Celebrating Or Ami’s Cantor Doug Cotler

Doug Cotler’s heart and soul is woven into the fabric of Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas, where he has been cantor for the last 25 years. In June, the Grammy Award-winning composer and musician, who fuses the contemporary with the spiritual, will retire from the synagogue he founded. His career and music will be celebrated on Saturday night, March 26, at the Or Ami ONE Concert at Viewpoint Performing Arts Theatre in Calabasas. He will also receive the Inaugural Ner Tamid Lifetime Achievement Award.

Cotler blends traditional Jewish melodies with modern popular music to teach, inspire, heal and entertain. He has recorded six albums of original Jewish music and published two songbooks containing the songs from four of his recordings. 

His music spans from the meaningful to adult-contemporary songs with Jewish themes, “Jewish Bluegrass” and humorous songs for kids of all ages. At Shabbat and High Holiday services and in his concerts around the country, he helps his audiences see the humor in life’s challenges, the meaning in each shehecheyanu moment and the hope when all seems lost.

“From the moment I co-led a Shabbat service with him over 20 years ago until now, working alongside Cantor Doug Cotler has been a continuing and inspiring education in kedusha (holiness), menschlichkeit (compassionate kindness) and simcha (unbounded joy),” said Or Ami Rabbi Paul Kipnes. 

A third-generation cantor, Cotler, 72, and his wife, Gail, live in Woodland Hills. They have two sons: Kyle, a rabbi and cantor in Chicago, and Noah, a computer security engineer in Woodland Hills.

Cotler’s cantorial training started at the age of nine; he grew up in Oxnard and would often sub for his father at the Ventura County Jewish Council. His professional career began at 14 – he sang in synagogues, at Jewish Community Centers throughout Southern California and at synagogues as part of his “work-study” program at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

His first professional gig was with Mason Williams (best known for his 1968 hit, “Classical Gas”) and the Santa Fe Recital in the early 1970s. Coltler left the tour after his father’s sudden passing to take over cantorial duties at his congregation in Northern California. During that time, he started really studying music. A year and a half later, he moved to Los Angeles. 

“Cantor Doug Cotler has been a source of meaning, depth and musical innovation since he stepped onto his father Cantor Ted Cotler’s bimah to sing in his stead after his father’s untimely passing,” Kipnes said.

It was Cotler’s Hollywood “big break” that enabled him to make such an impact though his heartfelt Jewish music. 

Cotler wanted to be a rock star. He and his writing partner Richard Gilbert spent years trying to make it as songwriters in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They’d write a song, demo it and then take it into Hollywood to try to sell it. Like any great Hollywood story, the duo decided to give this “rock and roll business” one more year, writing songs they thought would sell. 

“We must have written 20 songs that year,” Cotler told the Journal. “About the thirteenth or fourteenth song, this one publisher said, ‘You know, I’m having lunch with this guy who is looking for songs for this movie. This song might be good,’” Cotler said.

The song “Manhunt” was put on the soundtrack to “Flashdance.” It became an international hit and won a Grammy.

“I stopped writing rock and roll, and asked the question, ‘What would it sound like if John Lennon or Paul Simon or Billy Joel or Bob Dylan wrote Jewish music for the synagogue?’” – Cantor Doug Cotler

“With this cushion from ‘Flashdance,’ I stopped writing rock and roll, and asked the question, ‘What would it sound like if John Lennon or Paul Simon or Billy Joel or Bob Dylan wrote Jewish music for the synagogue?’” said Cotler. 

In 1986, Cotler wrote a song about the Shema called “Listen.” He then wrote “So Many Questions” (about the Barchu prayer) and “Standing on the Shoulders” (about the Avot v’Imahot prayer).  

Cotler made a cassette album of his songs and sent out 500 free copies to rabbis all over the country. Rabbi Danny Freelander, the program director at the Reform Movement/Union for Reform Judaism, heard “Standing on the Shoulders.” He called up Cotler and said, “I want to make it the theme of our biennial convention.” 

“[In 1991] I sang the song in front of 5,000 people,” Cotler said. “And that’s what started my career as a Jewish singer songwriter nationally. I found that the songs I wrote – these interpretations of prayers – were really evocative and meaningful and useful in worship. But when I started concertizing, they were too intense. So I started writing all these parodies and funny songs to fill out my concert.” 

While being on the road was exciting and fun, Cotler is a family man. When he was ready to be home, he created a home at Or Ami.

“Or Ami is my family. The synagogue is intimate and intense and deep and incredibly meaningful. So the occasion of my retirement is pretty bittersweet.”
– Cantor Doug Cotler

“Or Ami is my family,” Cotler said. “The synagogue is intimate and intense and deep and incredibly meaningful. So the occasion of my retirement is pretty bittersweet.”

Kipnes said that when working together with Cotler and Rabbi Julia Weisz, they “weave a tapestry of words and music and meaning without even uttering a word. Although his legacy of music and meaning-making is deep and abiding, our congregation will need time to process the loss of this incomparable spiritual leader. Yes, I too will need time to process this, for Cantor Doug is my friend and partner in prayer.”

One aspect of the synagogue that Cotler hopes will continue is their group of young song leaders, called the Madrichei Shir.

“We do 30, 40 b’nai mitzvahs a year,” he said. “I get to hear the kids sing. I identify maybe one or two incredible singers when they’re 12 and 13 years old, and then start working with them.”

Some work at the religious school, some lead services and some sing during the High Holy Days. A few of them could go on “American Idol” or “America’s Got Talent.” Some have gone on to try for careers on Broadway. 

“It it’s an incredible legacy,” Cotler said. “It’s one of the amazing things that Or Ami has done musically. I think that will continue. I hope it does.”