In today’s cantorial universe, a woman’s place is on the bimah

By Andrew Adler
Community Editor 

 There was a time, not terribly long ago, when the idea of a woman becoming an ordained cantor was pretty much a contradiction in terms. It wasn’t until June 6, 1975, that Barbara Jean Ostfeld broke the glass bimah — gaining her official ordination at New York City’s Temple Emanu-El, the seat of Reform Judaism in the United States.  

Fast forward 50 years almost to the day, when the sanctuary at Keneseth Israel Congregation had more than its share of hazzanim: about 55 members of the Women Cantors’ Network attending the organization’s 2025 Annual Conference,  June 9-12 at KI.  

In what amounts to a 180-degree turnaround from half a century ago, today the vast majority of cantors — ordained or not — are women. Where the sight and sound of a female hazzan was once the exception, “now it’s the rule,” says Cantor Deborah Katchko-Gray, who founded WCN in 1982 and who recently retired after 44 years on the bimah.  

“I was the second woman in the country to be a Conservative cantor,” Katchko-Gray said during a conference lunch break. “I realized I didn’t have colleagues to share with.” The Conservative movement’s Cantors Assembly, while a valuable collective, was ill-equipped to address the issues unique to women breaking through to the cantorate.  

The only WCN rule was that there were no rules, at least when it came to formalities. “I decided to make it an organization that was open without any qualifications, which was very against the (existing) model,” Katchko-Gray said. “That model was very closed” You had to have a certificate; you had to be a graduate with a diploma before you could walk in the door.”  

She positioned WCN as a more flexible alternative, “for anyone who’s interested in the cantorate, whether they’re working in it or not, or they’re just thinking about it – they love Jewish music; they’re curious.”  

That impetus continues to define WCN. “They come here and it’s a safe place. No one asks you where you graduated. No one cares. There’s no big vertical hierarchy – it’s kind of a big, horizontal hug.”  

This year’s WCN conference was decidedly eclectic, possessing a definite Kentucky-themed flair. Workshops included “Songs Between Others: Jewish Visions of Appalachia,” “Jewish Bourbon: History of the Jews in the Bourbon Industry” (followed, naturally, by a tasting), and “Mazel Tonk – Celebrating Kentucky(ish) Music with a Jewish Flair.”  

Ann Niren, curator of Jewish Collections at the Filson Historical Society, led an evening session dubbed “Jewish Music That You Probably Don’t Know by Leonard Bernstein (and a Few Pieces That You Do).” One afternoon was devoted to a “Field Trip to Downtown Louisville and East Market District (aka NuLu).”  

Call it an antidote – albeit temporary — to the sobering realities of antisemitism, war and political divisiveness.  

“These are tough times, and it was great being together with old friends, meeting new friends, singing together and learning,” said KI Cantor Sharon Hordes, the conference’s co-chair. “It was nice to be unabashedly Jewish and experience the wonderful spiritual side, and the joyful side, of being Jewish.”  

Yet a question remains: With so many female cantors dotting the landscape of Jewish worship, why is a group like WCN relevant?  

“I think about this a lot,” Hordes acknowledged, “why does this group still need to be around?” The answer, she says, is bound up in WCN’s organizational ethos.”  

“We’ve created something that’s very democratic, grassroots,” she said. “Everyone’s voice is listened to. People check their egos at the door.”  

And despite a critical mass of woman cantors, age-old challenges often bubble up.  

One example: “Synagogues don’t tend to hire if they have a female rabbi,” Hordes said. “A lot of them say, ‘Well, we can’t also have a female cantor’ — God forbid! And there are ways women are treated in the workplace that still reflect what you’d define as gender discrimination. It’s less overt, but it still happens.”  

A WCN conference turns on the “N” in its name — networking.  

“We all share our stories,” Hordes said, alluding to a panel discussion that — unlike all others that were streamed — was closed to outsiders. “We compare notes and say, ‘How were you treated when you went on maternity leave? How were you treated when you came back? How was it when your rabbi brought his child — were you treated differently than him?’”  

And then there’s the issue of money: who gets how much, and for which professional services?  

“A synagogue board will say to the cantor, ‘You know we’re downsizing — can we pay you less?’” Hordes said. “‘Can you also run the school and be the cantor?’ Well, that’s a lot. That’s not what people signed on for. That’s two jobs.”  

In other words, “People aren’t donating as much; they’re not joining as much, so the pot of money is not as big and cantors often get cuts. What a lot of my colleagues are doing is going back to school to become ordained as rabbis, so they can be hired to be the clergy person at a congregation.”  

Did Hordes ever consider going the rabbinical route? “It crossed my mind, but then I decided not to,” she said. Instead, she’s pursuing a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary — prompted by a “strategic planning” workshop she attended not long ago.  

“I looked at the slides that showed bar graphs of what people gave to their synagogues in the 1960s, the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s and 2000s — and it was just a downward line,” Hordes said. “And I thought, wow, what do I do? I want to stay in Louisville. I don’t want to be in another congregation and have them say, ‘Okay, you work for us for a few years, then we can’t afford you anymore.’ I wanted to take control of my career.”  

Job discrimination on the basis of age is a concern for cantors who might find themselves passed over in favor of younger (and in some cases older) candidates.  

“Ageism is real,” Heather Aranyi, a Chicago-based cantor and motivational speaker, acknowledged during her keynote address at KI. What, then, should an older (or younger) candidate do when confronting a brick wall of age resistance?  

“That’s going to be my plug for starting our own things — entrepreneurship,” Aranyi told her cantorial audience, recalling the moment she decided a hard professional pivot was in order. “I just reached a point it was like, ‘I’m tired of proving myself. I’m tired of auditioning. I’m tired of waiting to get picked.”  

Meanwhile, the cantorial landscape continues to evolve — standing in marked contrast to what predominated a generation ago. Houston’s Francyne Davis Jacobs, the WCN conference co-chair (she met Hordes while both were studying at Gratz College near Philadelphia), recalled the less-than-progressive norms of a generation ago.  

“When I was in cantorial school, which is coming up on 30 years ago, there was still a lot of, ‘I’ve never seen a cantor who looks like you,’” she said, “especially when I applied for jobs. In the last 15-20 years that’s shifted.”  

So have core aspects of music in worship, so that someone like Jacobs, who “grew up as a Reform Jew,” also steeped herself in the musical styles of the Conservative tradition. “And then lo and behold, I ended up getting a job in a Conservative congregation.”  

Indeed, under the New Cantorial Normal, a woman’s place is on the bimah, in full and resounding voice.  

“You know,” Hordes mused, “sometimes kids in my kids’ generation will say, ‘Wait a minute — there are male cantors?’”