By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer

Cantor Joyce Dumtschin

Every Rosh Hashanah and at a fair number of Bar and Bat Mitzvahs at Temple Beth Or, Cantor Joyce Dumtschin and her husband, Irwin, sing the Debbie Friedman arrangement of Shehecheyanu, the blessing thanking God for “keeping us alive, sustaining us, and enabling us to reach this season.”

“For me, that’s the spiritual moment of the service,” Joyce says, “because you can look at people, and I know what people have been through over the year. It’s like, yes, we’ve had our troubles, we’ve had our joys, we’ve had our sorrows, but look: we’re all here.”

When Joyce and Irwin sing Shehecheyanu at a concert in her honor on March 22, they’ll look back over two decades with the congregation where her journey to the cantorate began.

A Chicago native, Joyce moved to Dayton with Irwin in 1986.

“We were looking for a congregation and Irwin and I were both raised Conservative,” she says. They joined Beth Abraham, Dayton’s Conservative synagogue, as well as the new Reform synagogue, Temple Beth Or, in Washington Township.

“We were attracted to Beth Or because it had a lot of people our age and because it had a choir,” she recalls.

Shortly after she and Irwin joined the choir, she was asked to become the temple’s volunteer choir director.

“I’ve been the choir director since 1987, but then it became a paid position in the fall of ‘88. It kind of grew.”

Within a few years, she decided she wanted to become a cantor.

“Somewhere along the way, when I became choir director, I wanted to make intelligent decisions about what we were singing,” she says. “The more I know, the more I know how much I don’t know. That’s why I applied to the certification program.”

Joyce studied for the cantorate with Cantor Jerome Kopmar, cantor emeritus of Beth Abraham Synagogue. “He taught me more than I needed to learn for that test (Reform movement), musically. So while I was at it, I took the test for the Cantors Assembly (Conservative movement).”

Joyce was invested as a cantor in 1998.

Joining her on the bima for her 20th anniversary concert will be Kopmar, who has written a composition in her honor for the program. Other singers with special ties to her career will perform as well.

“The first time I sang at Beth Or without the choir,” she says, “I sang with Jerry Kotler in the spring of ‘87. We sang some Yiddish things and Tom Lehrer songs. The other connection is Jay Weiss, who was serving as cantorial soloist at Temple Israel at the time. He introduced me to the Guild of Temple Musicians, part of the URJ (Union of Reform Judaism). They have their annual conferences with the American Conference of Cantors, and so that’s how I found out about the certification program.”

Also on the program with Dumtschin, Kopmar, Kotler and Weiss will be Temple Israel Sh’liach Tzibbur (Prayer Leader) Alan Halpern, Beth Abraham Synagogue Cantor Andrea Raizen, and Marshall Weiss.

Twenty years on, Joyce continues to direct the choir, with 100-plus vocal and piano arrangements to her credit. Three years ago, she added a children’s choir that sings for family services and the High Holy Days. Another new addition, one of her favorites, is Groyser Tummel, the temple’s band.

“What I like about it is the ability to get people involved who are not necessarily out there in synagogue life,” she says.

Another favorite part of her job continues to be preparing students for their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. “They see something that was originally daunting to them and find out that they can do it.”

A Salute to Cantor Joyce Dumtschin, 20 Years at Temple Beth Or, Sunday, March 22, 7 p.m. Tickets $18-$36. 435-3400.