Cantor Annie L. Bornstein leads her congregation with her classically trained voice.
When Annie L. Bornstein was first approached to attend cantorial school, she laughed out loud. At the time she was a professional opera singer, and the prospect of being a member of the Jewish clergy hadn’t crossed her mind. But several years of schooling and work experience later, she is the cantor at one of the oldest congregations in the country, Congregation Beth Ahabah in Richmond. From opera to the synagogue, Bornstein has spent her life inspiring people with her music.
“Music touches people in a way that speech by itself never can,” Bornstein said. Her mezzo soprano voice has served her in helping her get where she is today.
Reaching out from the stage
The backbone of Bornstein’s powerful voice is her operatic training. She accepted a full scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music, where she received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. After school she became successful as an opera singer and worked steadily in locations around the country. After 14 years of traveling, she lacked fulfillment due to the pitfalls of show business, which she explains as ranging from hissy fits within casts to the favoritism of directors and managers.
“I was working with the Houston opera. One day I was sitting backstage and I said ‘I don’t want to do this anymore’,” she said.
Back to her roots
After her disillusion with the opera business, Bornstein had to look elsewhere for inspiration of her own. Her religion was always something that brought her peace, and she considers herself a very spiritual person. Her mother was a musician and her father a cantor who, according to Bornstein, ‘inhaled religion’, and both were survivors of the Holocaust at Auschwitz.
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For more information on survivors of the Holocaust in Richmond, click on the photo above to see an audio slideshow on the Virginia Holocaust Museum.
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“It drew me in a profound way to the religion and my commitment to it,” Bornstein said. This profound commitment is one of the things that helps her lead her congregation today.
Becoming a Cantor
It was a mentor of hers, one of the rabbis at Temple Emmanuel in New York, who saw her commitment, passion and beautiful voice and suggested that she attend cantorial school at Hebrew Union College. She finished cantorial school and has since worked in New York City, White Plains, NY, and Dallas, TX before settling in Richmond for her most recent pulpit.
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To learn more about the role of sacred music and the role of a cantor, click here to listen to a podcast with Cantor Josee Wolfe of Hebrew Union College in New York.
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Inspiring the next generation
Here in Richmond, Bornstein works diligently leading the congregation.
“What you have to understand is that there’s a lot more to being a cantor than singing,” said the Director of Museum Archives, David Farris. Bornstein’s day-to-day life includes many duties, such as leading both the adult and children’s choir, holding services or leading them alongside the rabbi, performing weddings, funerals, and baby naming ceremonies, counseling, and heading up the bar/bat mitzvah program.
“She whips those bar/bat mitzvah kids into shape,” said Talia Miller, the cantor’s assistant, who, like others who work with Bornstein, speaks highly of her ability to teach and her commanding personality.
Russ Finer, the executive director of Congregation Beth Ahabah, describes her with a single word: cavanah, which means to pray from the heart spontaneously.
She seeks not only to touch her congregation with prayer and faith, but all those around her. One of Bornstein’s favorite projects is her work with other faiths. She holds interfaith conversations with several different churches in Richmond, from the nearby Methodist congregation to Baptist congregations downtown.
“We all want the same thing. We all want to be able to exist and worship the way we need to, with respect for what others need,” she said.
She goes on to say that, she simply wants to touch others in her life, whether she does that through music, counseling, or simply teaching people to see each moment as something special, something that will never occur again.
“This moment, right now, is sacred,” she said.
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