Congregation Beth El in Voorhees has hired a new cantor, Zahava Fried. She starts July 1.
Fried will replace Hazzan Alisa Pomerantz-Boro, who had to step aside earlier this year due to complications from a heart issue. Pomerantz-Boro served the Conservative synagogue for 22 years and was one of the first female cantors in the Conservative denomination, so Fried has big shoes to fill.
She’s excited to fill them.
Fried said she knew of Beth El before she even applied for the role because of Pomerantz-Boro.
“For me, to step into the pulpit that she so carefully crafted is a tremendous privilege and a tremendous responsibility,” the new hazzan said.
Fried, 33, has not yet moved to the Philadelphia area. She plans to serve out her contract with Temple Beth Tzedek in Buffalo. The contract ends June 30.
Fried’s first Shabbat service at Beth El will likely come in July, and she will use the slower summer months to transition to her new job and community. The cantor and her husband have three children, and two will be attending the Kellman Brown Academy in Voorhees in the fall.
KBA was actually as much of a reason for choosing South Jersey as Beth El, according to Fried. The hazzan and her husband loved Buffalo and Temple Beth Tzedek, but the region did not have a Jewish day school. Fried, who served as a preschool director before going to cantorial school, and her husband, who attended day school, both wanted their kids to get a Jewish-centric education.
The couple arrived at this moment after 10 years in Buffalo. Fried’s contract was expiring, and her husband was about to finish his medical residency as an ear, nose and throat doctor. “We looked at each other and said, ‘Is this where we want to set down roots and raise a family?’” she said.
Fried began job searching. When she saw the Beth El listing, she also looked into the nearest day school, KBA. She thought South Jersey might make a perfect fit, so she applied. The next day, Beth El leaders got back to her. The connection felt natural from the first Zoom call.
“I had a smile plastered on my face,” Fried said.
Rabbi David Englander, Beth El’s spiritual leader, said that a recommendation letter motivated the search committee to schedule an interview right away.
“We received an extraordinary recommendation letter from one of Cantor Fried’s teachers just prior to her application for our position, describing their experience with her in such positive terms that we could not wait to speak with her ourselves,” he wrote in an email.
During the Zoom interview, Fried referred to herself at one point as “a beverage goblin.” She frequently walks around with water, coffee and/or seltzer. When Karen Schlessel, a member of the search committee, picked Fried up for the cantor’s in-person interview in March, Schlessel had two seltzers in her car cupholders.
That set the tone for a weekend that felt like “walking into a giant hug,” Fried said. The cantor connected with the search committee, Rabbi Englander, Associate Rabbi Sam Hollander and congregants. She said that cantors often feel like they have to “be on” when they are in the synagogue and on the bimah, but she never felt that way at Beth El.
“I just had to be me,” she said.
And the cantor is a Jewish leader with a deep commitment to Conservative Judaism.
Fried was adopted into a Jewish family as a newborn and raised Reconstructionist by her mother. She first went through the conversion process at age five. But as a teen, Fried visited Israel, backpacked around the country with friends and got invited by some locals to celebrate Shabbat. They went to a class hosted by an Orthodox rabbi, who started talking to Fried. He told her she wasn’t actually Jewish.
“That made me angry,” the cantor recalled.
She returned to the U.S., enrolled at Yeshiva University and went through a second conversion: this time to Modern Orthodoxy with a halachic beit din. Months later, she met her husband, and as they continued to date and talk, they realized that they both asked questions about God.
“We decided to wrestle with our theology together,” the cantor said.
Certain parts of Modern Orthodoxy did not sit well with them, like the rule that prevents women from singing on the bimah. They realized that they wanted a deep commitment to Jewish doctrine with the flexibility to evolve where appropriate. Fried sees Conservative Judaism as the tradition that balances both.
“I think the reason Conservative Judaism remains relevant is it’s one of the only denominations that continues to take very seriously and honor our thousands-of-years-old textual tradition and does not make large leaps when it comes to liturgical changes or textual changes, but when they do make those leaps, it’s in service of egalitarianism,” she explained. “I think it’s important to keep that tent as open as possible while sticking to Jewish tradition.”