cantors and lay people

[cellio]

I'm on a mailing list for synagogue music/musicians. It's mostly inhabited by cantors, and I try to just sit and listen.

Lately, though, they've been doing the "we don't get no respect" mantra, saying that synagogues underpay them and that non-proefessionals are cutting into their jobs (something like "how dare an accountant who sings part-time take away our jobs!"), and they've been tossing around the "union" word. And. Well.

I slept on this before sending it:

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Thus far this discussion has focused mostly on financial concerns -- that "part-timers" and "ameteurs" take work away from cantors, who need the work to survive -- leading to suggestions like the above, where others are forbidden to do this work. I would like to bring up a different consideration.

We, as Jewish leaders, should be encouraging members of our congregations to participate, to learn, and to become more proficient in a variety of Jewish endeavors. Hired professionals are a relatively recent innovation; before that, "just plain folks" were educated enough to serve as sh'liach tzibur, ba'al kri'ah, and other functions around the synagogue. Much of modern Judaism has lost that, and I think we should be trying to reverse that trend, not driving even more nails into the coffin.

I would rather see on the bima a dedicated member of my own congregation with an adequate voice than an outsider with a stellar voice and no real commitment to the congregation. (I recognize that some cantors do make real commitments to their congregations, but I also know that many just view it as a "gig".) I would like members of the congregation who are skilled in these areas to have opportunities to apply and hone those skills in their own congregations -- even if they are nurses or accountants or teachers who have absolutely no intention of pursuing a profession as an invested cantor. Restricting most ritual roles to people with credentials weakens the community, and Jewish worship is about the community. There are some roles that must be restricted in some ways, of course, but those are matters of halacha, not of job-protection.

If in the future we should have so many talented, dedicated lay leaders that invested cantors are feeling threatened, well, that's unfortunate for the cantors, but it's great news for the community. Any profession is subject to ups and downs, and occasional massively-reduced demand, because of changes in the world (automation, demographics, economic factors, etc). We are all subject to these risks, whether we are computer professionals, retailers, factory workers -- or cantors.

There will always be congregations that prefer the invested cantor, and there are undoubtedly other jobs that cantors are able to fill. Cantors aren't going away. But being an invested cantor is no guarantee of employment, just as a university degree is no guarantee in other professions. Sometimes the market just doesn't support the available labor force, and people have to adapt.

Comments

[sk4p.livejournal.com]

Very even-handed of you, very diplomatic, well-said.

It's kind of like the old notion Rand voiced that "we can't introduce the electric light bulb, because it would put the candle-makers out of business!" Tough noogie for the candle-makers. :)

[cellio]

Ooh, I should have you review my rants before I send them. The candle-maker analogy is perfect! I was looking for a real-world analogy (like how automation put factory workers out of jobs, so they had to learn new jobs), but feared side-tracking the conversation ("see how badly we treated the factory workers!"). I needed something older but that people could identify with.

Now that I think about it, I suppose I could have used cars and wagon-makers, too.

[goljerp]

It's a tough issue. Because, on the one hand, I can totally see the point of the Cantors. I'm not sure about the details at HUC, but I believe that the Cantorial program at JTS is a 5 year program. People in the cantorial school take a lot of classes, and they put a lot of work into finishing the program. Who's going to go through all that if there aren't any decent-paying jobs after finishing? (Well, some people will, but many people won't. I don't mean to suggest Cantors are trying to get rich or anything, but it's important to be able to support one's self).

On the other hand, just because someone finished a 5 year program doesn't mean they should be guaranteed a job. I think it's a valid decision for a place to decide that they don't want to have a professional cantor. And what would a Cantor's union do if, e.g., a shul decided that their Rabbi was going to lead services. Or a lay leader. Would the Cantor's union require that only Cantors read Torah? What about running a shul's choir? What about teaching music in sunday/hebrew school? What about...

Cantors do a variety of things for a shul, but there's nothing that they do that is halachically mandated to be done by a cantor, or that couldn't potentially be done by a knowledgable layperson. Their training might make them better at it than a random person on the street, but if a congregation decides that's not important, well, it should be their right.

I was friends with the Cantor at one shul, and thought that she provided immense value to that shul. I'm currently a member of a shul which has been debating whether to hire a part-time Cantor (although she's going to be called a "musical director"). I am opposed to this move, although it's probably going to go through anyhow.

