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.”

As the world watches in horror as millions of Ukrainians resist, take shelter or flee from Russian attacks, news reports stir up connections to a haunting past. For many, images of fear and flight from places like Lviv, Kyiv, Donbas, Odesa and Babi Yar summon echoes of the unspeakable inhumanity of the Holocaust.

These vignettes from testimonies in USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive bring just a few stories from these places to light. The words of survivors, as they often do, reach forward through time.

Tainted Miracles in Odesa

To Helen Helfant, Odesa felt like a godsend.

In 1940 Helen and her husband had staged a daring midnight escape from Nazi-occupied Warsaw into Soviet-occupied territory. But they were arrested and banished to a settlement in the forests of the remote Soviet autonomous Republic of Komi, where for four long winter months, they spent their days chopping trees and passed their nights in a windblown shack, fueled only by a daily ration of 600 grams of bread and a bit of watery soup.

Helen and her husband were again able to escape, this time in the spring of 1941 when they trekked into the dense forests of Komi, and then beyond.

“We crossed Russia from the north to the south, mostly running on foot, and partially by train,” Helen said in testimony recorded in 1995. Within a few weeks, they had covered 2,500 kilometers.

“We crossed Russia from the north to the south, mostly running on foot, and partially by train,” Helen said in testimony recorded in 1995. Within a few weeks, they had covered 2,500 kilometers.

“And then we reached Odesa … It was like a miracle, because over there was a warm climate. That is what we were crying in a fantasy, just to reach a warm climate, because we were so much frozen in the Siberian town,” she said.

Helen and her husband both found jobs, and a widow rented them a room in her apartment.

But then, just a few months after they arrived, on June 22, 1941, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union and Helen’s husband was conscripted into the Red Army.

“And Hitler started the bombardment of the city. It was such a beautiful city, Odesa. I will never forget, a beautiful city. And he was destroying the city part by part, again the same thing like in Warsaw, a repetition of Warsaw. There was no light, no water, there was nothing to eat,” she said.

One night, Helen joined a line outside a warehouse to get sugar, oil, bread – whatever the communist government might be offering. She stood in the snaking line from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., but then realized she had forgotten to bring a jar with which to carry some oil. She asked someone to hold her place in line while she ran back to her nearby apartment.

When she returned 15 minutes later, the line had been decimated.

“It was a terrible bomb that they threw on this line. When I came down, I didn’t recognize anybody – there were hands and legs and heads. The whole line, about 800 people, got killed. If I wouldn’t go for this bottle, I would have got killed the same,” she said. “I don’t believe in miracles, but somehow, it happens in life things that you can’t imagine how it happened.”

Horror in Kyiv

Samuel Orshan lived with his parents, his younger brother, and a large extended family in a Kyiv neighborhood near what was known as the Jewish Market.

He was 11 years old on June 22, 1941, when Germany launched a massive attack on the Soviet Union.

“There was bombing all around us,” Orshan recalled in his testimony. “We lived not far from a big factory and they bombed that factory, so we could hear the explosions, too.” 

The attacks went on for months. Samuel remembered standing on the roof to watch the explosions as his mother screamed for him to come down to the bomb shelter.

One night in August 1941, Samuel’s father, who was serving in the air defense unit of the Red Army around Kyiv, showed up with a truck and told the family to pack. 

One night in August 1941, Samuel’s father, who was serving in the air defense unit of the Red Army around Kyiv, showed up with a truck and told the family to pack. He had spent the previous month planning how to get his family to safety before the city fell under Nazi control. That night he drove his family to the cattle train that would evacuate them, and left to rejoin his army unit.

Samuel, his mother and brother were sent to the city of Kizlyar, in today’s Republic of Dagestan, and then to a nearby farming village. Samuel cared for his brother while his mother worked in a hospital. By the end of September 1941, they heard that Kyiv had fallen to the Germans and received the news that Samuel’s father was missing in action.

A few months later, a neighbor from Kyiv turned up injured in the hospital where Samuel’s mother worked as a nurse. He told them that immediately after the Nazis occupied Kyiv, in September 1941, all of the Jews in Kyiv and the surrounding areas had been rounded up and forced to march to Babi Yar, a ravine near the old cemetery. He said he had seen Samuel’s father there before managing to slip away from the human column and hide in a courtyard. Almost no one else managed to escape the ensuing massacre, the neighbor said. 

As the German army advanced south in 1942, Samuel’s family was evacuated to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. There they were housed in a large hall with more than a dozen other families. Samuel’s mother found work while his brother started kindergarten. Samuel tried to talk his way into a military academy, but instead had to settle on trade school.

In December 1943, the Red Army recaptured Kyiv after a prolonged battle with German forces. Samuel, then 14, knew what he had to do.

“I couldn’t stay anymore in Tbilisi. I wanted to go home and fight Germans,” he said.

He left his mother and brother and headed for Kyiv—nearly 2,000 kilometers away—by hopping trains and hitching rides with sympathetic military transports.

