“Let It Rip”: Lucy Greenbaum on Leaving St. Louis, Living in Jerusalem, and Refusing to Fit the Mold

Lucy Greenbaum is a study in worlds colliding. A lifelong musician who grew up in a Phoenix household filled with music - her father was a jazz pianist - she moved to St. Louis for college and then, after graduation, took a job with a large congregation in the area. For seven years, she built a professional life in St. Louis. She loved it, but a small voice she'd been ignoring kept nudging her toward something more. Combine the Jewish communal life she adored with the music she loved: become a cantor.

She remembers the conversation with her fiancé. Leaving St. Louis would be hard, but he gave her the push she needed, telling her, in a nod to The Bear, to "let it rip."

So she did. Today, Greenbaum is all in - a second-year cantorial student at Hebrew Union College, a student cantor in Pittsburgh, and looking forward to the Union for Reform Judaism's Biennial in December, where she will perform with Rabbi Noah Diamondstein.

Learning to Lead

Greenbaum arrived in Jerusalem for her Year-In-Israel knowing no one. Her class was delayed a month due to the war, which added to the feeling of disconnect, but that feeling didn't last long.

She arrived with complicated feelings and a lot of questions, and she didn't leave with concrete answers. She has made peace with that. "Nothing is as concrete or as simple as we want it to be," she says, and she learned to stay flexible, change the plan, and go with the flow.

Watching Rabbi Reuven Greenvald, the Director of the Year-In-Israel Program, lead the Jerusalem campus through one crisis after another taught her what "humble, gracious leadership" looks like. In one conversation he told her that we won't know until the future whether today's choices were the right ones. "That stuck with me," she says.

A Community That Challenges

When Greenbaum was first admitted and the cohort group chat began to fill up, she was eager to meet her future classmates. She was pleasantly surprised by the diversity of the group - the cohort spans Jewish backgrounds, careers, ages, and regions of the country. "I think a diverse community is stronger than a homogeneous one," she says. "I love sitting in class and hearing perspectives completely different from mine." One of her closest friends is fresh out of college while she is seven years out. She finds that friend's perspective fresher and clearer than her own, which she feels can be a little jaded, and it makes her rethink her assumptions.

Not Fitting the Box

Greenbaum had only one hesitation about coming to Hebrew Union College: she kept hearing the word "mold," the idea that the institution wanted to shape students into a particular kind of rabbi or cantor. "I like who I am. I like who I'm becoming," she says. "I don't want to have to fit into your box."

Her view has changed. She now sees her time here as adding tools to her toolbox. "We are being shaped into clergy, but you don't have to lose yourself," she says.

Asked what she'd tell herself the day before arriving, she says she'd warn herself that this is perhaps the hardest thing she's ever done, and that she should give herself grace. Above all, she'd tell herself not to close herself off, because that's not what she's here to do.

On Stage and in the Audience

Greenbaum finds joy in music off the bimah, too. A musical theater fan, she's glad to be in New York, where she recently saw Wicked on Broadway for the first time after seeing it on tour and watching the movie "a million times." Her favorite piece is "For Good," and she loves "that duet between two strong women on stage."

In December, at the Biennial, she'll be the one on stage. Diamondstein is a longtime friend; she sang on one of his albums, and they've written together. She's looking forward to getting to "put a set list together that has pieces of him, pieces of me, and where we overlap."