Day: September 12, 2023

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. airlines on Tuesday expressed growing frustration with Federal Aviation Administration air traffic control staffing (ATC) shortages, which have snarled flights and forced regulators to extend waivers on minimum flight requirements.

“In the short to medium term we have to reduce flights in very impacted airports because the system can’t cope with the number of flights today,” JetBlue Airways CEO Robin Hayes told Reuters on the sidelines of an industry conference Tuesday. “We’re selling flights that we know we won’t be able to operate because of ATC challenges.”

Airlines have faced flight woes after a record-setting U.s. summer travel season and voluntary cut flights because of air traffic shortages. They want to add more flights to address demand.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, who harshly criticized the FAA this summer, said at the conference that lagging air traffic staffing levels “was two decades in building and it is going to take years to get it addressed.”

The FAA declined to comment Tuesday beyond a statement it issued in August that said it met its goal of hiring 1,500 controllers in the year ending Sept. 30. But it is still about 3,000 controllers behind staffing targets.

Hayes said if the FAA doubled controller hiring – which it cannot – “it would still take us five years to catch up.”

The FAA has about 2,600 controllers in training. The Transportation Department is seeking $117 million to hire another 1,800 next year.

Citing ATC staffing issues, the FAA in August extended temporary cuts to minimum flight requirements at congested New York City-area airports and Washington National Airport through Oct. 28.

A government watchdog said in June that critical ATC facilities face significant staffing challenges, posing risks to air traffic operations.

The United States has experienced several near-miss aviation incidents this year, including some that could have been catastrophic involving apparent controller mistakes.

The FAA has 10,700 certified controllers, up slightly from 10,578 in 2022, virtually the same as 2021 and down 10% from 2012. Of the FAA’s 13,300 controllers, 26% are trainees.

At several facilities, controllers are working mandatory overtime and six-day work weeks to cover shortages.

Last summer, there were 41,498 flights from New York airports in which ATC staffing was a contributing factor in delays. New York Terminal Radar Approach Control staffing was at 54%, the report said.

Two U.K.-based activists have described troubling interactions with a researcher in the British parliament who was arrested on suspicion of spying for Beijing.

The 28-year-old suspect, whose name has been withheld by British police because he has not been formally charged, worked in the China Research Group in Westminster as a researcher and had a parliamentary pass. He has insisted on his innocence and is currently free on bail.

Finn Lau, a Hong Kong human rights activist currently in the U.K. and wanted by the Hong Kong authorities, told VOA Mandarin he had an unusual coffee meeting with the suspect, who initially expressed support for Lau’s work.

But when Lau mentioned plans to counter the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in British politics and raised objections to a sister-city partnership between cities in the two countries, the man suddenly said that he was busy and left in a hurry, Lau recounted.

Lau said he made repeated attempts to continue communication with the man but received no response to his emails. “I was very shocked when I saw his name in the newspaper,” Lau said.

The suspect also left a strongly negative impression on Luke de Pulford, the founder and executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), an international cross-party group of legislators that urges their governments to take a tougher approach to China.

Writing on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, de Pulford said the suspect “had an impact upon the China debate in the U.K. Parliament. He made my job harder. He *hated* @ipacglobal and worked to cleave people away from the IPAC network.”

De Pulford wrote in a series of posts that the suspect “briefed very strongly against some politicians in our network, and against me personally. … Privately, he was vicious – telling journalists that I was ‘dangerous’ and ‘not to be trusted on China.’”

De Pulford described the suspect as “an authoritative and knowledgeable voice” and incredibly clever.

“He hid behind a visage of ‘reasoned hawkishness,’” de Pulford wrote, describing the treatment of Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang province as “terrible” but then seeking to minimize the horror.

“Using this kind of argument he blunted the unity of the parliamentary campaign,” de Pulford wrote. “You could go as far as to say that he divided the China hawks. He was rhetorically very sophisticated. Never pushed it too far. Used his credentials deftly and reasonably.”

