Cantor Jessica Epstein is a 1998 graduate of the School of Sacred Music of the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City.
Jessica began studying voice in high school at Westminster Conservatory in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1989 she received the New Jersey Governor’s Award for Arts Education as well as a National Arts Recognition and Talent Search Honorable Mention.
A National Merit Scholar, she holds a B.A. in English and a B.M. in Vocal Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
During her required year in Jerusalem for
Cantorial school, she studied with an expert in Israeli art song,
and has completed the first comprehensive study of Israeli
composer,
Verdina Shlonsky, several of whose works she performed
at the Jerusalem Theater in Jerusalem.
She has served as a student-cantor in New Jersey and Brooklyn
Heights and was a chaplain intern at Columbia-Presbyterian
Hospital in New York City.
While at HUC-JIR, she was the Student President of the School of Sacred Music and received a variety of prizes for her work, including the Rabbi Malcolm Stern Memorial Prize for the student who has contributed the most to the school.
She served as a Cantor at Temple Ner Tamid, Bloomfield before joining B'Nai Abraham in 2005