“Return Again,” to Cantor Susan Wehle’s (z”l) Spirit, and Mine

It was the Fall of 2017; I sat with my guitar and offered a song in Williamsville, New York. I am in the sanctuary of what I knew as Temple Beth Am, a Reform synagogue, where I sang in the choir between 1979 and1982, leaving Buffalo for good after that, never to return. Now I sat in Congregation Shir Shalom, renamed in July 2012, when Temple Sinai, where Cantor Susan Wehle (z”l) had served, and Beth Am had merged. I was near the bimah and it was Erev Shabbat. I sang, “Return Again, return again, return to the land of your soul…” It seemed to me that people sat up a bit more and sang along. They were transformed. I wondered why, not quite understanding this was Cantor Susan Wehle’s trademark song.

            It was Ohalah 2008, my first time there, having entered the ALEPH rabbinic program the previous Fall. I had been told about Cantor Susan and was encouraged to introduce myself. But I was shy and while I spent formative years near Buffalo I didn’t want to impose, knowing Susan had friends to talk with. I spoke with her only briefly as we stood at the breakfast bar. I didn’t want to take up her time. Anyway, what connection did I have to Buffalo any longer?

            It was February 2009, Elat Chayyim, DLTI V gathering. Shabbat morning another classmate arrived and placed the New York Times on the table. I scan the cover and leave the room crying. The news my father had called me about the day before was there before me and Cantor Susan’s photo was on the front page, one of forty nine passengers of Colgan Air Flight 3407 who died when the plane crashed in Clarence, New York, approaching Buffalo. Rabbi Marcia had intended to inform the chevra after Shabbas. I barely knew Susan and was startled by my response.

            Now here I was in the sanctuary singing, a long hallway’s walk from where that photo of Susan was displayed, her smile gracing the room, she, wrapped in her tallit, on the wall above a grand piano, along with the other spiritual leaders of the combined communities. I had just come back to live in Buffalo following my husband’s death. I returned. Walking in the historic Forest Lawn Cemetery in July 2017 brought me unexpectedly to an obelisk to the victims of the plane crash. I found Susan’s name and placed a stone atop the memorial. A year later, a friend, who had waited that night for Susan’s return, and whose daughter had been trained for her Bat Mitzvah, and I walked along the Clarence Bike Path. We detoured into a neighborhood like any other and between two houses was a memorial. We walked the wing of a plane….and on the memorial, Susan Wehle’s name. We stood amidst the quiet, houses rising on either side.

            Susan’s spirit lives on in the hearts of her seemingly endless number of friends in this community and those who knew her. There are some who waited that night for her to return, there are children, now grown, who she prepared for Bar and Bat Mitzvah who became friends, the poet and guitarist who helped engineerher CD of healing songs, and others in the wider community who worked with her for programs, including remembrances of September 11. All recall Susan’s ability to comfort by her healing presence and her voice. Here in my hands, also, is the Ma’amid Sinai, “Gathering at SInai,” Shabbat Siddur, that Cantor Wehle helped compile. Within the covers is “Return Again,” along with many beloved Jewish Renewal songs. Susan’s spirit, her neshama lives.

            Today, when Cantor Arlene Frank and Rabbi Alex Lazarus-Klein are away I am invited to fill in and with my own neshama and voice, we all sing and remember Cantor Susan Wehle, “Return again, return again to the land of my soul….”

            May Cantor Susan Wehle’s spirit always soar here and her memory be forever a blessing.

Notes:

Ma’amid Sinai, p. 173.

Return Again by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and Rafael Simkha Kahn.

Cantor Susan Wehle was in the first DLTI cohort and the first Jewish Renewal Cantor in 2006.