Reports of the researcher’s arrest have prompted questions about the level of security in the British Parliament and whether individuals are adequately vetted before being hired into sensitive positions.

David Moore, a policy researcher in the House of Commons, told VOA Mandarin the vetting process for obtaining a parliamentary pass is “relatively thorough. They ask for your previous addresses, charges and convictions. In theory, it’s quite a strong system. But the question is, how far do they delve into that? My concern is they might just be rubber-stamping applications without a genuine review.”

Moore pointed out potential security threats. “Anyone can walk into the Parliament and go to a committee room. One can easily sneak off, or even worse, personnel can let in visitors, posing national security risks. Anyone with a parliamentary pass has quite a bit of power.”

David Alton, a member of the House of Lords, called it “deeply disturbing” that parliamentary passes had been issued to an alleged Chinese Communist Party spy, enabling him to have full access to the parliamentary estate.

He told VOA Mandarin in an email, “This, in turn, gives them access to confidential information, provides an opportunity to influence Members and staff, and to subvert the workings of Parliament.”

He said, historically, the failure to detect the penetration of spies from hostile states resulted in a dilution of trust by Britain’s allies and deterred them from talking to senior members of Parliament.

However, Isabel Hilton, a Scottish journalist and founder of the China Dialogue Trust, told VOA Mandarin in an email: “We do not have much evidence about the alleged breach, but given that the suspect was arrested in March, then released on police bail, I conclude that he was not regarded either as a flight risk or a national security risk.”

“This researcher had no access to classified information,” Hilton continued. “If he was reporting to Beijing, it would have been information about how [members of Parliament] were thinking about China and what they were doing.

“At best, he could have reported on internal conversations. Clearly all pass-holders should be vetted, as I believe they are, and if these allegations are substantiated, there should perhaps be closer coordination between different branches of the security services.”

Apple unveiled its next generation of iPhones Tuesday — a lineup that will boast better cameras, faster processors, a new charging system and a price hike for the fanciest model.

The showcase at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, comes as the company tries to reverse a mild slump that has seen its sales drop from last year in three consecutive quarters. The malaise is a key reason Apple’s stock price has dipped by about 10% since mid-July, dropping the company’s market value below the $3 trillion threshold it reached for the first time earlier this summer.

Investors apparently weren’t impressed with what Apple rolled out. The company’s shares fell nearly 2% Tuesday, a steeper decline than the major market indexes.

As has been case with Apple and other smartphone makers, the four types of iPhone 15 models aren’t making any major leaps in technology. But Apple added enough new bells and whistles to the top-of-the line model — the iPhone 15 Pro Max — to boost its starting price by $100, or 9%, from last year’s version to $1,200. As part of the higher base price, the cheapest iPhone 15 Pro Max will provide 256 megabytes of storage, up from 128 megabytes for the least expensive version of the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Apple is holding the line on prices for rest of the lineup, with the basic iPhone 15 selling for $800, the iPhone 15 Plus for $900 and the iPhone 15 Pro for $1,000.

Although maintaining those prices are bound to squeeze Apple’s profit margins and put further pressure on the company’s stock price, Investing.com analyst Thomas Monteiro believes it’s a prudent move with still-high inflation and spiking interest rates pinching household budgets. “The reality was that Apple found itself in a challenging position leading up to this event,” Monteiro said.

And the price hike for the iPhone 15 Pro Max could help Apple boost sales if consumers continue to gravitate toward the company’s premium models. Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives expects the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max to account for about 75% of the device’s total sales in the upcoming year.

All the new models will be available in stores Sept. 22, with preorders beginning this Friday.

One of the biggest changes that Apple announced is a new way to charge the iPhone 15 models and future generations. The company is switching to the USB-C standard that is already widely used on many devices, including its Mac computers and many of its iPads.

