Who we are

Cantor Caro is thrilled to be part of the NVHC community. A native New Yorker, Cantor Susan Caro proudly serves as the immediate past president on the Executive Board of the American Conference of Cantors (ACC), her professional organization which supports its members in their sacred calling as clergy committed to Judaism and for Jewish music.

Prior to receiving her Masters in Sacred Music and Ordination from the School of Sacred Music at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 1993, she graduated with honors from New York University. After living in Israel, Cantor Caro served congregations in New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles, and Singapore, devoting much of her energy to sacred journeys and spiritual experiences through the prism of music, exploring the confluence of music and wholeness in the totality of life. Her roots in Jewish music are firmly planted from song leading for many years at the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) summer camps, with experience spanning years of work with youth and adults in a variety of teaching settings, choral opportunities, performances throughout the United States and Israel, and creative liturgical and spiritual work. Trained in Spiritual Direction, Cantor Caro is a current fellow of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, both as a participant in the first Cantorial cohort and having served on its faculty for the Lay Retreats.

Susan has also contributed her talents serving on the adjunct faculties in Los Angeles of both the Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion and the Academy for Jewish Religion. Cantor Caro strives for excellence and integrity in the work of Jewish clergy as demonstrated by her long track record of work and commitment to the ideals and future of the Reform Cantorate. As the immediate past president of the ACC, she continues her service on its Executive Board since 2001, having also served as a member of the Executive Board of the URJ, and a long-time member of its Joint Commission on Worship, Music and Religious Living, including as vice-chair. She has coordinated the breadth of the ACC’s involvement for numerous URJ National and Regional Biennial Conventions; through the years, she has chaired a variety of Task Forces for the ACC, has served on the faculty of the URJ’s Summer Adult Study Kallah, on the URJ’s Commission on Social Action, on the National Camp Commission, on the URJ-Pacific Southwest Council Executive Board, and is a past chair of the ACC-Pacific Southwest Region. Drawing upon great support and insight from colleagues, Cantor Caro was the editor of Divrei Shir, the curriculum developed by the ACC with the URJ for Adult Education in the area of Jewish music. She has contributed to numerous recordings of Jewish music, and is an accomplished flutist, having studied at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. When not singing, teaching or counseling, you will find Cantor Caro with a book, on a hike, enjoying nature, yoga, travel, cooking or enjoying good wine, and feeling blessed to share her life with her husband, John Lertzman and their adult children and their families, and their fabulous Australian Labradoodle, Molé.

Rabbi Rosalind A. Gold was ordained in 1978 from the New York Campus of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), where her major area of interest was Jewish liturgy. She received her Master of Arts degree in Hebrew Letters from HUC-JIR in 1975, and her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1972. In May of 2001 she earned her Doctor of Ministry degree from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC, and was awarded the doctor of Divinity degree from HUC-JIR in 2003. Upon her retirement in 2004, Rabbi Gold became the Rabbi Emerita of the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation, a congregation she had served for 23 years. Prior to this position, she was the Assistant Rabbi of Temple B’rith Kodesh in Rochester, NY. Rabbi Gold is active in her rabbinic organization, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR). She served for four years as the Chair of the CCAR Committee on Ethics and Appeals. She was the first woman rabbi to serve on the Placement Commission. She has also served in the CCAR’s B’rit Milah Board, the Committee on Rabbinic Salaries, and as Chair of the Task Force on Women in the Rabbinate. In 2006, Rabbi Gold was appointed to the Fairfax County Commission on Organ and Tissue Donation. She has also worked with JACS, a support group for recovering Jewish addicts and alcoholics and their families.She is a member of the Clinical Faculty of HUC-JIR, where she works as a mentor to rabbinic students. She recently was named the coordinator of the Brickner Fellows Program of Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center, where she is working with colleagues from different denominations on effective social action programming. Rabbi Gold, who comes from California, was born in 1949. She is married and the stepmother of two grown children. She enjoys traveling and reading. Since her retirement, she happily sings alto in Zemer Chai, the Washington area’s Jewish Community Chorus.