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September 19, 2003
Band leader as cantor
Asaf Erez will be with Shaarey Tefilah for the holidays.
MICHELLE DODEK SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
This year, when Congregation Shaarey Tefilah sets up their High
Holy Day services in the auditorium at the Schara Tzedeck Synagogue,
they will have a new cantor to look forward to. He is young, versatile
and a professional musician.
Thirty-eight-year-old Asaf Erez has done some unusual things. He
has worked as an El Al air marshal, an actor and assistant director
in Los Angeles. He became more involved in music and then moved
to Seattle to form his current band, Od Yishama Orchestra. In addition
to attending his synagogue in Seattle, he manages to participate
in Shabbat services occasionally at Vancouver's Shaarey Tefilah
Synagogue. Possibly most intriguing of all of these unconventional
life choices, is the period in his life when he worked reading Torah
for three different congregations each Shabbat morning.
Between 1994 and 1999, Erez was living in Los Angeles, working on
his film, theatre and music career. He was offered a job reading
Torah at a 7 a.m. minyan for Shabbat and took the job. Being a self-described
modern Orthodox Jew, a fluent Hebrew speaker and a professional
singer, the idea of reading Torah as a job seemed natural to him.
"I remembered the trope (tune) from my bar mitzvah,"
he told the Bulletin. "I read Torah with an Ashkenazi
trope and an Israeli pronunciation, although I have done it with
the Yemenite trope as well." His father is Yemenite and his
mother is Ashkenazi.
After a few months, word got out that Erez was reading Torah and
he was approached by a minyan that started services at 9 a.m. The
Torah service was at 10 a.m., so he had time to walk over to the
second shul to read Torah for them. Shortly afterwards, a Carlebach
congregation that started services at 9:30 a.m. heard about him
and hired him to do their reading at around 11:30 a.m. For four
and a half years, Erez exercised his voice and his legs reading
Torah and walking between three synagogues every Shabbat.
"For a few months, a small minyan was trying to get started
and they asked me to layn (read the Torah) for them, so I
was [reading] four times each Shabbat. That minyan didn't make it,
so I was back to only three," Erez said with a smile. When
asked whether this tight schedule led to his ability to read Torah
very quickly, he shook his head. "In an Orthodox shul, the
expectation is that everyone can follow no matter how fast you read.
There were, of course, some mornings when there was a double parashah
[Torah portion], so I did have to speed things up."
During the week, Erez was working in film, theatre and with a band
he had formed in Los Angeles. But he decided, in 1999, to leave
that all behind and he moved to Seattle to start up a new group.
Od Yishama Orchestra, his current band, plays Israeli, Sephardi,
Ashkenazi and full-blown Chassidic music. Based in Seattle, they
play mostly weddings, b'nai mitzvah and organizational dinners in
Seattle, but they have done about a dozen events in Vancouver. They
are busy when they can be, but between Shabbat, Jewish holidays,
fast days and the counting of the omer, a band like Od Yishama has
only half a year available to work. This leaves Erez time to work
with children at the Seattle Hebrew Academy, teaching kindergarten
to Grade 5 music.
Erez reads Torah only occasionally now, but is gearing up for the
holidays at Shaarey Tefilah. Cliff Unger, president of the synagogue,
hopes this year will be the beginning of a tradition with a young
cantor for his young congregation. Perhaps international chazanut
(cantorial singing) could be a new twist in Erez's already colorful
life.
To contact Erez about Od Yishama Orchestra, call him at 206-817-1747
or visit his Web site at www.odyishamaorchestra.com.
Michelle Dodek is a Vancouver freelance writer.
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