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Our Clergy

SHAI CHERRY, RABBI

Shai Cherry has been a Jewish educator since returning from a year in Israel after dropping out of the University of Pennsylvania. That was 1988. In 2019, Rav Shai found his way back to the Philadelphia area to become our rabbi and chief educational officer.


Rav Shai eventually finished college and went to graduate school to study Jewish Thought at Brandeis University. After four years of teaching at Vanderbilt University, Rav Shai did a Google search for “Hebrew Immersion Preschool,” and he and Dr. Rebecca Cherry enrolled their daughter, Tehila, in one of the very few hits—Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles.

Those four years in Los Angeles were spent finishing his first book, Torah through Time:  Understanding Bible Commentary from the Rabbinic Period to Modern Times, teaching at UCLA, and attending the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies. The Cherrys also had a child or two.

From 2009-2019, the Cherrys lived in San Diego where Rebecca was a pediatric gastroenterologist and began utilizing the power of medical hypnosis. Rav Shai continued teaching in academic and communal settings while working on his second book, Coherent Judaism: Constructive Theology, Creation, and Halakhah.  

In the summer of 2019, Rav Shai, Rebecca and their two younger children, Rina and Shalev, drove across the country to join the AJ family.  Rebecca has opened a private practice in Elkins Park, Rina is in Israel for her gap year, and Shalev is in ninth grade at Cheltenham HIgh School. Tehila is an outdoor education counselor in southern California. During COVID-19, Rav Shai relented to his family’s incessant demands for a dog. Her name is Zara.

Howard K. Glantz, Hazzan

Hazzan Howard K. Glantz is a native of West Hartford, CT, and a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He received an additional Bachelor’s degree from the H.L. Miller Cantorial School at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in Sacred Music, as well as Investiture as a Hazzan of the Conservative Movement.

Hazzan Glantz, a certified mohel of the Conservative Movement, is also a graduate of the Brit Kodesh program of the Jewish Theological Seminary and has been servicing the Jewish community for 20-plus years performing ritual circumcision.  

Before becoming a Hazzan, Glantz had extensive involvement in Camp Ramah, Bnei Brith Hillel, and was a participant in the Sherut La’am Program in the Matei Yehudah region outside of Jerusalem. While in Israel, Glantz served as a baritone in the Great Synagogue Choir, benefiting from the leadership of world-renowned Hazzan Naftali Hershtik, conductor Ellie Yaffe and composer/arranger Raymond Goldstein.

Shortly after graduating the H.L. Miller Cantorial School, and Brit Kodesh program of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Howard was selected in 1991 to serve as Associate Hazzan to the much-revered and treasured Hazzan Larry Vieder, z"l, at Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, MI. In 1993, Hazzan Howard Glantz became the Hazzan of Adat Shalom and served the Greater Detroit and Ann Arbor Jewish communities for a total 13 years.

In 2004, Howard was engaged to succeed the world-renowned Hazzan and composer Charles S. Davidson at Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Elkins Park, PA.

SEYMOUR J. ROSENBLOOM, DISTINGUISHED SERVICE RABBI

Rabbi Seymour Rosenbloom is the Distinguished Service Rabbi, an honorific title accorded to him upon his retirement in 2014, after 36 years as the congregation’s spiritual leader. He is a 1966 graduate of the University of Rochester, and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1972. Prior to coming to AJ, he served Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, MI, a suburb of Detroit.

Adath Jeshurun is noted for its unique liturgy, expressed through the Seder Avodah prayer books, originally edited by Rabbi Max D. Klein. Rabbi Rosenbloom extensively edited and revised the Mahzor Seder Avodah which was issued in 2004, and the Sabbath, Weekdays, and Yom Tov edition, which was inaugurated in 2008 as part of the congregation’s 150th anniversary celebration. In 2013, a new volume, Seder Avodah for a House of Shiva, was introduced.

Rabbi Rosenbloom served many community organizations, and led many congregational and community groups to Israel and Eastern Europe. He pioneered a special sister relationship between Adath Jeshurun and Congregation Hod VeHadar in Kfar Saba, Israel, and inspired many members of AJ to be generous supporters of this sister congregation.

Rabbi Rosenbloom has a special interest in "Jewish men's issues," and has lectured and written on the subject using Jewish Biblical materials and the modern texts of Robert Bly, among others. 

Rabbi Rosenbloom was a member and leader of the Rabbinical Assembly, the worldwide professional organization of Conservative Rabbis, until he broke with the organization on the subject of rabbinic officiation at interfaith wedding ceremonies in 2016.

Charles Davidson, DSM, Hazzan Emeritus, z"l

Music has always been a hallmark of our synagogue. In 1965, AJ hired its first Cantor Charles Davidson, a graduate of the Cantor Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Uncle Cantor, as he was fondly called, was a national and international reputation as a composer. During his almost 40 years at AJ, he was prolific in composing, arranging and establishing AJ’s special liturgy, a form of worship that encouraged congregational participation. These traditions are still heard today and are carried on under the guidance of Hazzan Howard Glantz.

Throughout his career, Cantor Davidson wrote a wide variety of synagogue and secular choral music. Some of his best-known works include I Never Saw Another Butterfly (1971), a moving musical setting of the children’s poems from the Terezin concentration camp, Chassidic Sabbath (1961), a Friday night service set in Chassidic style and American Selichot Service: The Hush of Midnight (1966), the first contemporary service written in the folk-rock idiom. Also of note is …And David Danced Before the Lord (1966), the first Friday night service to use popular modern musical idioms (jazz and blues), and La Tavla de Dulce (1992), an oratorio commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Jewish expulsion from Spain. Cantor Davidson composed a number of oratorios, concert operas, and children’s choral works.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Click here for a variety of things Hazzan Glantz has recorded. Don't see what you need? Let Hazzan know by clicking here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Rabbi Rosenbloom's Writings

Selected Videos

Selected Audio

 

 

 

 

 


 

Tue, March 19 2024 9 Adar II 5784