Cantor Penny Kessler was called to the pulpit of the United Jewish Center in 1995. Cantor Kessler is the director of the United Jewish Center Adult Choir as well as the advisor to the UJC’s high school (SWYC, an affiliate of NFTY) and middle-school (Henry Dick Club) youth groups.
Cantor Kessler has participated in a wide variety of community events, such as ARC’s Danbury Interfaith Thanksgiving service (in 2003, she was the first Cantor to deliver the annual Thanksgiving sermon) and the “Breakfast for Care” of the Bethel Visiting Nurse Association. As a member and current chairperson of the Council of Jewish Professionals of the Danbury Jewish Federation, she has coordinated and participated in such community-wide Jewish events as the annual S'lichot and Yom ha-Shoa services and Israel Bond fundraising events. She is a frequent contributor to the Danbury News-Times “Forum on Faith” and was co-coordinator for the Danbury area women’s interfaith dialog experience.
Cantor Kessler has performed in concerts, presented divrei Torah and workshops, and participated in worship services at the National and Regional Biennials of the URJ and conventions of the American Conference of Cantors (ACC). She has served on the faculties of URJ’s Eisner Camp and NFTY-NE Institutes. In 2007, Cantor Kessler was the first Cantor to be invited to participate in the URJ’s Eilu v'Eilu project, discussing the challenge of difficult musical texts such as the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. "For Our Own Good," Cantor Kessler’s devar Torah on Parashat Eikev was included in the URJ publication, Living Torah: Selections from 7 Years of Torat Chayim.
A member of the Executive Board of the ACC, Cantor Kessler is the Chairperson of ACC’s Communications Committee (she is the editor of the ACC publication “Koleinu”), and a member of the ACC’s Committee on Ethics and Appeals and Social Action and Justice Committee. As former Chairperson of the ACC’s Social Action Committee, Cantor Kessler served as ACC representative to the Executive Committee of the URJ’s Commission on Social Action. Cantor Kessler is also co-Chairperson of the Communications Committee of the HUC-JIR School of Sacred Music Alumni Association.
Cantor Kessler received her Masters Degree in Sacred Music and Investiture as Cantor from the School of Sacred Music of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.. Cantor Kessler makes her home with her husband, Stanley, and their children Alaina, Warren and Harrison.
Phone: 203-748-3355