Apple is being forced to phase out the Lightning port cables it rolled out in 2012 because of a mandate that European regulators plan to impose in 2024.

Although consumers often don’t like change, the transition to USB-C ports may not be that inconvenient. That’s because the standard is already widely used on a range of computers, smartphones and other devices people already own. The shift to USB-C may even be a popular move since that standard typically charges devices more quickly and also offers faster data transfer speeds.

The basic iPhone 15 models have been redesigned to include a shape-shifting cutout on the display screen that Apple calls its “Dynamic Island” for app notifications — a look that was introduced with last year’s Pro and Pro Max devices. The basic models are also getting a faster chip used in last year’s Pro and Pro Max models, while the next generation of the premium iPhone 15s will run on an even more advanced processor that will enable the devices to accommodate the same kind of video games that typically require a console.

The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max also will be equipped with what Apple maintains is the equivalent of seven camera lenses. They will include periscope-style telephoto lens that will improve the quality of photos taken from far distances. The telephoto lens boasts a 5x optical zoom, which lags the 10x optical zoom on Samsung’s premium Galaxy S22 Ultra, but represents an upgrade from the 3x optical zoom on the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max.

In anticipation of next year’s release of Apple’s mixed reality headset, the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max will also have a spatial video option designed for viewing on that headset.

Apple is encasing the premium models in titanium that the company says is the same alloy used on some space ships.

Besides its new iPhones, Apple also announced its next generation of smartwatches — a product that made its debut nearly a decade ago. The Series 9 Apple Watch, available in stores Sept. 22, will include a new gesture control that will enable users to control alarms and answer phone calls by double snapping their thumbs with a finger.

The US has failed to address the dire humanitarian situation in contested Nagorno-Karabakh, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Menendez said on Tuesday as he called for sanctions on Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev.

Mr Menedez also called for an immediate halt to US aid to Baku in a powerful 15-minute speech on the Senate floor.

“I don’t know how the United States can justify spending any kind of support, security or otherwise to the regime in Baku … to send them assistance makes a mockery of [US aid],” he said.

Also known as Artsakh, Nagorno-Karabakh is an internationally recognised part of Azerbaijan, despite having a majority ethnic Armenian population.

Azerbaijan has blockaded the region since December and installed a military checkpoint at the critical Lachin Corridor.

The UN Security Council discussed the blockade in August, after a former International Criminal Court prosecutor said the blockade may amount to a “genocide” against Armenians. Lawyers representing Azerbaijan called the claims unsubstantiated and inaccurate.

The International Association of Genocide Scholars also recently warned of the risk of genocide against the Armenian population in the region.

Mr Menedez called on the US ambassador to the UN to introduce a Security Council resolution that would force an end to the blockade.

The powerful committee chairman held up a photo that allegedly showed the body of an emaciated Armenian in the disputed territory, demonstrating the blockade’s impact on civilian health.

He cited videos “of Azerbaijani forces killing unarmed Armenian soldiers in cold blood, reports of Azerbaijani soldiers sexually assaulting and mutilating and Armenian female soldiers,” which he claimed “bears the hallmarks of genocide.”

“We have seen and heard this kind of propaganda throughout history. It is the work of a regime intent on destroying and erasing this ancient Armenian community’s history in Nagorno-Karabakh,” Mr Menedez said.

“Without immediate action this group of Armenians will be destroyed within a few weeks.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently spoke to Mr Aliyev by phone, where he “reiterated our call to reopen the Lachin Corridor to humanitarian, commercial and passenger traffic, while recognising the importance of additional routes from Azerbaijan”, the State Department said.

Reuters reported that a Russian lorry carrying food aid for Armenians in the Karabakh city of Khankendi set off via the Aghdam road on Tuesday, amid uncertainty over the sustainability of a potential deal on aid deliveries.

The British government has rejected calls to officially label China a threat to its interests. Several lawmakers have called for a tougher line from the government after it was revealed that a researcher in the British parliament was arrested on suspicion of spying for Beijing.

