Cantor Josée Wolff
posted 13 December 2006

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Cantor Josée Wolff is Director of Student Placement and a part time faculty member at the School of Sacred Music, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. As of August 2006 she will be the interim cantor of Temple Shaaray Tefila in New York. Cantor Wolff has served Reform congregations in the US and Europe for the past 15 years. She was Director of the Department of Synagogue Music of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and served as cantor at Temple Shalom in Succasunna, NJ, Temple Beth Chaverim in Mahwah, NJ, Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City, the Liberal Jewish Congregation in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and the Hebrew Congregation of St. Thomas, USVI. She is a member of the executive board of the American Conference of Cantors, the School of Sacred Music Advisory Council, and the Joint Commission on Worship, Music and Religious Living.

In addition to her work at Hebrew Union College, Cantor Wolff enjoys leading worship and teaching about synagogue music and worship throughout the Progressive Jewish world.

Cantor Wolff has performed at numerous Cantorial concerts in the US, South America, Europe, and Israel and is a regularly featured performer at the International Jewish Music Festival in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She has led worship services and presented workshops at regional and national UAHC conventions and retreats, for the World Union of Progressive Judaism, The Reform Synagogues of Great Britain, the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany, at the Jewish Music Institute in London, LIMMUD, CAJE, the North American Jewish Choral Festival, and Cantorial conventions. Cantor Wolff can be heard on Shabbat Anthology and Songs from a Passover Haggadah (Transcontinental Music Publications), and Jubilee Concert (School of Sacred Music 50th Anniversary recording). She is co-author of The Art of Torah Cantillation, and The Art of Cantillation, Volume 2, published by UAHC Press, and music editor of the CCAR Hagadah, The Open Door. Cantor Wolff most recently produced the CD Tov Lehodot, Voices from the Dutch Liberal Community.

Cantor Wolff, a native of The Netherlands, holds a degree in flute from the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, and performed and recorded throughout Europe as a member of various chamber ensembles. In 1991 she received her Masters degree in Sacred Music from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, School of Sacred Music and was the first woman from the European continent to be invested as a cantor.

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