LEADERSHIP RABBI

Rabbi David A. Cantor

ABOUT RABBI DAVID A. CANTOR
IN HIS OWN WORDS

MY BACKGROUND

I was born on the morning of the 20th of October, 1970, in my parents' house in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the last of four children. My childhood memories are of family meals: on Fridays my father would recite Kiddish and a blessing over challah; sometimes my mother would light candles. We attended synagogue when invited, and on the High Holidays. My Father conducted both Passover Seders at home, and no leaven was eaten during the following week.

My family did not keep kosher. We did not attend shul regularly. Of all the children, only I was sent to a Jewish school, and only for the second half of kindergarten, and grade one. Thereafter I attended public or private secular schools. 

In preparation for my bar mitzvah, I was required to attend shul on Saturday mornings, and to take after-school Hebrew lessons. My father would drop me off at shul on his way to work on Saturday mornings (he was and still is a lawyer), and would pick me up on his way home. At that time my shul, Congregation Shaarey Zedek, only required bar and bat mitzvah students to attend Shacharit, as that was the only service that they were expected to perform for their bar or bat mitzvah. After Shacharit was finished I would go back into the sanctuary to listen to the reading of the Torah, and to Musaf. I believe that it was there that I first came to love the synagogue service, and to hear the cantor and choir sing. 

After my Bar Mitzvah I was invited to join the synagogue’s “intermediate choir,” a group of young people who would sing at Musaf. In time I came to join the senior choir, and to attend services when the choir was singing. 

MY RELATIONSHIP WITH MY WIFE, CHRISTINE

When I was in high school, I became involved in debating. On the 26th of December, 1987 (Boxing Day), I attended my first session of the Manitoba Youth Parliament as a backbencher; my wife Christine was a cabinet minister. We met, and became friends. By the following September we were dating.

Christine’s parents are not Jewish. Her mother was raised French Roman Catholic, and later went to Salt Lake City to become a Mormon; her father was raised Icelandic Lutheran. They met while at school to become psychiatric nurses, fell in love, and were married in the United Church of Canada; organized religion is no longer important to them. 

On our first date, as Christine tells it, I took her to synagogue. On mornings when I was singing with the choir, Christine would sit in the sanctuary with my great-uncle Ben. I do not know if it was the service or my uncle’s  passion for Judaism, but Christine came to fall in love with the religion, and became a Jew by choice. As far as my uncle was concerned, he had adopted her. 

When a Jew-by-birth dates a Jew-by-choice, one of two things can happen: the Jew-by- choice can become too religious for the Jew-by-birth and the relationship fails; or the Jew-by-choice can be inspired to become more religious, as happened with me.  Christine is a vegetarian, I began to keep "biblical kosher".  Christine is interested in Judaism; I became more committed to my heritage. 

For all that Christine encouraged me to take first steps on the road to religious observance, there was one other  experience in my life that made such steps vital to my survival: law school. 

MY EXPERIENCE OF BECOMING A LAWYER

After meeting Christine I continued on to finish high school, and three years later to receive a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Manitoba. Unsure of what to make of my life, I did what any philosophy major who was not interested in academics tended to do: I applied to, and was accepted into law school.

Someone once said that law school graduates are a collection of people who, according to their résumés, used to be interesting.  Used to be, in the sense that the time-demands of law school tend to eliminate any extra-curricular activities that the student may have. The only activity that survived admission to law school was singing in the choir.

A person can do school-work every hour of every day; to preserve my sanity, I began to observe the Sabbath: not according to the halacha, but according to the literal reading.  I did no school-work on the Sabbath. 

In Canada, the graduate must first serve a period of time as an apprentice to a practicing lawyer, to work as an articling student.  If law school consumes time, articling all the more so. When I first began working for my law firm. I would walk to work at 7:00 in the morning, return home at 10:00 at night, have something to eat, and go to bed. As in law school, and against the general expectations of the legal profession, I continued my practice of not working on Saturdays; it was not, however, enough.

So I began to say Modeh Ani upon arising, lay Tefillin, and say the Shema. I also began to say the Shema before going to bed. This is what kept me sane while working as an articling student: it was always possible for me to create a little window of holiness in my day, just as Shabbat created a window of holiness in my week.

 Beginning in my second year of law, I began to become suspicious of the profession. By the time I was in the field, I knew that Law was not the place for me, that it was, in many ways, a soul-less profession.

MY EXPERIENCE OF BECOMING A RABBI

Congregation Shaarey Zedek is a large synagogue, necessitating two separate Musaf services on High Holidays: one in the morning, and one in the afternoon.  I was walking with a in the park that is near the shul.  I was telling her about how I no longer wanted to be a lawyer, about how I did not know what to do.

 She asked me what, given the choice, I would like to do with my life.  After some thought, I was surprised to find that the answer was to be a rabbi.  Seized with the idea, I made an appointment to speak with my rabbi. 

After a series of either extreme coincidences or divine interventions, I was accepted to the rabbinical program at the Ziegler school. I began to wear a Kippah, kept a kosher home, and observed the laws of family purity. We walked to synagogue every Shabbat, even through extreme cold, and kept the Sabbath at home. And after I was admitted and enrolled as a solicitor, we packed up our belongings and moved to California to go to school. 

For Our Ancestors, For Us, For Our Descendants