Spying suspects

British police detained two men in March on suspicion of breaking Britain’s Official Secrets Act. The arrests came to light this week, when the Sunday Times newspaper reported that one of the suspects was a researcher in the British parliament with connections to several prominent members of the ruling Conservative Party, including government ministers.

In a statement posted online Monday by his lawyers, the researcher — whom VOA is choosing not to name because he had not been charged — said he was innocent.

“I have spent my career to date trying to educate others about the challenge and threats presented by the Chinese Communist Party. To do what has been claimed against me in extravagant news reporting would be against everything I stand for,” the statement said.

Diplomatic response

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak raised the incident with Chinese Premier Li Qiang at last week’s G20 summit in India. Speaking to lawmakers Monday, Sunak said he would defend British democracy.

“The whole House is rightly appalled about reports of espionage in this building,” Sunak said. “The sanctity of this place must be protected and the right of members to speak their minds without fear or sanction must be maintained. We will defend our democracy and our security. So, I was emphatic with Premier Li that actions which seek to undermine British democracy are completely unacceptable and will never be tolerated,” Sunak added.

However, the prime minister did not say that Britain would officially recognize China as a threat to its interests.

Beijing, meanwhile, said the allegations of spying were a fabrication. “We urge the U.K. to stop spreading false information and stop its anti-China political manipulation and malicious slander,” Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told reporters Monday in Beijing.

Security threat

Critics say Britain must be more critical of China, following a series of allegations over security breaches, including the harassment of exiled pro-democracy activists in the U.K. and the establishment of overseas police stations on British soil. Beijing denies those allegations.

Finn Lau helped to organize pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019. After his arrest by Chinese police, the 29-year-old fled to Britain. He suffered serious injuries following an attack in a London street in 2020, which he blames on supporters of the Chinese Communist Party. Earlier this year, Hong Kong authorities issued a bounty of $128,000 for his arrest, along with several other exiled activists.

Lau told VOA he has repeatedly requested meetings with the British government to discuss the security threat but has so far been refused.

“I would say that there is some kind of lack of coherent approach, or even China policy at the moment — especially regarding national security or some kind of threat overseas,” Lau told VOA.

That view has been echoed by several British lawmakers. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss is among Conservative Party members calling on the government to officially recognize China as a threat to Britain.

“These are extremely worrying reports about the level of infiltration of Chinese-supported forces into our democracy. … What we need to do is to recognize that China is the largest threat, both to the world and to the United Kingdom, for freedom and democracy,” Truss told lawmakers Monday.

Economic ties

The British government describes China as a challenge to its interests, but not a threat.

Speaking to reporters Monday during a visit to the BMW Mini car factory in Oxford, Britain’s business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, said economic ties could be at risk.

“We cannot describe China as foes. They are our fourth-largest trading partner. There are many businesses, not least of all the very one I’m standing in, which are integrated with the Chinese economy. Many jobs are reliant on it,” Badenoch said.

Activist Finn Lau says that reliance is overstated. “China only accounts for 6.1% of total trade volume in the U.K. We should focus on diversifying our trading relationships, starting from today,” he told VOA.

Both of the suspects arrested in March were released on bail. The police investigation is continuing.

The British government has rejected calls to officially label China as a threat to its interests. Several lawmakers have called for a tougher line after it was revealed that a researcher in the British Parliament was arrested on suspicion of spying for Beijing. Henry Ridgwell reports from London.

My cantor doesn’t talk unless she has to in the week leading up to the High Holidays.

Until we discussed it, I wondered if she takes this vow of relative silence as a spiritual exercise, to focus herself before she pleads the congregation’s case to God. But I also considered that she simply needs to preserve her vocal chords for seven demanding services. A cantor on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is like Taylor Swift in concert — except cantors sing for many more hours.

Either way, I couldn’t imagine it. She’s got three young boys. How many days can a parent go without shouting “Don’t forget your lunch!” or “Who left their socks in the living room?”

