Hazzan Penny Myers joins us for the High Holy Days 5785 (2024) to lead our Conservative services. She will also serve as hazzan co-leading the combined Erev Rosh Hashanah service and for Kol Nidre services with Rabbi Meir Bargeron.
“Versatile,” “engaging,” “warm,” and “gifted” are a few of the many attributes people have said about Hazzan Myers.
In 1996, following a successful tour in Central Europe as the primary lyric soprano soloist, she received a BA in Music-Voice from Buffalo State University. Her studies continued at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, earning a Master of Arts in Teaching-Music Education in 1999. While a music teacher at an inner-city school in Durham, North Carolina, Hazzan Myers was a nominee for Teacher of the Year and discovered the Cantorate in Durham, N.C., where she moonlighted as cantorial soloist.
She received her Hazzan credential through the Cantors Assembly, a branch of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the world’s largest professional association of Jewish Cantors.
In 2022, Hazzan Myers received her Rabbinic s’michah from Mesifta Adas Wolkowisk/ Rabbinical Academy of America, making her the first dually ordained Jewish clergy in Western New York.
She has performed on the bimah and on grand stages throughout North America, Europe and Israel. She is also a sought-after lecturer with a focus on pedagogical practices within worship and religious school education.
She also teaches and lectures about female clergy, emphasizing the challenges and blessings of how #metoo has affected awareness in Jewish organizations.
Chairperson of the Great Lakes & Rivers Region of the Cantors Assembly, Hazzan Myers is very active in the Cantorate, serving on many committees. She was recently a recipient of the Volunteer of the Year award from the Cantors Assembly.
Hazzan Myers is married to neurologist Dr. Bennett Myers. They have three children: Hunter, Saul, and Corrinne.