Rabbi-Cantor Michael McCloskey

• Currently teaching a course on the intersection of Jewish music and peace studies
• Taught a course on Jewish Choral Music and Singing Together, Summer 2024
• Regular substituting for Core Concepts Classes
• Will begin teaching Medieval Jewish Philosophy and Modern Jewish Philosophy in Fall 2025

• Developed courses and recruited and enaged with students in courses such as "Do Golems Dream of Electric Shuls": The Golem in the Age of A.I. and "Reparations, Restoration, and Renewal through Jewish Redemptive Narratives"
• Engaged in faculty meetings each semester

Pastoral Care

• Visits those who are sick
• Provides counseling and camaraderie for those in mourning/dealing with loss
• Arranges rides to synagogue events for those with mobility and vision impairments
• Arranges celebrations and observance of mitzvot (Shofar, Passover Seder) for those who are in assisted living or are lacking a place to go for holiday meals.
• Working to create a monthly young adult group that meets locally for community and conversation.

Ritual

• Co-created a thriving Women's Rosh Chodesh Study Group, which boasts over 30 regular attendees at monthly gatherings, is completely lay-led, and has brought in performers and speakers (Including Anita Diamant and her daughter, Emilia).
• Created Weekly Lab Minyan (Featuring contemporary melodies, meditation, creative approaches to tefillah (writing of blessings, visual art, etc.), and lay participation.
• Working to create a new handbook for gabbaim that includes non-binary language for aliyot, more participatory options for gentile partners, and accompanying training.

Technology

• Arranged the temple's quick pivot to zoom services at the outset of the Covid epidemic, working to educate my co-clergy, officers, and other lay volunteers.
• Helped congregations to learn how to use zoom features, maximizing digital presence.
• Worked with my co-clergy to regularly evaluate the content and length of our tefillot, ensuring a balance of authenticity and creativity, considering zoom fatigue, greater interactivity.
• Arranged the temple's eventual transition to hybrid worship (zoom and sanctuary), working to ensure accessibility, knitting together of online and "brick and mortar" space, and a sense of equal participation from both those joining via Zoom and in the sanctuary.

Musical Community Building

• Composes new liturgical music to add to the venerable collection of sacred melodies utilized by temple. New compositions now circulating in kehillot from Boston to Cleveland to L.A.
• Started a children's choir that sang at holiday celebrations.
• Started two bands, one for youth and one for teens, that also played at communal celebrations.
• Created "Shabbat K'ley-Zemer: New World Music with an Old World Feel" service. Each month we hold a lively Kabbalat Shabbat service with music I've arranged for violins, accordion, piano, and voice. Eighty to one-hundred people attend each service and dinner.
• Created our "Shabbat Unplugged" Service, featuring Saturday morning prayers scored for piano, guitar, clarinet, and light percussion, a featured speaker, and a delicious communal luncheon. Each service also features/honors a particular group or element of our community.
• Arranges a yearly Cantor''s Concert Series, which recently has included such diverse offerings as concerts with Kolenu: The Jewish Community Chorus of Boston, The Bostonian Opera and Chamber Ensemble, Magevet: The Jewish A Capella Ensemble of Yale University, The Lori Saltzman Jazz Trio, Arbah Kanfote Jewish Women's Chorus, and a recital of the music of Robert Schumann, Rossini, Copland, and Bernstein

Education for "Doing Jewish"

• Facilitates weekly "Coffee with the Cantor" continuing ed series. Recent courses have included "I Give You Every Herb for Eating" [Genesis 1:29]: The Wild History of Plants and Judaism (with focus on the grapevine, the almond, cannabis, and hallucinogenic), Esther's Contraception: Jewish Views on Women's' Reproductive Health, and a Cantor's Case for Reparations
• Works to engage young adult congregants and families of b'nei mitsvah to chant Torah and Haftarah (Our high holy day readings have been nearly all chanted by teens during my tenure).
• Text Study for Parents at our Collaborative Community Religious School and in "in house" salons.
• Facilitates yearly Siyyum B'chorim (Conclusion of a Talmudic tractate absolving first-born from fasting). Recent sessions include "Make it Tart and Thick: The Subversive Undercurrent of the Haroset", "Running Toward Freedom: Talmud, Travel, and the Rejection of Tyrrany", and "The Eglah Arufah: Responsibility for the Social Welfare and the Dangerous Rhetoric of 'Law and Order'
• Assists our b'nei mitsvah, not only with their Torah/Haftarah but also with their d'rash/speech and their mitsvah project. Offers workshops and counseling to families.

• Worked with cantorial students to develop and polish skills in Nusach HaTefillah (our prayer melodies), lifecycle officiating, leyning, concert work, pastoral counseling, etc.)
• Offered workshops for Hebrew College Rabbinical School in Nusach HaTefillah for Festivals.
• Works privately with Rabbinical School students in order to develop greater vocal technique for the pulpit and classroom.
• Offered seminar for cantorial and rabbinical students during High Holy Day Mini-Mester
• Mentored several cantorial and rabbinical students, bringing to the temple to gain experience in leyning and service leading.

• Grew Boston chapter in three years from eight singers to twenty singers
• Annually joined the other 35 chapters from the USA and Israel in a concert at Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.
• Accompanied the entire group of 350 singers at both aforementioned halls, at a concert in Baltimore, and have accompanied the chamber group at the opening concert of the North American Jewish Choral Festival
• Co-conducted and accompanied a concert with HaZamir Providence at the Coleman House, Newton, MA.
• Guest conducted the Providence chapter at Temple Eman-El, Providence

• Served as Shaliach Tsibbur twice a month and for all festivals and for the high holy days.
• Began an adult choir which met bi-monthly and sang at festival services.
• Taught Jewish music twice a month in the religious school.

• Taught both middle and high school students in courses which encompassed Jewish liturgy, Hebrew Bible, Comparative Religious Traditions, Jewish Literature, and Jewish film.
• Mentored two Teaching Assistants.
• Developed Curriculum.