Before her rehearsal schedule kicked into high gear this summer, I asked Cantor Arianne Brown of Congregation Adas Israel in Washington, D.C., to explain the not talking, and what else she does to prepare for the most important 10 days on the Jewish calendar, physically and spiritually. How does she ready herself for the concentrated soul-searching, the singing sans water, the time away from her family?

I asked other cantors too — five in all — from three streams of Judaism.

They told High Holiday disaster stories and the lessons they had learned from them. They showed me the spreadsheets that track who sings what and when and in which key. And, when asked, they shared advice for the people in the pews. My favorite came from Hazzan Alisa Pomerantz-Boro of Congregation Beth-El in Voorhees, New Jersey.

“Put yourself in the game,” she said. “You’re not the audience.”

Here is some of what else they had to say.

Born to it

Alisa Pomerantz-Boro is the cantor at Temple Beth -El in Voorhees, New Jersey Courtesy of Alisa Pomerantz-Boro

HAZZAN ALISA POMERANTZ-BORO

Age: 58

Synagogue: Congregation Beth-El, Voorhees, New Jersey

Movement: Conservative

Voice: Mezzo-soprano

It used to bug Hazzan Alisa Pomerantz-Boro that during the High Holidays some congregants would just sit there, mouths closed, prayer book closed, the picture of disengagement.

But last summer, after reading a book called The Power of Moments, she realized that it’s unrealistic for every moment of a service to move everyone in the room. So she will be content this year, during the holidays, if everyone goes home with at least one.

“So what are they going to remember?” she said. “Maybe it’s the Hineni? Maybe it’s the little 8-year-old boy who had a little solo? Maybe they’ll remember something the rabbi said.”

Pomerantz-Boro, who graduated from the Jewish Theological Seminary just a few years after it began conferring the cantorial degree on women, has been preparing for the upcoming holidays since May. Five services at her synagogue will rely on Torah readers, about 40 of them, ranging in age from just bat mitzvahed to septuagenarian.

Her job, as she sees it, is to get everyone else and everything ready. Make sure the readers know their portions. Roll the Torahs to all the right spots. Change their mantles to the white ones. Assure the sound system will bring the experience to everyone listening in person and at home.

But she herself? Not nervous.

“I can do the High Holidays in my sleep,” said Pomerantz-Boro, whose father was a rabbi. “I come from a family of clergy and I’ve been doing High Holidays since I was, you know, prenatal.”

There’s another reason she doesn’t sweat the High Holidays. Her daughter, Rebecca, now grown, had a massive stroke in utero and spent her first two years in the hospital. Pomerantz-Boro’s husband brought Rebecca up to the ark during the High Holidays when she was a toddler.

“And we opened up the ark, and she went ‘wooooowww!’” said Pomerantz-Boro, recalling her daughter’s wonder when she saw the Torahs.

“Her whole birth and perspective on life changed my life,” she said. Even at the most important and crowded services, the hazzan conjures Rebecca’s awe and remembers why she became a hazzan in the first place.

“I’m just grateful,” she said, “that I have this awesome responsibility for my congregation.”

Five notes

Cantor David Lipp of Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Louisville, Kentucky Photo by Lisa J. Huber

CANTOR DAVID LIPP

Age: 62

Synagogue: Adath Jeshurun, Louisville, Kentucky

Movement: Conservative

Voice: Tenor

Cantor David Lipp in concert Courtesy of David Lipp

David Lipp felt off during Kol Nidre, the service that kicks off Yom Kippur. “I got through it,” he said, “but it was hard.” Musaf the next day was harder. And then he braced himself for Neilah, the last service of Yom Kippur, the most intense and sacred. Symbolically, it’s when the gates of heaven are closing, and God is making the final decisions about Jews’ fates in the new year.

