A Voice For Healing

Cantor Wehle’s mile-wide smile and soulful voice made her an infectious presence in Jewish Buffalo.

Cantor Wehle’s mile-wide smile and soulful voice made her an infectious presence in Jewish Buffalo.

by Rabbi Irwin A. Tanenbaum
Special To The Jewish Week

Note: Cantor Susan Wehle, 55, of Temple Beth Am in Williamsville, N.Y., was one of 50 people who died last Thursday when a commuter plane crashed into a home in the Buffalo suburb of Clarence Center. Wehle, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, grew up in Brooklyn. She attended the University of Buffalo, where she earned a degree in Jewish studies. She later earned a degree in drama, performed in theater companies in Buffalo, Chicago and New York, and worked as a mime. The author is the rabbi of Temple Beth Am.

She had a song in her heart.
And she carried that song with her, from Purim parties to Yizkor services to hospital beds, along the way touching countless Jewish Buffalonians.

/>What do I see when I remember Susan Wehle, my friend and colleague? I see her magnificent full-face smile and bouncing curly hair. I see her amazing cheerfulness in almost all circumstances. I see her vibrant in costume during Purim, so very joyful during Shabbat, so involved before a class of adults or students. I see her walking with an arm around a youngster earnestly sharing a quiet moment.

What do I hear when I listen with my inner ear? I hear her prayerful songs of praise. I hear her joyful children’s ditties. I hear her soulful hymns extolling God’s greatness and glory. I hear her touching, poignant “Eil Mole” at funeral and Yizkor services.

What do I treasure when I think of Susan? I treasure that she loved our people and our God. I treasure that she cherished each moment spent in rapture before the Almighty, wrapped in her beautiful tallit, swaying slowly in the moment. I treasure that Susan cared for God’s great world and reveled in its beauty and bounty. I treasure her animated personality, her joie de vivre.
Her zest and her spirit touched one and all.

Our Talmud teaches us that “the loss of a single person is like the destruction of an entire world.” Susan’s life encompassed many worlds. She gave her heart and soul to them all, never holding back.
She loved the world of her family: her two sons, Jonah and Jacob Mink, her siblings Eva Friedner, John Wehle and Dana Wehle. Our hearts grieve for them and with them. May they know some small measure of consolation because of her unflinching love for them. She has joined the celestial realm, and it is they who must remain with their pain and loss, until they are joined more fully again.

Susan loved the world of her congregation, Temple Beth Am, a member of the Union for Reform Judaism, and before that Temple Sinai, a Reconstructionist shul. To these holy congregations she devoted her considerable energies and spirit, her love and concern. She came to us when we were weary or ill to lift our spirits by her presence and her soft songs of healing and prayer. She taught our children and enriched our adults.

Cantor Wehle gave of herself with a unique sense of the spirit within, infused by the presence of God. She taught us that life is a journey, and with music and prayer, dance and poetry, she helped us navigate. Nothing was too small or too large for her to do for us. She cannot be replaced in our hearts.
Susan loved the world of the community. She eagerly embraced projects and committees both in our Jewish community and along the broader road of all humanity. She dared to hope. She worked with The Holocaust Resource Center, her awareness heightened by memories of her survivor parents.
She forged new inroads among suburban teenagers from Jewish and Muslim families. Susan had a unique style of visiting hospitals and nursing homes, singing her way into hearts and souls. (Her CD, “Songs of Healing and Hope,” is very popular). She embodied the ideal of “a light unto the nations.”
Susan loved The Aleph Jewish Renewal Movement. Her many friends there shared her worldview, alive with the breath of the Almighty. With them she studied and learned, danced and sang, and thereby worshipped the Creator. With them she was ordained a cantor under the auspices of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in 2004.

Our own world is a darker place now for want of her illumined soul. Her presence among us is now a void, and we must be satisfied by her memory alone, and our own ability to emulate and follow her mighty example of living life in its fullest.
So many have written wondrous and beautiful paeans of praise to Susan this week, and this is but one of them, crafted lovingly by her friend Barbara Holender:

Is it any comfort to think
there’s one more glorious voice
among the heavenly choir?
Something must survive the wasting.

Oh, she was joyous and strong,
full-throated and ardent —
such a soul does not linger.
What goes down in flame
rises in song. We hear her still —

Shiru l’adonai shir hadash,
Sing, Susan, sing unto the Lord a new song.
Susan Wehle knew deep in her soul’s inner recess that at the root of all there surely could be found that ever-enfolding embrace of Adonai our God — and she does now abide warm and safe therein.
Sing on, dear friend, you will sing on forever.
Zichronah Livracha — May her memory truly be for a blessing.
Rabbi Irwin A. Tanenbaum is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Am in Williamsville, N.Y., where Susan Wehle was cantor.

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