March 7 to 9, 2019

Cantorial candidate Daniel Gale leads us in inspirational music and prayer at a Thursday evening concert, Friday Kabbalat Shabbat service and dinner, Shabbat Shaharit service and community kiddush and a Saturday night Havdalah and musical jam. 

Cantor Daniel Gale—Cantor Daniel Gale was Invested as H̱azzan by the Cantors Assembly, Cantor Gale has served congregations in Michigan, Alabama and Nevada, and is a proud alum of Camp Ramah in Canada.

He began his cantorial career at an early age - serving in his teens as shaliach tzibbur for Temple Israel in Bay City, Michigan. Cantor Gale pursued cantorial and Jewish studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Hebrew College, from where he received a Master’s in Jewish Education. Prior to JTS and Hebrew College, he studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music receiving graduate and undergraduate degrees in Vocal Performance and Opera.

While at Hebrew College he was awarded the Dr. Albert and Dorothy Holzman Prize for Innovative Instructional Materials in Jewish Education. In addition, Cantor Gale’s graduate thesis “Teaching the Holocaust through Music in Secondary Education” was awarded Hebrew College’s highest academic honour as a “commendable and meritorious work that reflects deep thinking, rigorous and academic application and insightful creativity with regard to pedagogy”.

Equally at home in the synagogue, opera house or concert hall, he has received critical acclaim for performances throughout the United States, performing a wide range of repertoire, with special emphasis on the vocal works of Jewish composers. From Yiddish art songs to opera to Broadway, from works of the “golden age” of cantorial singing to the contemporary Jewish music scene, his interpretations of Jewish music have touched countless souls over the years.

Cantor Gale has performed with such groups as the Santa Fe Opera, Ars Música Baroque Orchestra, and the Boulder Bach Festival. He performed the world-premiere of composer Laurence Sherr's Fugitive Footsteps, a work memorializing victim of the Holocaust, also consulting to Dr. Sherr on the cantorial aspects of the work. 

Cantor Gale’s unique collaboration with acclaimed African-America singer Oral Moses, "Songs of “Struggle/Songs of Faith: Celebrating the Jewish and African-American Musical Traditions” (or “Moses and the Cantor, for short), has been performed in numerous venues throughout the United States. Their performance at the historic Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL was “…likened to a 1968 concert by Leontyne Price in its scope and impact for the Birmingham community,” by Dr. Robert Corley, Civil Rights era historian at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. 

Pastoral and inter-faith work is an important aspect of his work. As a founding member of the University of Alabama Regional Medical Center’s Pastoral Advisory Committee, he consulted to UAB administration and staff on matters of religious sensitivity in hospital practice. Within the interfaith community Cantor Gale has developed programs for schools and religious groups promoting religious tolerance and understanding. In recognition of his work in the inter-faith community, Cantor Gale received the City of Saginaw (MI) Bridge Center's "Spirit of the River Award" for Religious Leadership, and the City of Bay City’s Martin Luther King Jr. "Keep the Dream Alive Award” for his work in guiding his community through a public confrontation with a local white nationalist hate group.

He has also served on the regional board of the National Conference for Community Justice (NCCJ) and the Alabama Faith Council, an interfaith social action organization, of which he was a founding clergy member.

To learn more about Cantor Daniel Gale, click here>>