He arrived in battle-scarred Kyiv in the spring of 1944. To his great disappointment, the army would not take a boy as young and lanky as Samuel. So, instead, he lived with an aunt and uncle and again enrolled in a trade school.

Samuel later learned that about 20 members of his family—including his father—were among the 34,000 Jews killed at Babi Yar over a two-day period in September 1941.

Waves of War in Lviv

As a young boy, Alex Redner lived through three waves of occupation in his native Lviv (then Lwów, part of the Second Polish Republic): A German invasion followed swiftly by Russian occupation in 1939; another German invasion in June, 1941; and then Russian liberation and occupation in July, 1944. 

Before all that, Alex had enjoyed a good life. His father was a respected doctor, with patients from many backgrounds. Alex had an older sister, Emily, and a large extended family.

Alex was 11 when Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.

Alex was 11 when Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. “We had hundreds of refugees fleeing from west to east, and the roads were simply filled end to end with people trying to run away,” he said in his testimony.

“We had hundreds of refugees fleeing from west to east, and the roads were simply filled end to end with people trying to run away,” he said in his testimony.

Within a few days the German military campaign had reached Lviv, which was on the far eastern side of Poland. 

“We had daily bombing of German planes. We were practically living our days and nights in a basement shelter,” Alex said.

On September 17, 1939, Germany handed Lviv to the Soviet Union as part of a secret pact between Hitler and Stalin, and the city, with its large populations of Ukrainians, Poles, Jews and Russians, came under Soviet control.

Lviv rapidly filled with refugees from Poland who wagered that life under Stalin would be better than under Hitler. The Redners made room in their apartment for friends, relatives, and even strangers seeking shelter. 

Then, on June 22, 1941, German planes bombed the city and on July 1, its troops occupied Lviv. 

“From the very first day, it was an abysmal situation. It was like being thrown from a normal life down in the pits and becoming a rat trapped in the bottom of a pit. That was that big of a change,” Alex said.

Nazi attacks on the city’s Jews began immediately. Alex and his family were able to evade several roundups and deportations, but his grandfather was killed. The family lived in and out of hiding using false papers and spent many months in the Lviv ghetto. When the Red Army liberated Lviv in July 1944, they were hiding in a village 20 miles from the city.

When they went back to Lviv – one of only a handful of Jewish families to return – they found that their apartment had recently been vacated by Germans. The Redner apartment became a stop for the many Jewish refugees who arrived in Lviv.

“I remember that we had, day after day, people with a tea in hand telling us the story how they eventually escaped, and they came back to Lwów. And we didn’t have any good news for anybody,” he said. 

The Redners left Lviv in 1946, and Alex made his way to France, where he met his wife, then moved to Uruguay, where his parents were living. He and his wife and two daughters ended up in Pennsylvania.

When he gave his testimony in 1995, he had these cautionary words.

“I think that the lesson that we all should remember is that we are surrounded by a very dangerous world,” he said. “If Hitler succeeded to make out of Germany a nation of criminals in a little time, through a very shrewd effort of propaganda, that same thing can be done in very many other places, in much less time, with the help of television and modern technology. … We should be prepared to somehow deal with it the moment it happens.”

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Julie Gruenbaum Fax, former senior writer for The Jewish Journal, is a writer and content creator for USC Shoah Foundation. She is working on a book on her grandparents’ Holocaust experience.

In 2015, Rabbanit Alissa Thomas-Newborn became the first female clergy member of an Orthodox synagogue in Los Angeles. During her time at the shul, she worked with a variety of populations, helping members of all ages connect to their spirituality and practice. Now, she’s leaving her position to move to the East Coast with her husband, Akiva Newborn, and their daughter Ella, to work as a chaplain at New York Presbyterian-Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

“I feel very blessed to have been in the LA community,” Thomas-Newborn said. “LA is both a very large and a very small community. When I first came here, it was tough, but once I really built relationships with people, I felt so embraced and supported. I was lucky to have had relationships with people in the Orthodox community, as well as other dominations and faiths.”

According to the rabbanit, one of the most meaningful aspects of her work was the mental health awareness events and Shabbatons she held. At the first Shabbaton, there were two families who had been great friends for years, and in that space, they learned they each had a sibling with mental health issues.

“They actively reflected on that moment and how that was a part of themselves they have never shared with anyone else,” she said. “When people say ‘How are you doing?’ at kiddush, they can be themselves when they answer and be part of the community. The shul is there to make us feel like it’s an extension of our family.”

One event that stood out to Thomas-Newborn happened during a Shabbat kids’ program. Every Shabbat, the Torah is taken out for the children to see. “There was a little girl who didn’t get to see it, and she came up to me crying,” she said. “I said ‘Let’s do it again.’ We took out the Torah together and opened it up and looked inside. She was so incredibly happy and joyful to be near it. That was such a privilege to be part of that with her and for a child to feel that connection to Torah.”

