Chai ... celebrating 18 years of a cantor’s song
Dec. 18 concert will honor cantor of Congregation B’nai Israel
BY LAYLI WHYTE
Staff Writer

CHRISKELLY staff Marla Barugel will celebrate her 18th year as a cantor at the Congregation B’nai Israel in Rumson.

Marla Barugel will be celebrating her 18th year as cantor at Congregation B’nai Israel in Rumson this month where her duties vary from teaching bar and bat mitzvah students to chanting in ancient languages during services.

“Going into the profession of cantor,” she said, “I was able to combine three of my passions: singing, foreign languages and teaching.”

Barugel was one of the first women to graduate from the Cantors Institute/ Seminary College for Jewish Music, now known as the H.L. Miller Cantorial School.

“When I was 13 and I had my bat mitzvah,” she said, “I actually said that I wished I were a man so I could be a cantor.”

Before attending the seminary college, she put the idea of becoming a cantor out of her mind since at that time, the profession was not open to women.

Instead, she pursued a bachelor’s degree in French and Spanish, and worked as a Spanish teacher.

After Barugel moved back to New York City from the Midwest in the early 1980s, she lived across the street from the Hebrew Arts School on West 67th St.

“I took courses in music there,” she said. “One of the classes I took was Yiddish Art Song, where I met a cantorial student from the Jewish Theological Seminary who encouraged me to become a cantor.”

Barugel learned that certain synagogues were allowing women to act as cantors for services, and actually met a female cantor while taking a Ladino folk song class at the Hebrew Arts School.

“I was moved and inspired to hear her davening or chanting,” she said, “and I also liked the aspect of intermingling and socializing with her congregation after the services. I’m a people person.”

Barugel has performed in the United States, Italy, France, Mexico and Israel, singing in the language of each country. She also lived for a time in both Paris and Madrid.

She is a founding member of the Cantors Institute Alumni Association and has served on the Executive Council of the Cantors Assembly.

Barugel said she wanted to sing prayers because the liturgy moved her, but had never before had the opportunity to sing in a synagogue.

“I feel every week when I’m chanting, a very deep spirituality,” she said.

In 1992, Barugel’s youngest son, Avidor underwent liver transplant surgery and endured serious post-operative complications. When he recovered, she felt the need to give thanks.

“I was so overjoyed when he finally came home from the hospital after nine months,” she said. “In 1993, I embarked on the project of making the CD.”

She describes her album, titled “From Darkness to Light,” as a very eclectic song collection.

Many of the songs are sung in different languages, including Ladino, which is the language the Jewish people took with them when they were expelled from Spain and entered North Africa. She also sings in Russian, French, Hebrew and Yiddish.

Barugel also composed two original songs for the album, “Cuando el Rey Nimrod,” written in Ladino, and “Yom Zeh M’chubad,” a Sabbath table song.

An excerpt from “Cuando el Rey Nimrod” reads: “When King Nimrod went out into the fields, he looked at the heavens and at the stars. He saw the holy light above the Jewish quarter, a sign that Abraham, our father, was about to be born.”

This song is recorded in Ladino, but translated into English in the CD jacket.

“The original ballad [romance] has been a favorite of mine for years,” according to Barugel’s notes on the jacket, “but I was inspired to write a new version. This song is dedicated to my mother-in-law, Alegria Barugel, who is in a nursing home. Although unable to speak, until recently, she could mouth the words to both versions of ‘Cuando el Rey Nimrod.’ How powerful is music!”

Congregation B’nai Israel will be celebrating the work of Barugel, who will be celebrating her 18th, or “chai,” anniversary at the congregation.

“Chai” is the Hebrew word for life. The Hebrew letters spelling Chai have a numerical value of 18.

“We give a lot of importance to that number,” said Barugel. A concert will be held in her honor on Sunday, Dec. 18, at 7 p.m. at Congregation B’nai Israel, 171 Ridge Road.

Barugel joined B’nai Israel immediately after receiving her diploma of Hazzan, the degree required to become a cantor. She was one of the first two women to receive the diploma of Hazzan from her school.

In her position as cantor, or shaliach tzibbur, which means messenger of the community in Hebrew, Barugel leads the congregation in services for Shabbat, high holy days and festivals.

“Over the years,” she said, “my role has expanded to include teaching all bar and bat mitzvah students, teaching cantillation, which is how to chant the torah and haftorah, to children and adults, officiating at weddings and funerals and visiting the sick in the hospital.”

Barugel also attends and officiates at shiva minyanim, prayer services at the home of someone sitting shiva, or is in mourning.

“My major responsibility is to supervise the Torah Readers Group,” she said, “which means assigning portions to, and listening to students and adults learning the Torah.”

Barugel works very closely with Rabbi Andrew Bloom, who first came to the congregation in July, and she said they have a wonderful working relationship.

“We meet several times a week,” she said. “We discuss upcoming services and bar mitzvah students and special programs held in the synagogue. Those meetings account for the success of our partnership.”

Barugel first entered the Seminary College in September 1983, and almost immediately began to fight for her right to follow her lifelong dream.

Although she and her fellow female students were taking identical classes to the male students, they could graduate only with a bachelor’s degree in sacred music, not the diploma of Hazzan male students received. They began lobbying, protesting and campaigning for equal rights.

“Many of the male students were supporting us as well,” she said.

By the time Barugel graduated, Chancellor Ismer Schorsch of the Seminary College decided that the same decision that granted women the right to become rabbis also pertained to women becoming cantors.

“Women were now able to take on all of the time-bound positive commandments,” she said, “such as praying three times a day and wearing the tallit, or prayer shawl, and tefillin, or phylacteries, which are boxes we put on our head and arms daily, which is part of a ritual containing our major prayer, Shema and other portions from the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy. We wear these in the morning to express the fact that we bind ourselves to God emotionally through our hearts and intellectually through our minds.

“Performing this mitzvah, or obligation,” Barugel explained, “has always been an obligation for men, but women were exempt.”