I have the feeling I haven't been very coherent. Ah, well...

[cellio]

It is a tough issue, yes. HUC's cantorial program is also five years, and when you invest that much time in any course of study, you want to have some confidence that you'll be able to get an appropriate job at the end.

But on the other hand, cultivating the idea that professional cantors are the only answer is bad. Judaism is a participatory religion. Way too many people go to "watch" services, not to pray and be involved, and what's the point of that? So if we've got people who are actually moved to go out and get sufficient skills to fill leadership roles in the synagogue, we should encourage them. And there are almost certainly aspects of the job that can't be filled reliably by volunteers, either because of the time commitment or because of specialized skills (school programs, HHD music, leading a weekly choir, etc), so I think there are still jobs out there for professionals.

And I don't find the argument "if you let the ameteur do it then I'm out of a job and that's not fair to me" to be compelling. I face the possibility of being laid off because "maybe we don't need documentation after all" (or "our programmers will write it"). The person who works at an independent bookstore faces being laid off because they can't compete with Amazon. The landlord who earns his income from rentals to high-tech workers faces loss when those jobs go elsewhere due to the city's brain drain. Shit happens. You can't compel people to hire you or retain you, union thuggery aside, and the sooner you realize that and instead make yourself attractive so people will want to hire you, the better.

(And yeah, it's not like a cantors' union could really enforce its will on congregations anyway. So they should be viewing it as a way to allow cantors to collaborate on things like salary surveys and educational updates, not as a way to beat up on congregations.)

[goljerp]

cultivating the idea that professional cantors are the only answer is bad.

I agree.

I don't find the argument "if you let the ameteur do it then I'm out of a job and that's not fair to me" to be compelling.

I don't find that argument compelling, either. The candlemaker/electricity analogy is good. The argument I find harder to dismiss is "The amateurs out there won't do it right, but they're always going to be cheaper." I don't totally buy the argument, and even if I did, I don't think that they've got the right answer.

(And yeah, it's not like a cantors' union could really enforce its will on congregations anyway. So they should be viewing it as a way to allow cantors to collaborate on things like salary surveys and educational updates, not as a way to beat up on congregations.)

I actually don't think you're correct on this. Sure, a cantor's union (CU) on its own doesn't have much leverage on congregations. However, a cantor's union with close tie to the Rabbi's union and the Reform movement could have LOTS of leverage.

What if, in order for a congregation to be part of UAHC (or whatever the new acronym is), they had to agree to the CU's guidelines, which included things like "Any person hired in a cantorial role by a synegogue of more than x member units must be a member of the CU unless waiver y has been obtained" or whatever... if this was the only way that a shul could hire (or re-hire) a CCAR Rabbi and get all the benefits of being part of UAHC (NFTY youth group, etc.), I imagine that things might change. Especially if the hypothetical CU was smart and started things slowly (stick a grandfather clause into the above statement, and it gets a lot more palatable...)

[cellio]

The argument I find harder to dismiss is "The amateurs out there won't do it right, but they're always going to be cheaper."

That's a risk, but the rabbi ought to catch these problems and can educate the lay people in specific areas. It's my impression that if you don't have a rabbi, you aren't hiring a cantor either.

Yes, there are things that cantos do that don't directly manifest on the bima, where the rabbi wouldn't necessarily catch problems -- such as choir direction, songleading in the school, and so on. I've heard invested cantors argue that there's a lot that cantors do that most people never see and that most people aren't qualified to do. But I'm not sure how essential these things are, and it doesn't address the aspect that lay leaders do best (leading services). This argument really sounds like ego and protectionism to me.

Think about other professions. When you set out to engage someone to perform a service, you have an idea in mind of what's "good enough", that balance point among skill, price, and your specific needs. You don't have the delusion that you are hiring the best person in the world on an absolute skill; you just realize that you don't need, say, the top doctor at the Mayo clinic to treat your flu. If you need the other services you'll hire for them; if you don't, or if you just aren't at that point yet, the high-ranking expert is overkill. You'll overpay and he'll be bored. Not a good mix.

However, a cantor's union with close tie to the Rabbi's union and the Reform movement could have LOTS of leverage.

Hmm, good point. I think things would get really ugly if they tried something like that, but with politics and time many things are possible.