Rabbi Hazzan Jonathan Angress: The Cantor is Now also the Rabbi

By Norma Libman

You could say that Rabbi Hazzan Jonathan Angress became a cantor and a rabbi, and now lives in Albuquerque and serves Congregation B’nai Israel, because he fell in love with Fiddler on the Roof. But it’s a little more complicated than that. For starters, he was only six when the magic happened.

“My parents took me to see my cousin in a school play version of Fiddler,” he says, “and, as you know, the show opens with a fiddler on a roof, and I got enamored with that image. My parents bought a tape of the movie and I would watch it every day. I got to the point where I could recite it from memory. But this image of somebody playing a violin on top of a house just stuck with me and I begged my parents for violin lessons. They didn’t take me seriously at first. They thought it was something I would give up very quickly.”

It turns out he still plays violin to this day.  He took a group class and private lessons, and thirty years later he’s still playing violin. In fact, it was looking like he was going to become a professional violinist, he says, until it was time for him to start training for his Bar Mitzvah. He was already very active in religious life, and at that time discovered, also, that he could sing. He believes that comes from his study of the violin, which trained his ear. 

He ended up being prepared for his Bar Mitzvah by the cantor at his synagogue, and that training included not only reading Torah, but also leading the service. The cantor put him in the choir and soon he was leading the choir and arranging music and, before long, became the unofficial assistant to the cantor. He soon decided that this was the way to combine the two passions of his life: music and Judaism.

“Everything I did from that time on, going to college, what I studied, and all that, was part of my going down the path of becoming a cantor,” he says. He received his Bachelors degree in Music and Judaic Studies from the University of Miami Frost School of Music, after which he received his Masters and Cantorial Ordination from the H. L. Miller Cantorial School at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. There he not only trained as a cantor, but also learned the skills to be a member of the clergy. While he has held many part-time cantorial positions since he was in High School, he was first employed as a cantor at his grandparents’ synagogue in Florida  and then began assisting and filling in for the rabbi when needed. He has also studied voice and acting with Broadway actor and singer Paul Schoeffler and has served as an unofficial Jewish musical consultant on the 2015 Broadway production of  . . .  what else? Fiddler on the Roof.

He moved on to Congregation Beth El in Phoenix, where he began to observe a trend where synagogues were hiring rabbis who could sing because it was getting difficult to afford both a rabbi and a cantor. During his six-year tenure in Phoenix he served as sole spiritual leader of the congregation for about half that time. So the decision to launch into rabbinic studies was an easy one. In the fall of 2022 he came to B’nai Israel as the cantor and spiritual leader, but was already well into his rabbinic studies. His final ordination as a rabbi, from the Rabbinical Academy Mesifta Adath Wolkowisk in New York, was this past year.

“We really like Albuquerque,” he says. He is here with his wife and stepson, who is a sophomore at UNM studying mechanical engineering. His wife, a teacher for more than twenty years, was also a STEM Ambassador for the Department of Defense in Phoenix, and now continues both teaching and government work in Albuquerque.

They like the slower pace of New Mexico, but acknowledge some challenges. For instance, because Albuquerque is a much smaller city than Phoenix, kosher food is not as readily available.   

On the other hand, Rabbi Andress says, “I still play the violin, also the guitar, and a little bit of piano, and I enjoy incorporating them into our Jewish practice in various ways. We’ve integrated music into school and youth activities. We have some musical accompaniment in services, but the High Holidays remain largely traditional with about half of the evening services now being accompanied by the piano. We have a volunteer choir which currently gets together to sing for specialized events and programs once in a while. 

“There is sometimes a little push back but I know that is part of developing a relationship with the clergy. The synagogue had dabbled in that a bit, but I now make sure that the Selichot service, Erev Rosh Hashanah and Kol Nidre have piano accompaniment. We keep the daytime services more traditional. So we’re offering something for everybody. And even with the piano my style is more traditional. That’s just been my style to begin with.”

Rabbi Angress is trying other new activities for the congregation as well. “For instance,” he says, “we did a young family camp-out event on Shavuot this year in order to connect the holiday with nature and the environment. This was spearheaded by one of our active young parents who is also a geography professor at CNM. We’d like to do more similar types of events in order to engage and connect with different demographics, both inside and outside the synagogue building. Outside public events may take a while to happen as we continue to monitor and gauge the public’s interactions and reactions to the Jewish community post-October 7^th.”

Congregation B’nai Israel was founded in 1920 and its historic building, known as “the Tent in the Desert” has been located on Indian School Road since 1970. Since 2019 it has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Norma Libman is an award-winning author, journalist and educator who has published three books, more than 500 articles in newspapers, magazines and journals nationwide, and lectures regularly at Oasis, UNM Continuing Ed/Osher and other venues. For more information visit her website at www.normalibman.com.

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