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Juliet Spitzer 2006│ Zeh HaYom Margot Stein 2006│ Lulei Jeremy Stein 2008│ Magein Avot Irene Steiner 2008│ Shalom Rav and Anim Zemirot Shawn Zevit 2008│ Ve Shamru 2006│ Adonai S'fatai Honorable Mention Meryam Zislovich 2006│ My Heart Is Ready
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Rebecca Schwartz
is a professional singer, songwriter, and guitarist; a Hebrew song leader; a cantorial soloist; and an educator. She has performed and taught music since 1975, and currently works at Old York Road Temple—Beth Am and Congregation Rodeph Shalom in the Philadelphia area. Rebecca has released two albums: Only Time Can Tell (original love songs) and The Light of Shabbat. Rebecca recently created and presented "The Power of Prayer Through Music—Enhancing Worship With Song" for the 29th Annual Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education.
Rabbi Ethan Seidel has served Tifereth Israel Congregation in Washington, DC since 1992 when he and his family moved there from his first pulpit in Lincoln, Nebraska. Before being ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York in 1988, he graduated from Oberlin College with degrees in mathematics and piano performance, and worked as a computer programmer. In addition to his musical interests, he loves studying Talmud, juggling, baking, gardening, playwriting, and unicycling. 
Hazzan Joanna Selznick Dulkin is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. She graduated with honors from Stanford University and received her Master’s Degree in Sacred Music and Cantorial Investiture from the Jewish Theological Seminary's H.L. Miller Cantorial School in 2004. Having previously been associate hazzan of Beth El Synagogue Center in New Rochelle, NY, she currently serves hazzan of Shaare Zedek Synagogue in St. Louis, Missouri. Her music has taken her to Hawaii, Israel, England, and Singapore, where she served as the High Holiday cantor for two years. She is a published composer and writer, and appears on several CD recordings. 
Rabbi Shira Shazeer has been a composer and performer of klezmer and Yiddish music for many years. She is the lead singer and accordionist for the Klezmaniacs, her larger band, and for Fish Street Klezmer, her duo with her husband, Cantor Ken Richmond. She has produced several CDs and performed around the world. Her compositions have been featured at Lilith Magazine’s evening of new Jewish women’s music and at the Carlebach project at Makor. She participated in the American Jewish World Service’s Rabbinical Student Delegation to El Salvador and is a graduate of the Scholars Circle at the Drisha Institute in New York and Hebrew College’s Rabbinical School in Newton, Massachusetts.
Cantor Robbi Sherwin, of Austin, Texas, grew up in an Air Force family in small towns all over the U.S. and was first exposed to the riches of Jewish music at summer camp. She became certified as a cantor in 2003 after a decade of study while raising three children (including co-composer Katy Jordan). Currently the spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Butte in Crested Butte, Colorado (where at 9,800 feet above sea level the community creates it’s own “Rocky Mountain Chai”), she has also served congregations in Austin, San Antonio and El Paso, Texas, as well as Denver and Evergreen, Colorado. She has released two CDs, Todah La’Chem and Aish Hahodesh, and her melodies have been recorded by many other artists. Her Hu Ya’aseh, co-written with Rich Glauber, appears on the CD Voices for Israel II. As a member of the trio Sababa! she has performed throughout the US, England and Israel, and she can be heard on their new recording Pray for the Peace.
Maggid Jhos Singer received a degree in music from the University of California, Los Angeles (despite warnings from well meaning advisors that this choice would likely have a negative impact on his future income-earning potential). Miraculously, this diploma and training have come in very handy in his career as a Jewish cleric. Ordained as a Maggid in 2001 by Rabbi Gershon Winkler, he has written many liturgical pieces for lifecycle rituals and worship. Some of these can be heard on the album Shirat HaLev. He teaches in and around the San Francisco Bay Area and writes often for Jewish Mosaic. He and his wife Julie Batz co-lead the Coastside Jewish Community in Half Moon Bay, California. 
Rabbi Gershom Sizomu was born in 1969 in Uganda. His father was the Abayudaya community's rabbi and mohel, and his maternal grandfather was the community's chief rabbi. He became the community rabbi upon his father's death in 1991. He and his family have been active musicians in the community for many years, setting much of the Jewish liturgy to traditional African rhythms and harmonies. He received a BA in education from the Islamic University in Uganda, and later founded and led the only Jewish high school in Uganda and the Abayudaya Yeshiva. He received ordination in 2008 from American Jewish University’s Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and returned to Uganda where he continues to serve the community there.
