AJRCA Spotlight: Rabbi Cantor Samuel B. Radwine

Why Become a Cantor

For many of our people, there exists a moment in memory when we first became aware of being in a place of prayer—when we first connected with the awe of sacred time. For some, it may have been sitting next to a grandfather, playing absently with the tzitzit on his tallit. For others, it might have been peeking into an open Sefer Torah and sensing the magic of those as-yet-undefinable letters. For me, it was sound.

My earliest memory of sacred sound was as a very young child attending
Shabbat services in the Classical Reform temple of my youth. The sound that
struck me was actually in English: “from generation to generation.” I remember
marveling at the alliteration, astonished that an entire congregation could recite
the words in such perfect synchrony—despite my having no idea what those
words truly meant. But it was the sound we made together that drew me in.

There were other musical sounds as well. Sometimes it was the pipe organ,
flowing down from the loft above. Sometimes it was the quartet, singing mostly in
English. Sometimes it was the unified voice of the congregation singing hymns
from the red hymnal in the pews. These idioms of worship may seem foreign to
many Jews today, especially younger generations, but they were the familiar
spiritual landscape of my mother and grandmother—both of whom participated
regularly in public prayer.

People often ask whether I came from a “religious” family, assuming that I must
have been shaped by traditional practice. I always answer “yes,” and then
explain that my mother was what I lovingly call a religious Reform Jew. My
grandmother found few things more uplifting than spending the entire day in the
Temple on Yom Kippur. My father was always with us, though his connection to
synagogue life was shaped by a very different background—what one might
describe as “Yiddish secularist.”

Sometimes I imagine my ancestors looking down from the olam ha-ba, shaking
their heads and asking, “From this family came a chazn?” Yet that unusual blend
of spiritual sound, spiritual space, and spiritual time became the force that drew
me toward the vocation of the cantor.

I began my cantorial studies at the very moment synagogue music was
undergoing one of its most dramatic evolutions. Throughout Jewish history,
wherever we lived, we absorbed musical language from our host cultures.
Eastern European folk modes gave rise to Ashkenazi nusach. Parallel
developments shaped the music of the Edot HaMizrach, whose traditions
absorbed the sounds of the Sephardic world.

It was only natural, then, that the folk and popular idioms of the 1950s and 60s
found their way into American Jewish life through composers formed in Jewish
camping. For my generation of cantors, the challenge became honoring centuries
of inherited tradition while also feeding the growing hunger for music that spoke
to the evolving Jewish soul. This was the cantorial world I inherited—and it
became the source of my deepest meaning as both a musical and spiritual
leader.

In 1957, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel—perhaps the foremost Jewish spiritual
voice of his age—spoke and later wrote on “The Profession of the Cantor.”
Heschel urged us to hearken to the sound of both word and note. “It is important
for the cantor to study the score,” he wrote, “but also the words.” And he added,
“Study itself is a form of worship—and worship, a form of study.”

It is through this fusion—of text and melody, of meaning and sound—that the
cantor guides prayer and facilitates worship. The musical note and the spoken
word both have the capacity to open the Jewish heart to the infinite glory of the
Divine Presence. Whether in the ancient Temple with the priests and Levitical
choirs, in the grand synagogues of Berlin and Vienna, or in the spirited
sanctuaries of our summer camps, it is the Hazzan who helps draw the
community toward sacred encounter through voice, intention, and presence.

I’m also often asked why someone would want to become a cantor. A person
becomes a cantor because their soul can’t help but sing. It’s the rare calling
where music becomes mitzvah, where guiding a community in prayer feels like
weaving heartbeats into harmony. A cantor gives voice to memory, to hope, to
the sacred. It’s a life where helping others find their own song becomes your
greatest joy.

I have been profoundly privileged to devote my life to this calling—to stand
before communities, weaving together memory, melody, and meaning. The
cantor is not merely a singer of prayers but a shaper of spiritual experience, a
guardian of sacred sound, and a guide who helps others find their own voices in
prayer. My hope is that we continue to uplift, nurture, and celebrate this sacred
vocation, so that future generations may be led, inspired, and held by those who
carry the timeless yet ever-renewing song of our people. May the work of the
cantor ever bring us closer to holiness, to one another, and to the living Presence
we seek.