Cantor Joshua Breitzer
Cantor Josh Breitzer (he/him) joined the clergy of Congregation Beth Elohim in 2011 upon receiving ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He leads the community through prayer and song, teaches chanting and ritual skills to people of all ages, and helps turn special moments into sacred occasions. Under his innovative cantorial stewardship, CBE has become a beacon of dynamic, pluralistic ritual activity, attracting international attention and growing to over 1300 member units.
In 2025, after many years of board service, Cantor Breitzer was elected President of the American Conference of Cantors, which offers spiritual leadership and sacred music to Reform congregations throughout the world.
Cantor Breitzer’s professional activities extend far beyond Brooklyn. Named by The Forward in its “Soundtrack of Our Spirit” series as one of the best new Jewish music voices, Cantor Breitzer has sung at concert halls and synagogues across the country. He appears throughout the PBS documentary “The Four Sons And All Their Sons: A Passover Tale” and helped create the New York Festival of Song’s acclaimed cabaret “A Goyishe Christmas to You” in which he has performed every year since 2010. Among his most influential mentors were Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Yehudi Wyner, Cantor Lawrence Avery, and Dr. Jack Gottlieb, whose artistic legacy Cantor Breitzer continues to preserve and promote.
As Clinical Instructor in Cantorial Arts at the HUC-JIR Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music, Cantor Breitzer advises and coaches students and teaches courses on integrative repertoire for Shabbat and Yom Kippur. An alumnus of the Clergy Leadership Program of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, he strives to model in all his work how one might weave traditional and contemporary liturgical settings into a holistic, compelling prayer experience. His former cantorial interns have gone on to serve prominent progressive Jewish communities all around the globe.
Cantor Breitzer proudly hails from mid-Michigan and spent formative summers at Interlochen Arts Camp, later earning voice degrees from the University of Michigan and the New England Conservatory. Committed to inspiring the next generation of Jewish music makers, he was the founding conductor of HaZamir Brooklyn, a chapter of HaZamir: The International Jewish Teen Choir, and is on the faculty of URJ Crane Lake Camp. He has also presented classes at the North American Jewish Choral Festival, the Academy for Jewish Religion, and at the Abraham Geiger Kolleg in Potsdam, Germany.
Together with his wife Donna and their children Jonah and Gideon, Cantor Breitzer makes a home in Park Slope. He relishes the city’s multitude of mass transit systems, doing the New York Times Sunday Crossword, and crafting puns of varying quality for his extremely tolerant family and friends.