Typically, despite Neilah’s solemnity, and the fact that he has not consumed food or water for a day, Lipp usually has little trouble rising to its challenge. “You can see the end, right? There’s just a burst of adrenaline and suddenly I’m singing better than I expected.”

But not that Yom Kippur.

“By the time I got to Neilah I basically had five notes of my range, and you know, I don’t have a huge range under normal circumstances — an octave and a half at least and a little more if I’m lucky.”

Dizzy, he broke the news to the choir, because they would sing Neilah with him. “I don’t have much of a voice,” he told them. “It’s going to be high and it’s going to be low and it’s going to be crazy. Just do the best you can and don’t worry about it.”

After the shofar blast that concluded the Yom Kippur service, many in the congregation seemed to have no idea that Lipp had sung with practically no voice. But several musically inclined people came up to him to ask if he was alright. One of them told Lipp that he had never sung with more kavanah, or intention.

Lipp knew what that congregant was talking about. He felt it too. “I was concentrating so hard to make it work,” he said. “My prayer in some ways was more authentic than it ever had been since, or it was before.”

His voice’s failure happened more than a decade ago, and Lipp doesn’t want it to happen again. But he does want to reclaim the power he transmitted to the congregation that day.

Every year, he said, “it’s something I try to capture.”

‘Full body workout’

Cantor Adam Berger of KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation, Chicago Courtesy of Cantor Adam Berger

CANTOR DAVID BERGER

Age: 43

Synagogue: KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation, Chicago

Movement: Reform

Voice: Tenor

David Berger and his husband, a rabbi at a synagogue 10 miles from his own, sit down with their calendars many weeks before the High Holidays to make sure they’ve got babysitters lined up so nothing falls through the cracks for their sons, ages 10 and 4.

Berger, who has been leading services since his student days at the University of Illinois, schedules as many as three rehearsals a week with both the professional and volunteer choirs in his synagogue in the weeks before Rosh Hashanah. They take on particularly challenging music, much of it written by Max Janowski, the noted composer and music director of KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation until he died in 1991.

“His music for the High Holidays is super, super vocally intense and dramatic,” said Berger. “A lot of big notes and extreme singing.”

To make sure his voice is up to the task, he warms up extra carefully for rehearsals, and downs copious amounts of water.

He also tries to write new arrangements each year to complement Janowski’s. It all gets organized, scrupulously, into music binders — “the most perfect binders,” he said. “I’m obsessed.” Berger used to hate the “chicken scratch” that passed for sheet music handed to him when he used to sing in the chorus.

So each year he retypes almost every piece, and triple-checks that it’s in the right key. He remembers the time, as a chorister, when he was told to “just sing it a third higher,” forcing him to transpose the notes on the paper in his head. Berger won’t inflict that on anyone.

He gets obsessive about his health too. “I am terrified of the tiniest little thing I feel in my throat.” And he struggles with chronic pain, so he schedules more physical therapy appointments than usual to limber him up for the Days of Awe, which he calls a “full body workout.”

Five years ago just before Yom Kippur he did get sick, with a croupy virus transmitted by a relative who came to stay for the holidays. It robbed Berger of his speaking voice, but he was able to sing for the most part, and took full advantage of every break. “I would come off the bima and do a quick Neti Pot.”

He’s exacting, he said, because he wants the music to resonate far beyond Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. He wants the music to “get deep into the construction of who we are as a people” and showcase “the otherness of what it is to be Jewish.”

“I believe really strongly in sound as a builder of identity and ethnicity,” Berger said. “I still have the sounds of my synagogue growing up deep inside me.”

The last drop of water

Cantor Arianne Brown of Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C. Photo by Kristina Sherk Photography

Arianne Brown

Age: 43

Synagogue: Adas Israel, Washington, D.C.

