Rabbi Emily Howard Meyer wears many hats in the DMV Jewish community — rabbi-in-residence, spiritual leader, artist, educator, musician and business owner.
She’s taught herself Hebrew, worked as a cantorial soloist, taught religious school music, officiated Jewish lifecycle events, volunteered at a Jewish senior living community, created handmade Torah arks and led a tallit-making class at Goucher Hillel. She is also the owner of OySongs.com, a Jewish music distribution website.
“I’m all about finding different conduits into Judaism, so for me, art and music are different conduits for people to connect,” Howard Meyer said.
So it may come as a surprise to hear that the Rockville rabbi wasn’t raised Jewish.
Howard Meyer grew up in a largely secular household in Oregon. Her mother sent her to various Christian Sunday school programs and vacation Bible schools, but none of that felt right to her.
“I was just very uncomfortable,” Howard Meyer said.
She searched for a faith tradition in college and felt drawn to Wicca, a modern, nature-based pagan religion. “My mom said, ‘You can be anything in the world, but not a witch. That’s where I draw the line,’” Howard Meyer recalled.
Armed with an undergraduate degree in piano performance and theory/composition and her master’s in music from Peabody at the Johns Hopkins University, Howard Meyer moved to New York City to begin her career. But when her job lost funding two days before her start date, she used her typist skills — thanks to decades of piano — as a secretary for Hadassah: The Women’s Zionist Organization of America.
Her turning point came during a Rosh Hashanah lunch and learn program there.
“I immediately knew I needed to be Jewish in that moment,” Howard Meyer recalled. “It was a visceral thing … my soul cried out and said, ‘You’re supposed to be Jewish.’”
She spent the next several years immersed in Jewish study, reading books recommended by her bosses at Hadassah. After moving to Denver, she began observing Shabbat, taught herself to read Hebrew and learned Jewish prayers.
“I self-identified as a Jew at that point, but I still had never done anything formal or even spoken to a rabbi,” Howard Meyer said.
As head of the music department at a Wyoming community college, Howard Meyer lived hours away from the nearest Jewish community: “It was a very long three years.”
After another move, this time to upstate New York, she contacted a rabbi and was paired with the newly ordained Rabbi Amy Sapowith as Sapowith’s first conversion student.
Six months in, the synagogue’s senior rabbi left to visit Uganda for the summer, and Sapowith temporarily filled his role. “By the end of the summer, I hadn’t even fully converted yet, but I was already helping to lead b’nai mitzvah services, leading services and working as a cantorial soloist,” Howard Meyer said.
Her new marriage took her to Omaha, Nebraska, where she taught religious music at Reform and Conservative synagogues. The religious school principal of the Reform shul — noting, “‘You’re truly horrible at this, … [but] I think you have potential,’” — sent Howard Meyer to Hava Nashira, a URJ Camp program for budding Jewish synagogue musicians.
“It’s this fantastic community of all kinds of people from all different backgrounds, and we get the greats to teach us in Jewish music,” Howard Meyer said.
Prominent Jewish singer-songwriter Debbie Friedman, who served as one of Howard Meyer’s mentors through Hava Nashira, told Howard Meyer that she should become a cantor. Wanting to honor Friedman’s dying wish, Howard Meyer talked to Hebrew Union College about joining its cantorial program.
She moved to Washington, D.C., where she taught religious school music and a class on parody writing at Shaare Torah in Gaithersburg. She also taught Sunday school music at Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Potomac.
But the HUC program had a high bar for cantorial students, including a sophomore college-level understanding of Hebrew. Howard Meyer took Hebrew lessons with Rivka Degani at the Bender JCC of Greater Washington for six years.
Howard Meyer was also expected to work in a Reform Jewish community, so she served as Temple Shalom’s cantorial soloist for more than 11 years. The HUC program collapsed, but Howard Meyer had years of Jewish study and experience.
She became assistant to the cantor at Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase, where she taught religious school music, Hebrew school, the temple’s choirs and b’nai mitzvah students.
Howard Meyer went above and beyond during the pandemic, creating and editing 35 choral videos, which each took many hours.
She was headed toward a cantorial certification when her Talmud teacher, a Frederick rabbi, told her, “Your whole face lights up when you talk about Talmud and do Talmud study. Don’t you think you’d rather be a rabbi?” So that’s what she did.
“I decided that it would be more interesting for me to be a rabbi who sings instead of a cantor,” Howard Meyer said.
These days, she can be found teaching a weekly “Ask the Rabbi” class at Charles E. Smith Jewish Life Communities, where she volunteers as a rabbi-in-residence, or leading Jewish college students at Goucher Hillel in crafting prayer shawls.
What does Howard Meyer enjoy most about her work? “I just love the people,” she said. “I love people in general — getting to know people and interacting with them.”
The rabbi creates programming based on CESLC residents’ feedback. When an 82-year-old mentioned that she’d never had a bat mitzvah, Howard Meyer spearheaded an adult b’nai mitzvah program at Revitz House.
When the adult b’nai mitzvah “graduates” expressed a desire to continue learning, Howard Meyer opened a Judaics class attended by 15 to 20 students weekly.
“I come in and teach about what they are interested in, and we talk about it theologically, historically and also what their thoughts are,” she said.
The Revitz House residents are grateful to have Howard Meyer as their rabbi-in-residence, but the rabbi sees herself as the lucky one.
“All of the people that I’ve met throughout my almost three years, [have] been just so interesting: the lives they’ve led, the things they’ve done, the books they’ve read,” Howard Meyer said. “Everything has been such a learning experience.”
She also uses her art background — specifically in Jewish arts — to lead a program on Jewish ritual objects and how to make them at Goucher Hillel.
“I would love to keep doing what I’m doing. I love teaching. I think teaching will always be a huge part of what I do. I feel that that is a big part of my rabbinate,” she said.
