Welcome

Benjamin Rosner

MEET CANTOR BEN ROSNER

New to San Diego area and Adat Shalom, multi-instrumentalist Cantor Ben Rosner brings a dynamic approach to Jewish  music, synagogue life, and pastoral care.

For the last 10 years Cantor Ben Rosner served as the Cantor at  Mosaic Law Congregation in Sacramento.

Cantor Rosner utilizes multiple styles of voice and instruments— including classical guitar, mandolin, banjo, ukulele, harmonica, keyboard and recorder—to bring joyful and soulful melodies to synagogue prayer. He greatly values intercultural collaborations and he has produced and participated in prayer services and concerts featuring music from Yemenite, Persian, Sephardic, Mizrachi, Yiddish, Ladino and Hindustani traditions.  

Cantor Rosner is committed to fostering a community that serves the needs of all of its members. At Mosaic Law Congregation, he reintroduced Tot Shabbat introduced Shababababa services for the youngest children and facilitated the development of  MLC2030, a synagogue group that engages and empowers Jews in their 20s and 30s, an age group that is typically unaffiliated.  Many people had been attracted to services at Mosaic Law Congregation as a result of the Friday Night Live/Shabbat Under the Stars services, which have  also attracted many musicians. In collaboration with the membership committee, he has helped to attract over 115 new memberships since 2013.

Cantor Rosner was also instrumental in starting an MLC Pride committee, now called Keshet. In Spring 2022, Cantor Rosner created and facilitated a three-part program called, “Everything You Would Like to Know About Death but Were Afraid to Ask,” which covered everything from Jewish funerals, last rights, ritual practices, mourning, palliative and hospice care, to wills and estates, which featured over 15 guest speakers.  

Pastoral care is of great importance to Cantor Rosner. Serving as main clergy while Rabbi Taff was on Sabbatical two to three months out of the year, he often officiated lifecycle events solo while fielding calls, care meetings and visits. In anticipation of the synagogue Rabbi retiring, Cantor Rosner partnered with healthcare, social work, clergy, staff and caring lay-leaders through classes and networking to improve on how the community could better serve the spiritual, physical and mental well-being of its members.

Cantor Rosner immediately and creatively met the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading the synagogue’s transition to fully-remote services and programming. Cantor Rosner utilized Zoom and Youtube Streaming service to ensure that services offered by Mosaic Law Congregation would be accessible to its congregation. During this time Cantor produced many music videos with an exceptional video editor including videos of laypersons chanting the books of ShirHaShirim, Ruth, Ecclesiastes and Eicha.  Cantor produced a Virtual  S’lichot service, which was aired nationally by the Cantorial Assembly to all members of the Conservative Movement. 

In preparation for High Holidays 2020, Cantor Rosner was cognizant of safety concerns in choral singing. Inspired by Eric Whitacre’s “Virtual Choir” projects, Cantor Rosner privoted and trained the choir, with the help of section leaders to record their parts from home for inclusion in virtual services.  In addition, Cantor Rosner collaborated with composer David Friedman  and a Cantor in New York to produce Friedman’s “Achat Sha’alti.” This particular virtual choir piece included over 30 people performing, was viewed on Facebook over 3500 times, and was covered in the Times of Israel. In addition to Cantor Rosner’s flexibility to alter prayer and musical experiences during this time,  Cantor Rosner collaborated with the board and volunteers in creating educational programming online. Together, they originated a twice-weekly Zoom program, “Talk Jewish with Me,” during which community members lead talks about areas of interest. 

Cantor Rosner has produced many concerts and services  with guests  and cantors.  He also has a special interest in the Jews from many cultures and produced and participated in Yemenite, Persian, Sephardic, and Mizrachi prayer-services.  In addition to producing concerts with Yiddish and Ladino folk melodies, Cantor Rosner has collaborated with the Sacramento Guitar Society as a past board member to produce concerts/lectures with established guitarists and musicologists. Cantor Rosner also deeply enjoyed the collaboration with a Hindustani singer who is the director of Indian Music School in Sacramento, “Songs of devotion and love in Indian and Jewish traditions.”

Cantor Rosner holds degrees from the H.L. Miller Cantorial School of the Jewish Theological Seminary, where his thesis was “The Birth and Rebirth of Guitar in the Synagogue and A Theory and Practical Application of Jewish Liturgical Music.”  He has been interviewed as an expert and did editorial work on an article for Acoustic Guitar Magazine on the guitar in places of worship, and he has also collaborated with the editor of Journal of Synagogue Music on an article  that includes his recording and arrangement of the traditional prayer “Shiviti” for classical guitar and voice. Cantor Rosner also  published an article on “Selective Use of the Guitar as Accompanying Instrument” in the Journal of Synagogue Music. In March of 2019, Cantor Rosner presented in person, “The Unlimited Potential  of Guitar in Synagogue Music” at a symposium on Jewish Music at the University of Chicago through the Kaplan Institute

Cantor Rosner has given many lectures and solo concerts, which include “ “The Practice of Torah Cantillation and its Jewish Law and Grammar”,” Sephardic History and Music”,” Persian Instruments Used in the Movie “Ballad of the weeping Spring”, and “History, Halacha and the Art of Hebrew Calligraphy” as well as others. He has also been Scholar in Residence and Guest Cantor  at other congregations. In addition, Cantor Rosner acts as a consultant for an instrument seller, recording videos of multiple styles of guitar and other instruments for sale. 

Cantor Rosner enjoys composing secular and liturgical music.  Some of his compositions include “Hashkiveinu” for choir, which premiered at a community-wide Yom Hashoah commemoration,  “ Oseh Shalom” for guitar at voice and “A Shavuot Piyyut” for choir, both of which premiered at the Shalshelet Jewish Composers Festival in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Cantor Rosner grew up attending service at KAM Isaiah Israel in Hyde Park, Chicago, where he was exposed to the music of Max Janowski, the synagogue’s famed music director. He began playing classical guitar at age 13, earning a scholarship to the University of Miami’s conservatory program just a few years later.  While at UM, he started leading music Shabbat services at Hillel, an experience that inspired him to dedicate his life to Jewish learning and teaching. 

Outside of the synagogue, Cantor Rosner enjoys spending time with family, friends, his pet birds and doing nature photography.

Ben's Photos