Hazzan Jack Kessler, z”l, Scholarship Fund

In honor of Hazzan Jack Kessler, z”l.

Support the training of the next generation of Jewish Renewal cantors.

Hazzan Jack Kessler, z”l (1944-2024) was the founding Director of the ALEPH Cantorial Program and founding Chair of the Hazzanut Department. He served as Director of Studies in the cantorial school and was a member of the Academic VAAD.

Hazzan Jack taught the core sequence of courses in Nusach ha-Tefillah and the required Master Classes in voice and the art of hazzanut. He also taught nusach for the Davvenen’ Leadership Training Institute (DLTI) and lectured widely. Hazzan Kessler was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in NYC. He coached Hazzanut with David Koussevitzky, studied composition with Miriam Gideon, and received the Albert Einstein Memorial Prize in Hazzanut, the Cantors Assembly Prize and the Jacobson Memorial Prize in Hazzanut. He went on to have a twenty-year career serving Conservative congregations. He earned a Master’s Degree in Voice from Boston Conservatory (Deans List) and pursued two years’ work in composition in the Graduate Department of Music at Brandeis University, studying with Arthur Berger and Harold Shapero. He was a teacher of hazzanut and voice for 30 years and was the only active composer of classical Hazzanut in our time.  Originally trained as an Ashkenazi Hazzan, his performance style and original compositions also embraced Sephardi and Mizrachi styles.