by Marilyn Silverstein
NJJN Bureau Chief/PMB

August 12, 2008

In the sanctuary at Har Sinai Temple in Pennington, Cantor Emily Wigod Pincus was guiding 13-year-old Kayla Kraus of Trenton through the paces of her Torah portion in preparation for her September bat mitzva.

As Kayla, an eighth-grader, chanted the ancient words, Pincus echoed her in a light and lilting mezzo-soprano.

“Yasher koach,” the cantor congratulated the teen. “It wasn’t as difficult as you thought.”

Encouraging her first bat mitzva at Har Sinai is one of several new beginnings for the 42-year-old Pincus, who took her place in the pulpit of the 340-family Reform congregation in mid-July. She recently celebrated her investiture as a cantor by Hebrew Union College in New York. And she is newly married — to Drew Pincus, a project manager with Citigroup Inc. in Warren — and newly settled into the Metuchen home they share with his children, Alexie, 13, and Ben, nine.

‘We hoped there would be a star who would fall into our laps, and that’s exactly what happened.’

Pincus’ path to Har Sinai began in New York, where she grew up in the classical Reform tradition at Congregation Rodeph Sholom. A graduate of Brown University, she pursued her love of singing at the Manhattan School of Music and at La Escuela Superior de Canto in Madrid, where she spent three years studying voice and singing with a traveling zarzuela company. In 1994, Pincus returned to the States to pursue a career as an operatic soloist. Over the next few years, she sang with opera companies in Florida, Oklahoma, and Texas as well as with the Opera Festival of New Jersey.

But even as Pincus was finding her operatic voice, she was feeling pulled in a different direction.

“Being in opera was not working for me,” she said as she sat in her office at Har Sinai. “I love to sing, but I’m not really a performer. At that point, I started singing with the choir for the High Holy Days at Park Avenue Synagogue in New York. Also at about that time, I started to go to services at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun,” the popular synagogue also in New York.

There, Pincus said, she found participatory services, a progressive community spirit, and a kaleidoscope of music that pulled together the strains of several Jewish traditions.

“I was very attracted to that,” she said. “I became very involved and connected.”

Having grown up with classical Reform Judaism, Pincus said, she was accustomed to experiencing the cantor as a shaliah tzibor — an emissary of prayer who stood above and apart from the congregation.

“I had great admiration for clergy people, but I could never see becoming one, because I couldn’t connect to that kind of distance,” she said. “But when I started to go to services at B’nai Jeshurun, I started to realize there were different possibilities. I was at a crossroads.”

Her experiences at B’nai Jeshurun and several other influences, including the encouragement of a mentor and the emotional fulfillment of singing at a cousin’s bat mitzva, pushed her onto the path of a cantorial career, Pincus said. In 2003, she enrolled in the five-year cantorial program at HUC’s School of Sacred Music, spending her first year in Jerusalem.

“That was fairly intense,” she said. “It was also very beautiful — a huge immersion in Hebrew and Jewish culture, Jewish religion, Jewish history, and all kinds of things.”

Pincus spent her remaining years at HUC fulfilling her course work, teaching religious school, occupying student pulpits, guiding b’nei mitzva students, and rehearsing with congregational choirs. She celebrated her ordination in May.

“A lot of us decided to go to the mikva before ordination,” she said, “and that was a very meaningful experience. Then we all cried buckets during ordination.”

Soon afterward, Pincus accepted the position at Har Sinai, replacing 82-year-old Cantor David Wisnia, who recently retired from his 22-year tenure there.

‘Falling star’

In a separate interview at the temple, Rabbi Stuart Pollack, religious leader of the 150-year-old congregation, called Pincus “a worthy successor” to Wisnia and to Cantor Marshall Glutzer before him.

“She fits right into that rarefied status,” Pollack said. “She has superlative musicianship, an extraordinary voice, and a charismatic personality. The highest praise I can give her is that she’s upholding the cantorial tradition we’ve had for the past 57 years.”

Congregational president Ron Perl echoed those remarks.

“When you talk of the transition from Trenton to Pennington and now from Cantor Wisnia to the new cantor, we on the board were mindful that we had very big shoes to fill,” Perl said during a phone interview. “We wanted somebody who has great stature and who could serve us well and hopefully live up to the tradition. We hoped there would be a star who would fall into our laps, and that’s exactly what happened.”

Thoughts about Har Sinai’s cantorial tradition are also resonating with Pincus as she settles into her new position — coleading services, training b’nei mitzva students, and expanding the role of the congregational choir. She called Wisnia “a great preserver of the cantorial tradition and hazanut.”

“I’ve heard lots of wonderful things about him,” she said. “Clearly, he really established a connection with the b’nei mitzva kids. I think that’s a lot to live up to.”

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