Movement: Conservative

Voice: Soprano

Cantor Arianne Brown with her husband, Rabbi Randi Brown, and their sons. Courtesy of Cantor Arianne Brown

Arianne Brown doesn’t literally stop speaking in the weeks before the High Holidays, which she also likes to call “the cantor’s Olympics.” But she’s not going to talk more than she needs to. Her boys — 11, 9, and 6 — get that. For a few weeks, she’ll leave all their bedtime stories for their father to read to them.

The same goes for her daily chats with her mother and sister. Before the holidays, they’ll text instead.

“I feel like I’ve been blessed by God to do what I do. And I need to use my gifts to give the holiday to the congregation in the best way I can,” she said.

Whispering is not an option. It’s bad for your vocal chords, she explained. “It doesn’t allow them to fully close.”

As Brown protects her voice, she guards her overall health, avoiding crowds whenever she can. That means going to work — she rehearses for months with the synagogues’ musicians and choirs — but leaving the grocery runs to her husband and joining open school night by Zoom.

The pandemic in some ways made it easier for her to evade germs, she said, in that it’s far more normal to wear a mask now and people understand why she  passes on invitations to group gatherings.

On the day before the High Holidays themselves, Brown takes her machzor home, and steals time to prepare herself spiritually. She’ll read through it, singing in her head.

She drinks “crazy” amounts of water before Yom Kippur. The fasting part doesn’t phase her. But singing all day and into the night without water so daunts her that she wrote a prayer for cantors, The Last Drop of Water, about that final moment of hydration before High Holiday services begin. An alumnae of the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater, Brown wrote it in both Yiddish and English.

It begins: “May it be Your will that this last drop of water shall sustain me threefold, that my Kol Nidre shall be received with favor in the studyhouses above and below.”

Free of charge

Cantor Josh Sharfman of B’nai David in Los Angeles Courtesy of Cantor Josh Sharfman

Josh Sharfman

Age: 66

Synagogue: B’nai David, Los Angeles

Movement: Orthodox

Voice: Baritone

Josh Sharfman “davened for dollars” only once. For years the lay cantor, who teaches computer science at a Los Angeles Jewish day school, chanted the High Holiday liturgy as a gift to his congregation. Then, that one year, he sang it at a shul that was not his own — for money.

“Boy was that an empty experience,” said Sharfman, 66. “How can I be a Shaliach Tzibur when I’m a mercenary?” he asked, using the Hebrew phrase for prayer leader. “I don’t know the people. I’m not channeling them.”

Sharfman started leading High Holiday services in his teens, when his primary concern was whether he was getting the words and the notes “absolutely on target and perfect.”

Decades later, his voice — though still rich and resonant — has lost some of its strength. He’s fine with that, he said, and enriches his chanting with kavanah, or intention, by making the words more meaningful for himself and, by extension, the congregation. Each year before the High Holidays, he picks a theme to think on as he prepares. This year it’s “transitions,” and reflects the many in his life right now, among them his anticipated semi-retirement and the expectation of a fourth grandchild.

Most people in the congregation won’t know about his theme. He tells a group of close friends, though, and he’ll go out to lunch with his rabbi beforehand and fill him in.

It wasn’t until he was in his 40s, Sharfman said, that he came to understand that it wasn’t selfish to spend time thinking about his own life as he prepared to lead the congregation on the High Holidays. It was essential. The liturgy itself taught him that — specifically, the part of the Avodah service on Yom Kippur that addresses the high priest’s confession. It’s a three-parter. The high priest confesses on behalf of himself, on behalf of his family and on behalf of the congregation.

Sharfman likens it to the speech you get from a flight attendant before the plane takes off. “If you’re traveling with a young child or someone who needs your assistance, be sure to put your face mask on first.” You can’t serve other people, he said, if you haven’t made sure you’re OK first.

The realization empowered him to turn inward. “Am I the best partner I can be to my wife? Sharfman asks himself. “Am I the best parent I can be to my children?”

The post Avoiding germs, guzzling water, searching their souls: How 5 cantors prep for the High Holidays appeared first on The Forward.