Beginning her life as a cantor

EVAN WILLIAMS / FLORIDA WEEKLY Laila Gutstein,12, is preparing for her Bat Mitzvah this May with Cantor Marian Turk at Temple Judea in Fort Myers. Marian Turk grew up in upstate New York, but her family didn't practice Judaism. Some of her cousins did though, so through visits, she started absorbing the practices that would become both her lifetime passion, and eventually, a way to make a living.

Now 40 years old, she is the new cantor at Temple Judea in Fort Myers. It is an ancient profession that calls for her to become an expert and lead a community in Jewish music and ancient Hebrew texts. She shares some of the same responsibilities as a rabbi, such as being a clinical chaplain. Both must also complete a five-year education program.

"My cocktail party explanation is a rabbi is an expert in Jewish law, and a cantor is an expert in Jewish music and liturgy," she said. "Both a rabbi and a cantor are going to be educators in some shape or form in their synagogue."

Cantor Turk comes to the Temple fresh from being invested (graduated) last May at the Jewish Theological Seminary-H.L. Miller Cantorial School on Manhattan's bustling Upper West Side. It is dramatically different from Fort Myers.

"There is a gynormous, thriving Jewish population on the Upper West Side," she said. "Here, the Jewish community is much smaller."

But it is where Cantor Turk will begin her new profession, after making the decision to go back to cantorial school at age 35.

Her talent as a singer — a requirement for being a cantor — began to show in her high school madrigals group in Chappaqua, N.Y. But at cantorial school, her talents were tested against the nation's best.

"I kind of compare it to the high school student who got a 4.0 and then they got into Yale, and they're just like everybody else,'' she said. "I had been told that I had this lovely voice and I'd be a great cantor, and then I get to school and one of my classmates was an opera singer. Another had already had a 14-year career as a singer/ songwriter."

After high school, she attended Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts and spent a "life changing" junior year studying Hebrew in Israel. She also developed a taste for jazz.

"I just wanted to be Ella Fitzgerald," she said.

Before becoming a cantor, she said her working life was "the pits": office jobs related to communication technology. Spurred on by some of her co-workers who were getting laid off in Raleigh, N.C., where she lived at the time, she re-evaluated her talents and passions. She loves to sing, enjoys working with people and wanted to work in the Jewish community.

"I wanted to be something that my human potential was tapped into," she said.

She is a member of a Conservative synagogue, one of four Jewish movements, which range from translating the scripture from very liberally to almost literally. Conservative is somewhere in the middle, and was one of the groups progressive in investing women as cantors. In the Orthodox movement, women still can't be rabbis or cantors. The first female rabbis appeared around 1985 and the first female cantors started working a few years later.

"(Cantoring) is still a male-dominated profession," Cantor Turk said. "Before the 1980s and '70s, it's been a male thing. Males were the prayer leaders and males were the ones singing and developing the music. So part of it is just changing practices and changing perceptions."

Her role as a cantor is also different than men who practiced the profession in the mid-20th century when, she said, "Cantors were like rock stars. People would go on Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday) or on a holiday to hear a specific cantor sing the liturgy."

One of the greatest challenges of her new profession is creating a balanced musical program that Temple Judea's some 200 families will respond to. Chanting ancient Hebrew texts is traditional, but congregants sometimes enjoy tunes with popular folk rhythms.

"Part of what has happened over the last bunch of decades is fewer and fewer Jews have a connection to the Hebrew text. There are fewer people who are really literate in Hebrew. So for people like them ,it will be easier to pick up 'congregational' tunes that have nice melodies and are fun to sing. It's going to be more meaningful to them to listen to that than a cantor doing a beautiful rendition of some big chunk of Hebrew text they're not familiar with."

During Friday evening services, she usually performs more congregational tunes; on Saturdays she incorporates some traditional chanting.

"It really has to do with your congregation and what they want, and what their desires are," she said. "I think it's a balance."

She is also enjoying Southwest Florida. After seeing several dolphins surface on a boat ride with a friend when she came to audition for her cantorial position, she said, "I was totally taken with the beauty of this place."