Cantorial Search Updates
Meet our Cantor search committee
Sep 2nd, 2026
Dear Friends,
We are in Elul, the month that asks us to take stock before a new year begins. Temple Solel has come through a season of real change, and we have come through it well, together. Some change is still ahead of us, and I know we’re not all in the same place with it. Some of us are ready to look forward; others are still holding what we have said goodbye to. Both are honest ways to be in a year like this one.
What I want to take stock of with you today is our search for a cantor.
The question I am asked most often about it is a simple one: is anything actually happening? I have heard it at Friday night onegs, at religious school, and several times at the Engagement Fair. Hearing it that often tells me I should have written to you sooner, and that’s on me. So here is where things stand. Over the summer our committee prepared and submitted Temple Solel’s application to the American Conference of Cantors (ACC), the body that places cantors across the Reform movement. Cantorial hiring runs on a season of its own, one that begins in earnest after the High Holy Days. We expect Zoom interviews in October, with a small number of in-person visits to follow.
Two things are worth knowing about the committee’s work behind that sentence. There are more congregations seeking cantors right now than there are cantors seeking congregations, so the committee did not wait on a single channel; it looked at two ordination programs outside the ACC, and reported honestly that neither produced a candidate we could move forward with. That was the right call, and it is the kind of thoughtfulness I have come to expect from this group. The ACC application itself is closer to a dossier than a form: the position, a portrait of who we are, an honest account of Jewish life here in the Valley, and the practical landscape of housing, schools, and taxes that anyone would need in order to weigh a consequential move across the country. It took weeks — and almost none of it was visible from the outside.
Which brings me to what I most want you to hear. In the months ahead you may not hear much from us, and I don’t want that quiet mistaken for stillness. Most cantors who apply are serving congregations that do not know they are looking, and the ACC asks search committees to hold candidates’ identities in strict confidence for that reason. Their livelihoods depend on our discretion. So there will be stretches when the committee is working hard and can say very little. That silence is a sign of the process working, and I am asking for your patience through it. What I can promise is that we will include as much congregational participation as the process allows, always while protecting the people who trust us with their candidacy.
In the meantime, our music continues, and beautifully. Dan Nichols will lead us through the High Holy Days, and Jordanna Matlock has carried our Friday evenings since July with warmth and care. My thanks to Marilyn Hawkes and Tamara Lieberman, who co-chair this committee, and to everyone serving on it.
We are called Solel, pathfinders, for a reason. We do not walk because the path is always clear; we walk because we walk together. Psalm 96, one of the psalms of Kabbalat Shabbat, asks us to sing to God shir chadash – a new song. I am confident that in time we will find the voice to lead us in it.
L’shalom,
Jennet Kirkpatrick
President, Temple Solel Board of Trustees