Cantor Sharon Brown-Levy Joins Temple Sinai in Dresher

Cantor Sharon Brown-Levy was born in the Philadelphia area, spent much of her childhood here and graduated from Lower Moreland High School.

Now 54, the cantor is coming home.

She’s been hired as the second clergy member at Temple Sinai in Dresher. Rabbi Adam Wohlberg has led the nearly 400-family congregation since 2002.

Recently, Sam Hollander served as assistant rabbi, but he left to take a similar role at Congregation Beth El in Voorhees, New Jersey. The synagogue chose to replace Hollander with a cantor instead of a rabbi.

“The synagogue just felt that the musicality was something that was very much desired and was missing,” Executive Director Ari Goldberg said.

Brown-Levy is certainly musical.

Her father was an accompanist who traveled around the Philadelphia area performing with different bands. When his daughters were young, he formed a family band. Brown-Levy, her sister and her mother sang.

The family performed in synagogues, senior homes and other locations. They sang Yiddish music, Israeli music, Broadway tunes and American contemporary songs.

“That’s really where I got my foundation,” Brown-Levy said.

Brown-Levy’s mother, as she was dying of cancer, told her not to become a musician. There was no money in it, she said.

“’You’re smart. Be an attorney. Do something stable,’” the cantor recalled her saying.

The daughter didn’t listen.

“I couldn’t stay away from music. You couldn’t keep the music out of me,” she said.

The family moved to Florida after Brown-Levy’s mother died, and Brown-Levy studied at the University of South Florida. On weekends, she would come home to spend time with her sister and grandparents.

That was when she started picking up cantorial work at a local synagogue.

“They fell in love with me so much that they asked me to be their soloist,” she said.

While working there, Brown-Levy was noticed by leaders from a larger congregation, Temple Beth-El, in nearby St. Petersburg. They needed a cantor.

“That’s where I discovered the cantorial arts more in-depth,” she said.

Brown-Levy started handling the musical tasks at the bigger shul, but she was still not officially a cantor. The rabbi at that shul informed her that she was getting paid little for a cantor. She needed to go back to school.

Brown-Levy completed Reform and Conservative cantorial programs, both of which usually take about five years, in three.

She worked at Temple Beth-El for 11 years. Her second-longest stop, at Temple Emanu-El in Livingston, lasted eight years but ended in 2014. She then served congregations in New Jersey, Wisconsin, Toronto and Utah.

Then the cantor started another job search, and this time she found what she described as “the perfect fit.”

Temple Sinai’s hundreds of members include about 100 preschool students. The synagogue is stable.

It’s also in a region she knows and loves. Additionally, the Philadelphia area offers access to many high-quality medical and educational institutions, which is important for Brown-Levy, her husband Eytan and their 16-year-old son Mattan.

Temple Sinai last employed a cantor five years ago. Brown-Levy hopes to bring the music back in full.

“I’m thinking that I’m going to really be a source of musical consultation and engagement. To build upon their musical repertoire, to add instrumentals to their Friday nights and to pay attention to people’s comfort zones to adding instruments outside of Friday night,” she explained.

The cantor will also lead the synagogue’s bar and bat mitzvah program. She hopes to start a peer mentor program for post-b’nai mitzvah students.

“We’ve seen children fall off after their bar or bat mitzvah,” she said. “I want to create love and passion for Jewish learning, for Jewish music.”

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