By Andrew Adler
Community Editor
Cantor Abbie Strauss will be the featured guest artist at Congregation Adath Jeshurun’s March 15, 2026 Music Festival
Seven years ago when Adath Jeshurun Cantor David Lipp was President of the Cantors Assembly – the Conservative Movement’s principal cohort of hazzanim – he was the motivating force in bringing its 72nd International Convention to Louisville during May 2019.
Among the almost 200 members who attended was Abbie Strauss, a rising young cantor from a large Memphis, Tennessee synagogue who was making a name for herself not only as a liturgical prayer leader, but as a singer-songwriter with a decidedly populist bent. She and Lipp found they shared multiple musical sensibilities.
The two cantors – along with a bevy of guest artists – will collaborate for the 2026 Adath Jeshurun Music Festival Sunday, March 15 at 7 p.m. at AJ.
The concert – dubbed “From the Heart” – will include contributions from Keneseth Israel Cantor Sharon Hordes, Jennifer Diamond of The Temple, and Phyllis Hoffman – an operatic soprano who’s married to AJ Rabbi Scott Hoffman.
Cantor Strauss, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, may be best known for founding the Institute for Jewish Rock, a program for young instrumentalists modeled after the popular School of Rock classes held in many American cities. Like Lipp, she’s an accomplished guitarist, a skillset that reflects their mutual embrace of pop/folk idioms.
“A lot of cantors don’t play the guitar – they don’t have that musical sense outside hazzanut (i.e., formal cantorial performance),” Strauss said during a recent joint Zoom interview. “One thing that drew me to Cantor Lipp was his ability to just pick up the guitar. I have a few pictures of us at one conference where we’re jamming in the hallway. So I remember that aspect, and also the warmth of the Louisville community.”
Strauss recalls in particular a speech of Lipp’s in which he declared: “‘If things aren’t offered the way that we want, let’s create our own table.’” That’s one reason why I’m now on the Executive Committee of the Cantors Assembly. It made me realize that it’s not about being like every other cantor. It’s owning your path in your cantorate, so you can build your own road for others to follow.”
“Just to give a little context about what I said,” Lipp added, “so many of my colleagues are often feeling, whether justifiably or not, about how are rabbinic colleagues are always doing stuff without mentioning us, or not giving us enough credit. Basically, I don’t have patience for that. So what I said was, if they don’t invite you to sit at the table, make your own and invite them.”
More to the immediate point, “I’ve heard Abbie perform many times at our conferences, and she’s a wonderful, soulful performer,” Lipp said, comparing Strauss’s imperative to create music with his own innate aesthetic curiosity. He told Strauss about the monthly programs at the Trager Family JCC he calls “Newish Jewish Music,” at least one of which featured Strauss’s compositions.
“I went onto your website and bought basically all the sheet music that was available,” Lipp recalled. “And I know there’s more, because there are a couple of pieces I missed that were published elsewhere, but I played through everything and presented, probably 15 pieces I thought (listeners) would like the most.
“And to be honest,” Lipp continued, “if I didn’t have a program like that to prepare for, I probably wouldn’t feel I could justify the time it takes. So I thank you for writing the music and giving me that opportunity.”
Instinct has a lot to do with how Strauss approaches her craft, coupled with a pragmatic bent that confronts challenges head-on. Observing how many traditional Saturday School of Rock classes conflicted with Shabbat, she made a point of holding Institute of Jewish Rock sessions on Sundays. And for the upcoming Music Festival, she’ll bring along her own contingent of backing instrumentalists.
In a similar vein, “I’ve worked with composers who are very strict about how they want (their material) done,” Lipp said. “Many years ago I brought in somebody and wanted to use a Sim Shalom they had written, but they had written it for a very different text than we use in our prayer book. So I adjusted it so it would fit, and this particular colleague was really angry with me. I should have asked, to be honest, so it was a learning experience for me.”
Fast forward to this year, when Lipp wanted to use Strauss’s setting of Yedid Nefesh during a Friday night service, but her version was only one paragraph long.
“So I asked specifically, ‘Can I adjust the music so it’ll fit the rest of the text?’” Lipp said. “And you said, ‘Fine – I love it when people take my music and make it work.’ I appreciate that flexibility. It makes my life easier. Not that I wouldn’t have accepted it otherwise, but that’s a tribute to you.’”
Strauss doesn’t hesitate to stretch stylistically when the occasion demands it.
“I just did a funeral, where (the deceased) loved ‘Hamilton,’ so there was a way for me to bring in a little bit at the right moment,” Strauss said. “That’s my specialty: bridging, maybe with a pop song.”
Now, “a funeral seems like it would be a space where you wouldn’t take risks,” she acknowledges. “But I have opened with Barbra Streisand’s ‘People’ very quietly, just before the psalm.”
Call it a reflection of her defining musicality.
“Debbie Friedman was a big teacher of mine,” Strauss says, plus “a lot of Indigo Girls and The Beatles. I have a way of weaving back into prayer pretty seamlessly, either bringing English to a Hebrew text to help connect my different audiences, or jumping from a classic (prayer) into a pop song.”
She nourishes youthful passion, and that passion nourishes her right back.
“I work at our Jewish Day School here using the (Institute of Jewish Rock program), where we have a massive music community, over 200 members. So when artists come through we have house concerts with all different types of music. We have teenagers who lead prayer through rock instruments. It’s transformed the community.
“It’s outside the box in many ways,” Strauss says, “but it’s also very inside the box. We’re still singing V’sham’ru, but I teach them on bass and guitar and keyboards – and they sound like themselves. And that’s enough.”
Tickets to the March 15 AJ Music Festival are $10 in advance and $15 day of show, and include a dessert reception. For more information and to purchase tickets, go online at adathjeshurun.com/musicfestival.