March 18, 2005/Adar II 7 5765, Volume 57, No. 29
Raising her voice, singing our songLongtime Temple Chai cantor retires this year
VICKI CABOT
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 For 22 years, Cantor Sharona Feller has dedicated herself to helping the community find its voice - and sing its song. Photo courtesy of Temple Chai |
She is singing the song of the community.
"Sharona's beautiful voice and her understanding that that voice must be used to help the community find its own voice was crucial to our success," writes Rabbi Bill Berk, on sabbatical this year, in an e-mail message from Italy. He and Feller have worked together at Temple Chai for the past 22 years. Feller is retiring in May and will be honored at the synagogue on Saturday, April 2.
During her tenure at the Phoenix Reform congregation, Feller has used her voice to touch those in the Chai congregational family and beyond, reaching the larger Jewish and non-Jewish communities.
"Sharona's energy doesn't stop at her own temple," says Cantor Mikhal Shiff-Matter of Temple Beth Israel, who has collaborated with Feller and Temple Solel's Cantor Julie Berlin on a number of musical programs, including an upcoming April 3 concert featuring the adult choirs of the three congregations.
Feller's innovations span Temple Chai's development from a tiny congregation of some 180 families to today's 1,200-member family. Her involvement runs the gamut from teaching b'nai mitzvah students to creating Bat Chai, the temple's women's study program, to leading its adult and children's choirs to organizing its Thanksgiving ecumenical service.
Two of her greatest accomplishments, according to Berk, were the development of the temple's family school and its retreat programs. And especially, he says, collaborating with him to create the temple's Kabbalat Shabbat service.
"We were one of the first Reform congregations in North America to eliminate the late Friday night service and to recover the tradition of Kabbalat Shabbat," writes Berk.
Berk and Feller have known each other for more than 30 years. They met when both were students in California, working the Jewish summer camp circuit.
They share fond memories of those years.
"It was a creative time in Jewish life," Feller recalls, and the camp environment was a perfect place to experiment.
Music came naturally to Feller. She grew up in a Southern California family where everyone was always singing.
"My mom sang light opera, my dad had a good bass voice," she recalls. Music was the counterpoint of everyday life.
"You could tell if everyone was OK if we were singing."
Feller sang in the choir at her synagogue, Valley Beth Shalom, led then by Cantor Sam Fordis.
"I loved it," she says. "It was a great place to grow up."
She majored in ethnomusicology at the University of California in Los Angeles and went on to study at Hebrew Union College, making connections with area rabbis and freelancing as a cantor.
In 1976, one of those connections led to Rabbi Barton Lee at Hillel at Arizona State University - and also, in a more oblique way, to Feller's marriage to husband, Daniel.
Lee brought Feller in to sing at Hillel High Holiday services that year. Their parents met at a preholiday dinner.
Sharona and Daniel Feller were married in August 1978. They share a deep commitment to Jewish life, devotion to family, including children Rachel, Avi and Jonathan, and a love of music.
The couple moved to Chicago, where, Daniel Feller was completing his residency in ophthalmology, and Sharona Feller served as cantor at Temple Jeremiah in Northfield, Ill.
In 1983, the couple relocated to the Valley, and Daniel Feller opened his first office at Tatum and Shea boulevards.
Six months before, Berk had also moved to Phoenix to serve as rabbi at Temple Chai.
Sharona Feller says now that the coincidental moves and their reconnecting within months was "beshert."
They developed what Berk calls "a remarkable partnership."
"We pioneered the team approach to running synagogues, which meant, that rabbis, cantors and educators worked together in a non-hierarchical fashion to create the community's programming."
Rabbi Peter Levi, who joined the Chai professional staff four years ago, lauds Feller's commitment to the temple mission and the Jewish people.
He credits her "beautiful sense of who she is" and "her graceful spirit" with enabling her to engage the community.
"Everything she does, she does with her whole heart," says Marilyn Starrett, a Bat Chai participant. "You can't help but feel connected."
The women's programming has had a significant impact on the congregation, helping women find their place in Jewish life.
"We started it because we wanted to study as women and explore (Jewish life) through its voices," says Feller.
The recent women's retreat attracted 65 women - and a waiting list - for two days of prayer, study and camaraderie.
Feller says that bringing women together opens them up to themselves, and others.
"And the more sharing we do, the more we learn from others."
Feller, while a trailblazer in many ways, chooses to see herself simply as a woman who has had the opportunity to do what is meaningful to her.
"As a woman, I did not become a cantor to make a statement," she says. "I did it because I loved doing it."
Still, she remains a role model for many, women and men.
Levi calls her a "shaliach tzibbur," a representative of the community, a cantor who not only leads the community in prayer but acts as its agent. "She understands what is happening in the sanctuary and that she is the facilitator," he says.
"It is never about her, it is about the congregation."
Feller says that music helps people get in touch with their hearts.
"Singing is another language, another mode of communication," she says.
It allows people to let go, to release, to go to another level.
Feller says she loves when she looks out at the congregation and sees a congregant with closed eyes, absorbing the music.
"When you sing in community, you don't care how your voice sounds," says Feller. "It is the balance of the voices."
Teri Berman, who has sung with Feller in the Temple Chai Adult Choir for the past 17 years, credits Feller with creating the embracing atmosphere.
"Sharona is a joy," she says.
"To sing, to make music together is just a delight."
Berk notes that he and Feller developed a strong intuitive relationship regarding the key elements of the service - silences, kavannah (intention), choice of melodies, the way certain prayers are davened.
"In recent years we rarely had to talk - we could just communicate with each other with a look - or even without a look," he writes.
Feller attributes it to trust and confidence in each other. "We could rely on each other to fill the spaces."
And so, congregants have been treated to prayer experiences that seem to flow seamlessly and deepen with meaning.
"When I first heard Sharona sing the High Holiday liturgy, I felt as if I was transmitted back in history," says Ginny Keller, another adult choir member. "I felt like I was connected to years and years and generations and generations."
Music can do that, says Feller, that is its power.
And Feller, with her voice and her song, has been a real force.
"There are many beautiful voices," says Starrett, "but when Sharona sings it is her whole spirit.
"She is not singing to you, she is singing with you."
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Details
- What: Coffeehouse-style dessert and concert
- Who: Cantor Sharona Feller
- When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 2
- Where: Temple Chai, 4645 E. Marilyn Road, Phoenix
- Cost: $36
- Call: 602-971-1234