Understanding What We Sing #1: Three Conversations With Two Extraordinary Cantors

August 22 - Elul: Preparing to Turn Inward

Visit our "Understanding What We Sing" playlist to watch all 3 sessions:    • Elul 2023: Understanding What We Sing  

Our musical prayers can be as confounding as they are powerful. Why do we disavow our vows before we’ve made them in “Kol Nidre”? Why do we recite the confessional — “Ashamnu” — in the plural “we”?

In a very special three-part series, Cantor Dan Mutlu and special guest Cantor Richard Cohn of Hebrew Union College will be in conversation with esteemed journalist (and Central member) Abby Pogrebin to talk about the origins, history, intention and challenges of the music you know so well or have always wanted to learn.

What better way to engage in the introspective month of Elul, when— despite the summer fun —we are supposed to lay the spiritual groundwork for atonement?