A job that Thomas-Newborn was tasked with was building up the young professionals community at the shul. “When I started, it was a very small group of people, and now it’s almost at 100 people,” she said. “We recently had a Friday night minyan and it was full of joy and singing and felt like life was back to normal.”

Before joining BDJ, the rabbanit received her semicha from Yeshivat Maharat as well as graduated Magna Cum Laude from Brandeis University. She is a Board Certified Chaplain (BCC), and did her original chaplaincy training at New York Presbyterian. Along with working at the hospital, she’s going to be publishing a Shabbat guidebook for families with babies and toddlers within the year and looking into part-time pulpit work.

“I feel very blessed to have been in the LA community.” – Thomas-Newborn

“I love pulpit work,” she said. “I cherish it. I’m sad to leave it and didn’t want to let that go. It’s really important for female Orthodox leaders to continue to work in pulpits because there aren’t that many of us.”

In a speech to his congregation about the rabbanit’s departure, Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, senior rabbi at BDJ, said, “We will be experiencing a difficult parting of ways. Each one of us, without even a single exception will miss your passion, your pastoral insight and care [and] your Torah.”

According to Kanefsky, over the coming months, his shul “will be engaging in a deep and broad process through which we will arrive at a specific vision for the future of our female clergy position,” he said. “We will begin the process of searching for the person who will fill that position.”

For Thomas-Newborn, working in the Pico-Robertson community was a wish fulfilled. “I’m from Redondo Beach, and my dream was always to live in Pico because that’s where the kosher food and all the good shuls were,” she said. “There are a variety of ways in which I was able to live my dream.”

Even though her departure is bittersweet, she is looking forward to a new start.

“I’m very sad because I love this community so much and I’m so connected to it,” she said. “But I’m hopeful for what’s in the next chapter for myself and my family.”

Shalhevet Firehawks Varsity Girls Basketball won the 2022 California Interscholastic Federation State Regional Championship, beating Victory Christian Academy in Chula Vista 62-52. For the first time in Shalhevet Girls Basketball history, they played in the California State Championship Game on Friday, March 11. Though they lost 38-27 to the San Domenico Panthers, the coaches, players and administration are optimistic about this past season and what lies ahead for the team.

“To say that this has been a historic year is an understatement,” said Talia Tizabi, team captain and a senior at Shalhevet. “The fact that we not only won the CIF Regionals but ultimately made it to the California State Championship game is a lesson to any Jewish kid that they should never limit their dreams or potential. It is possible to go all the way.”

During the season, there was plenty of adversity that could have stopped the team from getting so far. According to coach Ryan Coleman, in a preseason tournament, they lost two starters within five minutes of each other to season-altering injuries. Senior Jessica Melammed suffered a torn ACL and missed the entire season, and Junior Talia Tibi suffered a dislocated kneecap and missed the entire regular season. Yalee Schwartz missed six weeks because of torn ligaments in her ankle.

“The bright side of all of the injuries was that we had other players develop aspects of their game that they would not have otherwise had a chance to do,” Coleman said.

To prepare for games, the team practiced nearly every day after school. They also spent hours watching film and finding areas to improve both as a team and individually said Tizabi, who has been playing basketball since she was five and played for Pressman Academy as well. “We cultivated excellent teamwork through team bonding off the court, including team dinners and celebrations.”

“We cultivated excellent teamwork through team bonding off the court.” – Talia Tizabi

According to Head of School at Shalhevet Rabbi David Block, the team is unique not only because they are skilled, but also because of the Jewish pride they have.

“I don’t think any other Orthodox schools have ever made it this far,” he said. “It’s a huge moment. Our players proudly embrace their Judaism, and when they play with grit and character as they always do, that creates a tremendous Kiddush Hashem (sanctifying God’s name). How often do commentators spend significant time on a game’s broadcasts talking about the importance to the teams to get back home before Shabbat? It’s a special thing to see and hear.”

The first week of April, the team is going to begin offseason training and workouts and then dedicate the spring and summer to improving. “Although we will be placed at least one division higher than we were last year, our team will remain hungry to fight for another opportunity at another special postseason run,” said Coleman.

Block said that he hopes Shalhevet students will be inspired by the team’s wins, and it’ll motivate them to accomplish their goals.

“As long they want it, care deeply about it and put in the effort, the ceiling is much, much higher than they might have thought. And we can live Torah [and] Jewish values even beyond the walls of our own school or classroom. We do it every time we step onto the court and show how successful we can be, and with integrity and character throughout.”

That certainly rings true for Tizabi, whose Judaism guides her on the court.

“I take pride in the Jewish values that have been instilled in me and I feel that we need to demonstrate these values both as players and fans, especially when things don’t go as we would like,” she said. “Whether it is showing referees the respect they deserve, helping up opposing players when they fall or always shaking hands with the other team, our team acts with dignity as we represent both Shalhevet and the larger Jewish community. I am proud of the way our team has conducted themselves. We wear our jerseys with a red Magen David with pride.”