Cantor Helps Temple Awakening Sing Jewish Community Growing Three Decades After Merger

Spokane’s only Jewish temple is submerged in chaos.

Outside, yellow tape cordons off the office entrance. Backhoes have torn up the lawn and parking lot in preparation for a new $1 million education wing.

Inside, boxes, tables and chairs clutter the hallways. Staff and volunteers wend their way around the obstacles, preparing for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, as well as a new year of classes for everyone from preschoolers to senior citizens.

They are smiling, nodding hello, carrying with them not only books and supplies, but the knowing look of people in on a secret.

Compared to a few years ago, “the difference is night and day,” said Rabbi Jacob Izakson. “This place is humming.”

Spokane’s small Jewish community is experiencing an awakening of sorts, the rabbi said.

Membership is growing. The annual kosher dinner for the community has maxed out with 3,000 diners every year - that’s all the kitchen can handle. But more importantly, members are growing as a community and as individuals. There’s a heightened sense of the spiritual, Izakson said.

For the first time since the temple was created in 1966 during a merger of two congregations, Beth Shalom has hired a full-time cantor, a trained musician responsible for leading the prayers.

David Mannes wears Spiderman ties and graces the Friday evening services with his harmonic tenor voice. He plays the guitar, chants from the Torah and sings modern hymns as well.

“The cantorial experience is so much a part of Jewish history,” Izakson said. “In the centuries before printed prayer books, there was always a chanter who would lead the congregation.”

But cantors are in short supply and command good salaries. Hundreds of smaller temples across the country do without, just like Spokane has done for decades.

The rabbi doubles up his duties during services, members of the congregation pitch in and contract cantors are hired for the high holy days every fall.

Hiring a full-time cantor is a sign of arrival, Izakson said.

When Beth Shalom first started looking for a cantor three years ago, they found that money wasn’t all they needed.

Cantors, by nature, are dedicated to living out their Jewish faith every day. In Spokane that is hard to do. There is no kosher bakery or butcher, no Jewish day school.

The Jewish congregation of 250 families is small by East Coast standards.

After a national search, the congregation came up empty. On the phone one day, Izakson was lamenting that fact to a fellow in Edmonton who was training a recent Jewish convert.

On the other end was Mannes (pronounced manis), a teacher and cantor in Edmonton, Alberta. Izakson asked Mannes, 45, if he was looking for a new job. He was.

“They were looking for a ‘mensch,’ a gentleman who could fit into the community,” Mannes said. “Maybe this was meant to be?”

Mannes is the son of a cantor. He was raised in a conservative Jewish home. His father came from a strong Orthodox tradition.

As an adult, Mannes has served both reform and conservative congregations - a plus for the Spokane community.

Reform Judaism gained popularity in the 18th century as a rebellion against the strict rules of Orthodoxy, which set Jews apart from the rest of the world.

Conservative Judaism arose in the 19th century as a response to the reform movement. It stresses a blend between the liberal reform interpretation of Judaism and the separatist approach of Orthodox practitioners.

Although Izakson is conservative, the congregation is a blend of both reform and conservative Jews.

Mannes’ familiarity with both movements was a bonus.

“I’m not a right-wing conservative or a capital-L liberal,” he said. “I’m kind of in between.”

The congregation expects more than just good music during the worship services. Mannes doubles as their director of education, designing the Hebrew school curriculum, the youth classes and tutoring 12-year-olds weekly the year before their bat or bar mitzvah.

“I wear several different yarmulkes,” he said.

Mannes’ musical education started in his father’s choir. He’s been performing in temple services since his bar mitzvah.

He never intended to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a cantor. Instead he got a bachelor’s and master’s degree in education.

He married a doctor and they moved to Edmonton, where she set up her practice. As he got involved with the reform temple in Edmonton, he gradually fell into participating more and more in the services.

In 1993, he passed the exam for the American Conference of Cantors.

His wife and children, ages 12 and 10, will stay in Canada until she can make arrangements to practice medicine in the United States. The arrangement makes it easy for Mannes to devote himself to his new job but is difficult on his family.

The payoff will be in a year, when a youth choir is up and running, the adult choir is at full strength and the new education wing is completed.

Mannes thinks the changes will further energize the congregation, and that will be evident in the music at the services.

“Sometimes the prayers don’t speak to us,” he said. “But music does.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo