Please check back frequently as details are added.
Cantor Josh Ehrlich: Friday, March 24 - Sunday, March 26
Please join us for our first Cantor candidate visit, featuring
Cantor Josh Ehrlich.
Cantor Ehrlich will be participating in Friday night kabbalat shabbat services, lead some of Saturday morning Shabbat services, followed by a kiddush and zmirot. Saturday evening we will have a havdalah event. Stay tuned for more details!
Cantor Ehrlich’s Bio
Hailed by “Godfather of A Cappella” Deke Sharon (Glee, Pitch Perfect) as “dynamic, bold, and audacious,” Josh Ehrlich is a composer, lyricist, accompanist, music director, music educator and soon-to-be-cantor based in New York City. Josh has written hundreds of musical theatre orchestrations and a cappella arrangements for ensembles all over the New York area and in Israel. He made his Off-Broadway compositional debut in 2017 with The Imbible: Day Drinking, which ran at New World Stages for three years. In 2021, The Cantors Assembly published Josh’s The Choral Torah: Five Books in Four Parts, a collection of fifty-four eclectic a cappella settings of biblical text (one composition for every parashah.) Josh founded and directs The Choral Torah Collective, a choir of Judaeo-musical educators that performs and promotes musical and biblical literacy at communities from Highland Park, NJ to Highland Park, IL. With a Bachelors in Linguistics from Yale University and a Masters in Composition from Rutgers University, Josh has worked as the music director for Golda Och Academy, the Leffell School, and Camp Ramah in the Berkshires. He currently studies at the H.L. Miller Cantorial School and is the Student Hazzan at New City Jewish Center. As a cantor, he hopes to continue his mission of using fresh four-part harmony to reanimate our most ancient words and to create interfaith choirs which transcend religious boundaries through shared harmony.
Schedule of Events
Coming soon!
Cantor Jessica Silverberg: Friday, March 31 - Sunday, April 2
Cantor Silverberg’s Bio
Cantor Jessica Woolf Silverberg is visiting Temple Israel from the Philadelphia suburbs where she is serving as the Interim Cantor of Har Zion Temple. Originally from Portland, Oregon, Cantor Silverberg received cantorial ordination and a MA in Jewish Studies in 2021 from Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts. She was the Cantorial Intern at Temple Beth Sholom in Framingham, MA, where she pioneered the use of instruments on Shabbat and developed an alternative morning service, an outdoor summer service, and a contemplative prayer experience, in collaboration with Rabbi Allison Poirier, that blends Jewish mindfulness practices with the traditional liturgy. Outside of New England, Cantor Silverberg has served as the High Holiday Hazzan for communities located in Maryland, South Carolina, and Texas.
Cantor Silverberg has an extensive background in youth education. She has taught multiple grades, consulted on Hebrew curricula, and piloted a b’nai mitzvah training program. Most recently, she served on the Judaic Studies faculty at the Jewish Community Day School of Rhode Island, and as Minyan Coordinator and Temple Educator at Temple Emanu-El in Providence. Before beginning her cantorial studies at Hebrew College, Cantor Silverberg was the Education Programs Coordinator and Ner Tamid Fellow at Ohr Kodesh Congregation in Chevy Chase, Maryland. She holds a certificate in Jewish Educational Technology from NewCAJE in addition to being a Leadership for Emerging Education Professionals (LEEP) Fellow. Cantor Silverberg is a trained Torah Godly Play practitioner and looks forward to sharing this spiritual practice with our youngest members.
Cantor Silverberg plays multiple musical instruments including guitar, violin, and oboe. She graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music with a BM in Music History. A devoted choral singer, Cantor Silverberg currently sings with Nashirah, the Jewish Chorale of Greater Philadelphia and regularly attends the North American Jewish Choral Festival. She is a proud alumna of Zemer Chai (Washington DC) and the Zamir Chorale of Boston, where she was a frequent soloist. In her free time, Cantor Silverberg enjoys discovering new plant-based recipes, playing board games, and spending time with her husband Dr. Steven M. Silverberg, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge.
Cantor Noah Rachels: Friday, April 14 - Sunday, April 16
Picture coming soon!
Cantor Rachels’s Bio
Cantor Noah Rachels aspired to be an opera singer for most of his adult life, while in parallel, he “accidentally” developed a career in nonprofit fundraising and administration, holding roles of increasing responsibility with such notable performing arts and higher education institutions as Carnegie Hall, Columbia Business School, and Barnard College. Since 2003, when he began singing professionally in synagogue choirs, he had thought many times about training to become a cantor, but always managed to talk himself out of it for one reason or another. While helping to care for his gravely ill mother in August 2018, however, he witnessed both the awesome power of music to provide comfort and peace, and the importance of human connection during lifecycle events. These experiences—combined with the example set by the inimitable Cantor Jacob Ben-Zion “Jack” Mendelson helped inspire Noah to consider the cantorate anew and enroll at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in fall 2019.
Now in his fourth and final year of study in the H.L. Miller Cantorial School at JTS, Noah currently serves as cantorial intern at Congregation Ansche Chesed in New York City, under the mentorship of Cantor Natasha Hirschhorn. This past fall, he presided over the High Holy Day services at Congregation Ahavath Achim in Colchester, Connecticut, as guest hazzan. And last April, Noah was recognized with the 2022 Cantors Assembly Richard Briskin Cantor-in-Residence Award, which entailed spending a weekend in residency at Temple Beth El in Rochester, New York. During summer 2021, as part of a 400-hour unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) training, he worked as a chaplain within the Palliative Care Supportive Services unit of JASA, a social services agency, where he provided spiritual care to a diverse array of clients. As a professional singer, Noah has also been heard at Park Avenue Synagogue, Congregation Rodeph Sholom, and the Reform Temple of Forest Hills (all in NYC), and he has been featured as a soloist in concerts presented by Harrison Friends of the Opera, Light Opera of New York, Canto de las Americas, the Maestro Pier Miranda Ferraro Concert Series, and New York Dramatic Voices.
To Noah, the cantorate represents a wonderful opportunity to combine his lifelong love of singing with his newfound calling to more directly provide care for, and be of greater service to, others. Furthermore, the rise of antisemitism in recent years drives him to want to play an active role in upholding and perpetuating Judaism, Jewish culture and music, and Jewish traditions. Beyond that, he hopes to leverage his position as a clergy member and community leader to be a force for positive change with respect to social justice issues.
Born and raised among the Catskill Mountains of New York State, Noah earned a bachelor of arts degree in music from Moravian College (now, Moravian University) in Pennsylvania and studied abroad at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He continues to study singing with Anthony Laciura. Noah, his wife Amy, and their toddler daughter Maya currently live in Riverdale in the Bronx, along with their cat, Mordechai. When he is not working, studying, practicing singing, or playing with Maya, Noah enjoys doing the daily New York Times Crossword and Spelling Bee, cooking, listening to recordings of historic singers and cantors, and fantasizing about working on a farm in Iceland.