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cantor

Left: The original Temple Emanu-El, which was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. Right: Portrait of Julie Rosewald from "A Woman of the Century: Fourteen Hundred-Seventy Biographical Sketches," 1893
Posted inFrom the Archives

Meet Madam Julie Rosewald, the world’s first woman cantor

David A.M. Wilensky
(Photo/Aaron Levy-Wolins)
J. The Jewish News of Northern California Staff Headshots. by David A.M. Wilensky October 21, 2025October 21, 2025

In an era when newspapers referred to most women by their husbands’ surnames, the name “Madam Julie Rosewald” leapt off our pages. That’s how this publication always referred to Rosewald, […]

Jenni Asher expects to graduate from the Academy for Jewish Religion California next spring. (Photo/Arjun Ramesh)
Posted inReligion

L.A. musician Jenni Asher studying to be first ordained Black woman cantor

Shoshana McKinney Kirya-Ziraba (Photo/Courtesy)Andrew Esensten by Shoshana McKinney Kirya-Ziraba and Andrew Esensten February 22, 2024June 14, 2024
Asher Shasho Levy is the hazzan at The Kitchen, an independent synagogue in San Francisco.
Posted inMusic

Meet Asher Shasho Levy, The Kitchen’s new hazzan and oud master

Andrew Gilbert by Andrew Gilbert February 6, 2023September 24, 2023
Cantor Malachi Kanfer. (Photo/Forward-Ellen Dubin Photography)
Posted inFirst Person

Sanctifying the stutter: How I embraced my speech disorder as a cantor

by Malachi Kanfer and Forward August 24, 2022August 24, 2022
Left: Jacob Kaplan-Lipkin as a bar mitzvah with Cantor Doron Shapira at Peninsula Sinai in Congregation, 2010. Right: Years later, he's getting ready to help lead Peninsula Sinai for the High Holidays.
Posted inHigh Holidays

As a kid he loved his Foster City synagogue. This High Holidays, he’s going to help lead it.

Maya Mirsky
(Aaron Levy-Wolins/J. Staff) by Maya Mirsky August 24, 2021August 24, 2021
Cantor Stephen Saxon was inspired by an interview he heard on KQED to help Tom Ammiano get a long-denied varisty letter.
Posted inBay Area

A varsity letter, 63 years late: East Bay cantor rectifies politician’s homophobic high school snub

by Gabriel Greschler March 3, 2021March 3, 2021

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