On Friday evening, February 14, Cantor Barbara Ostfeld will be the guest speaker at our erev Shabbat service, sharing with us her experience of being the first female cantor ordained from the Hebrew Union College as well as her recently published memoir, “The Ballad of Barbi Prim”. Just this past November, Cantor Ostfeld was honored at the URJ Biennial in Chicago and was presented with the 2019 Debbie Friedman Award for Contributions to Jewish Music.

At the ceremony,  President of the American Conference of Cantors, Claire Franco, shared the following words about Cantor Ostfeld, “Decades ago, Barbara planted her roots in the soil of a calling that was not open to women. Her passion, her bravery and yes, her chutzpah, allowed the women that followed, like me, to carve our initials in the trunk of our profession.”