. They have four children, of whom the youngest — Yoni, 16 — will also move here. Their third child, Rachel, 18, will be attending a United Synagogue Youth program at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem this fall.