Cantor Marnie Camhi will teach young and old as the new cantor at Temple Shalom in Aberdeen.
Photo by Jill Huber
August 12, 2008
Marnie Camhi, the new cantor at Temple Shalom in Aberdeen, feels music is the lifeblood of prayer.
“It’s connected to memories, lifecycle events, and holidays,” she said. “Music that we heard as children in the synagogue and in the home stays with us throughout our lives, and when we hear that particular prayer melody, it’s as if we’ve come home.
“Synagogue music today is about combining those familiar melodies with more new and contemporary ones — it’s about finding that balance between the traditional and the new.”
Camhi, a native of Long Island, became the Reform temple’s cantor in July, succeeding Cantor Janice Cohen.
A member of the American Conference of Cantors, Camhi was invested in 2006 at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion School of Sacred Music in New York and received a master’s degree in sacred music from the school in 2005. She also earned a bachelor’s degree in music in 2001 from Binghamton University in New York.
“It’s been said that ‘to sing is to have prayed twice,’” Camhi told NJ Jewish News. “It is my hope, as Temple Shalom’s cantor, to raise our collective voice in prayer through song.”
Camhi, who lives in Metuchen with her husband, Evan, an attorney, said she welcomes the opportunity to be the temple’s keeper of Jewish musical traditions. She will share musical history by leading worship services with Rabbi Laurence Malinger, Temple Shalom’s religious leader; participating in lifecycle events; teaching in the temple’s religious school; and working with the junior and senior choirs.
Camhi also will maintain the temple’s bar/bat mitzva program, in which she will prepare students to chant liturgy, Torah portions, and haftarot. She said she intends to work on a personal basis with each student.
Her activities in the temple, she said, will also span the generations. “I intend to reach out to the young and the old so that, with them, I may create musical programming to impart the teachings of the Torah and to imbue a love of Israel,” Camhi said. “I would like to have a part in fostering and maintaining a community of Jews who assemble to find themselves, embrace those around them, and to encounter God.”
Camhi was the cantor at Temple B’nai Shalom in East Brunswick from 2006 to 2008 and was a cantorial intern at Temple Chaverim in Plainview, NY, from 2002 to 2006. She also served as a cantorial soloist at Temple Concord in Binghamton from 1998 to 2001.
Expanding repertoire
Camhi said she regards community outreach as an important component of her cantorial experience. At B’nai Shalom, she led a “learning Shabbat services” program for intermarried and unaffiliated Jews and organized and conducted a community-wide interfaith Thanksgiving service choir. While at Temple Chaverim, she led an annual women’s seder.
Her other outreach efforts included serving as coleader of Shabbat services at an assisted living facility, leading a Passover seder for developmentally challenged college students, and performing as a soloist for Hadassah functions.
“Outreach is important to a temple and to me, personally,” Camhi said. “It’s mutually beneficial for all houses of worship to be good neighbors. Friendship and understanding evolve from these kinds of relationships.”
In 2003, Camhi performed in a concert featuring Israeli art songs at HUC-JIR in New York and in a concert of Yiddish and Ladino songs at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem in 2001.
She came to her vocation early. As a child, Camhi sang with the youth choir at the Suburban Temple in Wantagh, NY (her mother sang in the adult choir).
“By the time I was 14, I knew becoming a cantor was my calling. My parents were always supportive — they encouraged me to follow my dreams,” said Camhi. “For years, they gave up a lot of their free time to drive to me to all kinds of singing classes and singing events. I’m extremely grateful to them.”
Although Camhi has worked hard, she considers herself to be the beneficiary of a great deal of luck.
“I’m incredibly fortunate because I’m able to combine some of my greatest passions — music, Judaism, and my love of learning,” she said. “I’d love to bring in more of the music of the Reform movement and expand the liturgical repertoire. And I’ve learned an important lesson — music is a great equalizer and source of comfort. It can be a communal activity without judgment.”
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