NJ Jewish News on-line | Sweet 16 for cantor who brought shul out of musical ‘dark ages'

Cantor Janet Roth Krupnick in a candid moment with her two daughters, Abigail, 13, and Madaket, eight, at home. Krupnick was feted at a Sweet Sixteen party celebrating 16 years at the Summit Jewish Community Center on June 19. Photos courtesy Rabbi Moss Krupnick

As she marks her 16th anniversary as a cantor and at the Summit Jewish Community Center, Janet Roth Krupnick is a seasoned professional who teaches not only at her own synagogue but at the North American Jewish Choral Festival.

She runs a synagogue choir and instructs trope classes to enough people each year that members estimate that at least half are capable Torah readers.

Krupnick brings top names in her field to the synagogue for artist-in-residence weekends and performs her own concerts with serious music by the likes of Arnold Schoenberg.

She knows when to add new tunes and when to hold off ("when you chant 12 chapters of Kohelet on Sukkot, you can do one in a Sephardi trope"), and she has gained the embrace of her congregation.

"I feel blessed," she said of her relationship with the Conservative synagogue. The feeling is mutual: On June 19, she was feted by her congregants with a Sweet Sixteen party at the Short Hills Caterers.

She and her congregants recall the young, naive cantor who stepped off the train for her first interview.

"I picked her up at the railway station," said Gene Baraff, who headed the congregation search committee. "She was carrying a guitar. She was not wearing anything formal — she was ‘blue denim skirt' in attitude, if not in appearance."

"We never had a female cantor before, much less one who presented herself as a folksinger," he said.

Still, it didn't take long before Krupnick won him over. "By the time the interview was half over, I was convinced she was going to bring something so unusual to our synagogue that I began fighting tooth and nail to bring her here."

For Krupnick, it was a visit to the synagogue on Shabbat that sold her. "It was Havdala. The kids went up on the bima," she recalled. "I liked the feel, the intimacy. It was warm and fuzzy, with the kids up there and the lights down and the wine."

Although she had been offered other cantorial positions at larger synagogues, she said, she knew this would be home for her. And it didn't hurt that the congregation used traditional melodies by conductor and composer Zavel Zilberts (1881-1949). The "folksinger" has a soft spot for tradition.

But at the time, she didn't realize the challenges she would have to overcome, from bias in some corners against a female cantor to obstacles to her introducing her love for music to the congregation.

The synagogue had no microphones, no working piano, not even staff for the cantor, whose office at the time of her arrival has since been converted into a storage closet.

"They were kind of in the Dark Ages in terms of arts and music," Krupnick said.

"We were not an educated synagogue in terms of musical practice," agreed Baraff.

Celebrating the cantor's daughter's bat mitzva are, from left, Rabbi Avi Friedman, Cantor Janet Krupnick, Abigail Krupnick, Rabbi Moss Krupnick, and Rabbi emeritus Bill Horn.

Fresh from cantorial school, Krupnick had been in school her whole adult life, earning first a bachelor's degree in Middle Eastern languages and literature from Indiana University in Bloomington, then working briefly as a song leader in her native Chicago before pursuing a master of arts degree at North Texas State University in Dallas, all before she even considered entering the cantorate.

A lifelong Reform Jew, she grew up at Temple Emanu El in Chicago and spent time in Israel. She naturally applied to Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform movement's seminary and cantorial school. But she was rejected. "I was too folky for HUC. I had written art songs with Hebrew lyrics. I was doing my thesis on Judaeo-Spanish ballads. I was heartbroken," she said.

Friends, including Cantor Erica Lippitz of Oheb Shalom Congregation in South Orange, encouraged her to apply to the Conservative movement's cantorial school at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

At the Summit JCC, she slowly found her footing. "I started to do things as I saw a need or as I was inspired," she said.

For congregant Janet Wilson, Krupnick's work with the choir has been transformative. Wilson had started the choir years before, but, she acknowledged, "we couldn't sing our way out of a paper bag. We were a motley crew. Trust me. We had far more enthusiasm than skill." Today, Wilson said, Krupnick hands them a sheet of music, "and we can sing our parts." More than teaching them the basics, Wilson said, the cantor has imbued them with her own passion for music.

Early on in her tenure, Krupnick decided to bring artists to the synagogue in a program that came to be funded by Baraff. The cantor involves the synagogue choirs and even arranges for ethnic food to be served that reflects the music presented.

This year, she will give a concert with soprano Susan Schneider, and Schoenberg will be on the program. "I'm not going to sing five notes because it's easy and the congregation likes it," Krupnick said. "I look for stuff that's good."

Synagogue members also value her spiritual guidance, something they came to recognize in 2001 when the congregation was thrown into crisis. Their longtime religious leader, Rabbi William Horn, had a stroke, from which it took him more than a year to recover. During that time, Krupnick stepped in to officiate at weddings and funerals. Although Horn had provided a list of rabbis who could serve, congregants preferred Krupnick.

At life-cycle events, said Wilson, members wanted someone they knew to officiate. Particularly at funerals, "people felt they would rather have someone who knew the deceased than someone who would say words but knew nothing about them."

And they realized Krupnick could deliver a sermon. "She gives a d'var Torah during services that reflects on the interplay between the music and what's being done," said Wilson. "She has sensitized the entire congregation to this."

At the same time that the rabbi fell ill, Krupnick's own husband, Rabbi Moss Krupnick, was gravely sick. Not everyone in the congregation knew, and the cantor continued in her extra duties until a part-time rabbi was brought in.

Many described her emerging from the situation as greatly matured and with an enhanced relationship with the rabbi.

"He did his thing; I did mine," she said of the period before Horn's stroke. "Then all of a sudden he was sick and I was doing his stuff and making sure the congregation didn't disintegrate. I was a little nervous about some things, but ultimately I was freer to be myself."

These days she's also schepping nachas from her daughter Abigail's bat mitzva, which the family celebrated the weekend of June 17 at the synagogue. Even that, however, involved using her professional judgment on the bima. She had prepared a Hallel set to Italian melodies. But when she realized few were singing along, she gave them up. "I just knew it wouldn't work," she said. "I'm generally pretty good at knowing when I can't do it and when I can."

Looking forward, she sees her role broadening even more, in partnership with Rabbi Avi Friedman, who succeeded Horn in 2005.

"More is possible with Avi because he is so liberal," said Krupnick. "He's generally good to work with and open to all sorts of ideas."

Friedman even plans to push for musical instruments in shul. Krupnick welcomes the change for special occasions to enhance the service, but, she said, "I don't want to sing summer camp services every Shabbat."

She takes comfort from the love and support of her congregation. During the festivities, Baraff told her, "I still haven't found the exact words to describe the gentleness, kindness, selflessness, and the grace that you bring to everything you do. I wish I could. But even without those words, you must know that our admiration for you is rooted in your accomplishments, and you must understand that our affection for you is rooted in your self-effacing humility and personality."