Yes. Women serve as cantors in congregations across North America and around the world, and JSLI trains and ordains women and men as cantors.
A short history
For centuries, leading the congregation in prayer was reserved for men. Jewish women still sang and taught liturgical music, as choir leaders, music teachers and soloists, but they weren’t recognized as cantors. After Sally Priesand became the first woman ordained as a rabbi by a U.S. seminary in 1972, the Reform movement opened its cantorial school to women, and in 1975 Barbara Ostfeld became the first woman invested as a cantor. The Conservative movement began investing women as cantors in the late 1980s.
Women cantors today
Today women cantors lead services, chant Torah, train b’nai mitzvah students, direct choirs, compose and arrange liturgical music, and serve as full clergy. In many liberal congregations, women now make up a large share of the cantorate. Orthodox communities generally do not have women lead mixed congregations in prayer.
At JSLI
Our Cantorial School teaches four musical modules (High Holidays, Shabbat, Weekdays and Festivals) plus lifecycle and pastoral care, and it’s open to women and men. See the Cantorial School page and Can a Woman Become a Rabbi?