A Message from the Senior Cantor Search Committee

A Message from the Senior Cantor Search Committee

Shalom fellow congregants,

Your Senior Cantor Search Committee is excited to introduce you to the next Senior Cantor of Holy Blossom Temple. We are thrilled to welcome Cantor David Rosen as our new Senior Cantor! Cantor Rosen will begin in the role starting in July 2020, as Cantor Maissner transitions to Cantor Emeritus.

We believe that Cantor Rosen will be a strong leader for our Temple musically, spiritually, and in the continued blossoming of our community. He brings a lot of positive energy.  He is open and engaging with all congregants and beyond, from pre-schoolers to seniors. Building relationships is one of his key strengths.

Cantor Rosen has both respect for the musical traditions of Holy Blossom, and a flair for innovation. He will build on the incredible foundation that Cantor Maissner has built over four decades, and will bring new ideas and approaches to engage our community and attract new followers.

Cantor Rosen is already highly respected in the world of Reform Cantors. He holds a teaching position at Hebrew Union College and has served in the most senior roles of the Reform Cantors organization (American Conference of Cantors).

To learn more about his many accomplishments, Cantor Rosen’s current biography can be found here.

To add to all this, Cantor Rosen, his wife, Rabbi Ilyse Glickman, and their son Joel are all originally from Toronto and are familiar with the Canadian Reform movement.  They already feel at home among us.

Our committee wants to express our gratitude to you, our congregation, for the amazing input we received through the many focus groups that Temple members attended, individual feedback you shared through individual committee members, and close to 300 responses to our survey last year. Your input led directly to the job description and the criteria we used to evaluate candidates.

As co-Chairs, we also thank our extraordinary committee for their tireless effort over 18 months during our listening campaign, definition of requirements and evaluation of candidates.  We had many strong candidates, and selecting the right one required many months of careful, diligent and thoughtful consideration. The Senior Cantor Search Committee members are Maddie Axelrod, Barry Borden, Jeff Denaburg (co-chair), Jascha Jabes, Rachel Malach (co-chair), Lewis Molot, Joanne Roher (Vice-Chair), Elliot Salmons, Brenda Saunders, Rob Sniderman, and Rabbi Splansky (ex-officio).

As Cantor Rosen and his family transition back to Canada this spring and summer, please join us in giving them a warm welcome to Holy Blossom Temple. We can’t wait to introduce you to Cantor David Rosen in person!

With excitement,

Rachel Malach & Jeff Denaburg
Co-Chairs, Senior Cantor Search Committee