Juliet Spitzer is a singer/songwriter and has recorded six CDs of original Jewish (and general) music. She leads music and healing workshops in the Philadelphia area, and composes for and performs with Theatre Ariel, Pennsylvania's professional Jewish theater company. She is a member of the a cappella trio MIRAJ and the vocal ensemble SheWho, and leads creative services nationally with the musical troupes Shabbat Unplugged/ Havdallah Live and Tof b’Yadah. Her two solo CDs are Full Glory: Songs of Hope, Consolation, and Joy and Shifting Edge, and with MIRAJ, A Moon Note and Counting Angels in the Wilderness. She teaches on various topics in Judaism in the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School. 
Rabbi Margot L. Stein is an award-winning singer/songwriter who has produced or co-produced six albums of original Jewish music. A creativity consultant to the Jewish community, she utilizes the performing arts to teach Torah. She composes and sings with the a cappella trio MIRAJ and the troupe Shabbat Unplugged and teaches Jewish Ethics and Purposes of Jewish Living at Gratz College's Melton Adult Mini-School. Her musical play, Guarding the Garden, toured North America for four seasons, was seen by some 20,000 people, and was featured on the cover of Lilith magazine. 
A native of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Hazzan Jeremy Stein he studied flute and arranging at Berklee College of Music in Boston. After graduating, he toured with his jazz/rock band Flutopia. In addition to performing with his band, he has recorded film scores, composed radio jingles, and played at countless Jewish weddings. He performed at Carnegie Hall with The Zamir Choral Foundation, sharing the stage with Theodore Bikel and Debbie Friedman as well as hazzanim Jackie Mendelson and Alberto Mizrahi. For the past several summers, he has served as Rosh Shira at Camp Ramah in New England. A recent graduate of JTS’s H. L. Cantorial School and College of Jewish Music, Jeremy is settling into his new role as hazzan at Congregation Beth Israel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Irene Steiner has a Masters Degree in Music from the University of Wisconsin, with a major in voice. A frequent soloist at synagogues and churches in the New York metropolitan area, she has also performed in operas, oratorios, musical comedies, and in art song recitals. A 1999 journey to Krakow inspired a passion for Jewish music. In 2000 she produced the first of a series of annual concerts of Yiddish and other Jewish songs at Temple Beth Shalom in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. She has become deeply involved in the music of Mordechai Gebirtig (also from Krakow), setting to music 12 poems written during the war for which no music was found. She has also written musical settings for the poetry of Itzik Manger and the Yiddish Canadian poet Simcha Simchovitch. An attorney practicing in New York City, she lives with her family in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York with her family. She dedicates her efforts in performance and composition to her parents, who are Holocaust survivors, and to her grandparents and uncles, who perished in the Holocaust. 
Rabbi Shawn Israel Zevit, born in Winnipeg, has lived most of his life in Toronto and Philadelphia. He has recorded three solo CDs including the 2-disc Generations: Journey Across the Ages which includes Kabbalat Shabbat - A complete Friday Evening Spiritual Experience in Music. He is the author of Offerings of the Heart: Money and Values in Faith Communities. A founding member of Shabbat Unplugged and Playback Philadelphia, he also co-directs the Davennen’ Leadership Training Institute which trains lay leaders, rabbis, cantors, singers and musicians in the art of spiritual leadership through prayer, music and group dynamics. He is a spiritual director and coach for clergy in seminary programs, and has taught Interpersonal and Organizational Communications at the University of Toronto and Temple University. He is Director of Outreach and Tikkun Olam and a senior congregational consultant for the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation and is also on the steering committee for Harmoniyah: the Reconstructionist Music Network for the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation. 
Rabbi Meryam Zislovich is a mystic, shaman, kabbalist, artist, scholar, writer, story teller, cantor and rabbi. She was born and reared in Israel and graduated from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she was a student of the performing arts. She was a member of a Palestinian-Israeli travelling theater troupe, then moved to California to study with Ali Akbar Khan, master of classical Indian music. She became a rabbi and cantor, and has been living in the Bay Area and Israel ever since. She believes that singing has the power to express and dissolve emotional and physical pain, and to effect profound healing within and without through communion.