It wasn’t until her senior year as an undergraduate at the Hartt School of Music that Sydney Michaeli discovered the cantorate as a career path for herself.

“I ended up falling in love with the cantorate and realizing that it combined all the things I loved: music and people,” Michaeli said. “I realized the cantorate was a way for me to have that musical piece in my life, but also to have a relational piece and an educational piece and a pastoral piece. Those were all things that I felt really excited about.”

The Falls Church resident is a cantor at Temple Rodef Shalom, alongside Senior Cantor Michael Shochet. The largest Jewish congregation in Virginia, TRS boasts a membership of 1,850 households.

“I really feel at home in a large synagogue because I love being part of a big community where I get to know a lot of people, where there’s a lot going on, and also where I get to work on a team,” Michaeli said.

As cantor, Michaeli leads services and life cycle events, provides pastoral care, writes TRS’ weekly newsletter, conducts the teen choir, works with the adult choir, runs musical programs and spends time with kids in TRS’ early childhood center. She works with b’nai mitzvah kids, the youth and camp teams, the music and performing arts committee, and the Chai There initiative for young families.

“I just love the richness of our community,” Michaeli said. “It feels meaningful to me to do this work on such a large scale.”

Music has long been part of the cantor’s life. She grew up singing and playing the cello in a “very musical household” in New York.

“From a very young age, I wanted to be an opera singer,” Michaeli said. “I knew I wanted to have a life in music, so that’s something I pursued.”

The Jewish aspect of her professional life came later.

While studying opera in college, Michaeli searched for a summer job between semesters. A job at New York City’s Temple Emanu-El “fell into [her] lap” through a mutual friend. She began as the Reform shul’s membership assistant to Jessica Ingram, who is now the executive director at TRS.

“It just seemed like a good fit,” Michaeli said of her first Jewish communal job. “It had good hours. I said, ‘I’m Jewish; I could work in the Jewish community,’ but it definitely didn’t occur to me that it would open so many doors to my future.”

She noted the inclusivity of synagogue life, regardless of whether someone is musically trained.

“Singing together, praying together, being part of music together — it’s something anyone can do,” Michaeli said. “I don’t care if you think you’re the best singer or worst singer. Everyone can pray together, raise their voices together, and I think it’s so powerful and is really the highlight of what I get to do.”

Though the cantor had dreamed of being an opera singer, she gets to scratch that musical “itch” at TRS because Jewish music falls into many different genres and styles.

“Something I love about this community [at TRS] is that they have an appreciation for a very wide range of types of Jewish music,” Michaeli said. “So I could be singing something that many people would consider traditional from the 1800s, and then a little later, be singing something that was composed a couple weeks ago by an up-and-coming artist. And this community is really receptive to that.”

She also enjoys collaborating with her colleagues and fellow musicians on musical projects or simply opportunities to make music.

“We do lots of concerts, we bring in special guests, so I feel like because I get to do so much varied music, it brings me a lot of joy,” Michaeli said.

When not on the bimah, Michaeli does her best to upkeep her personal practice, working on music from classical to cantorial and honing her guitar skills across Jewish musical genres.

“It’s such a rich culture, such a rich history,” she said. “There’s so much to explore.”

Michaeli hopes that by leading songs at TRS, she brings a sense of unity to the congregation.

“I think there’s a lot of divisiveness in our world, and I think that when we can come together and pray and sing, that’s something that can’t be replicated by anything else in the world,” she said.

zbell@midatlanticmedia.com