Palm Beach Cantor Abbie Strauss turns music into community and healing
Abbie Strauss is the founder of the Institute of Jewish Rock in Palm Beach Gardens.
Abbie Strauss carries the warmth of Iowa in her roots, yet her journey has always been one of far-reaching horizons. The same holds true for her husband, Rabbi Feivel Strauss, a Florida boy by upbringing, who was living and studying in Israel when she met him one night in a club where she sang.
And now this: Abbie, soon to turn 44, the mother of three vibrant young children, has been named a member of the Grammy Recording Academy, a distinguished honor that gives her singing and songwriting both a national and international audience. She’s a newly featured artist on JLTV — Jewish Life Television — where her music and band are streamlined to a global audience. And she’s an international touring and recording artist.
It’s no small feat for the cantor and founder of the Institute of Jewish Rock in Palm Beach Gardens. Opened a decade ago when she lived in Memphis, the school encourages and teaches “inclusivity, creativity and healing through music,” with on site and online classes for students of any background or experience.
“We don’t believe in barriers to entry,” she said. “Whether you’re learning your first chord or you’ve been performing for years, you belong in this community.”
At its core, she believes, music transcends languages of words to become both a powerful healing force and a spiritual power — an intercontinental language — that can unite people of all backgrounds and countries. Abbie spends significant time in hospitals and healthcare facilities, bringing resilience and joy to those in pain or with memory loss as well.
She started early in life on a path that may have seemed as clear and obvious to her as the flight of an arrow from a well-strung bow.
But not to some others, including music teachers.
“My whole life has led to the creation of community through music,” she said.
“Growing up I was drawn to music, starting at Jewish summer camp. Music opened up an inner strength in me, and my gift was a voice and the freedom to express myself.”
Her parents encouraged her musical pursuits, and her uncle, a doctor, was a member of a Beatles-inspired band. She recalls jumping up and down on a bed and playing guitar, unrestrained at home. But her piano teacher, her saxophone teacher and a couple of others concluded she wasn’t cut out for a life in music and advised her to find something else in life.
“But I’m stubborn,” she said. “And now I’ve been in the profession for a long time.”
After graduating from high school in Cedar Rapids, she attended Indiana University for a Jewish studies program and music but decided to major in English and minor in music. Then she became an English teacher, first in St. Louis and later in Memphis, all the while continuing to work on her music.
Her mentor, Rick Recht, runs Jewish Rock Radio, an online station where she began as an emerging artist 15 years ago; she still has a podcast aired on the station. Recht was into and encouraged her own interests, not just in Jewish music, but in folk, pop, and rock, she says.
But that’s only a part of her remarkable journey.
She did a project with Recht that required her to travel to Israel. Her parents made a vacation of it, joining her for the journey.
“It was over Hanukkah. A war that broke out while I was there. I got the burning inside — I knew I had to move to Israel and support the country.”
To do that, she returned home, finished a master’s degree, quit her job and gave her cats to her parents, she recalls. As usual, they supported her in the move, although the cats may have been ambivalent.
In Israel, “I studied music and busked on the streets to make rent money — there’s an idea that when you want to become a professional, you put in 10,000 hours and just play, just be who you are.”
Abbie put that idea into action.
She was playing a variety of music, not just Jewish music, and she was drawn to a club with an open mic, where people often covered songs from the Beatles or U2 or a host of others, she says.
“One night, I met this tall, cute guy, and when he walked in, everyone knew him. He was a musician as well, and a rabbinical student. He became my biggest fan.”After graduating from high school in Cedar Rapids, she attended Indiana University for a Jewish studies program and music but decided to major in English and minor in music. Then she became an English teacher, first in St. Louis and later in Memphis, all the while continuing to work on her music.
Her mentor, Rick Recht, runs Jewish Rock Radio, an online station where she began as an emerging artist 15 years ago; she still has a podcast aired on the station. Recht was into and encouraged her own interests, not just in Jewish music, but in folk, pop, and rock, she says.
But that’s only a part of her remarkable journey.
She did a project with Recht that required her to travel to Israel. Her parents made a vacation of it, joining her for the journey.
“It was over Hanukkah. A war that broke out while I was there. I got the burning inside — I knew I had to move to Israel and support the country.”
To do that, she returned home, finished a master’s degree, quit her job and gave her cats to her parents, she recalls. As usual, they supported her in the move, although the cats may have been ambivalent.
In Israel, “I studied music and busked on the streets to make rent money — there’s an idea that when you want to become a professional, you put in 10,000 hours and just play, just be who you are.”
Abbie put that idea into action.
She was playing a variety of music, not just Jewish music, and she was drawn to a club with an open mic, where people often covered songs from the Beatles or U2 or a host of others, she says.
“One night, I met this tall, cute guy, and when he walked in, everyone knew him. He was a musician as well, and a rabbinical student. He became my biggest fan.”
Feivel, who grew up in Boca Raton, had deferred college and moved to Israel after high school, where he joined the army. He later earned all his degrees there and studied at the Hartman Institute in a flagship program that trained ordained rabbis in cross-denominational theologies.
He was, she says, “a pluralist. So. I met my match. I believe that every voice matters. The program he chose to do covers the spectrum,” — and he’s one of three in the United States with that Hartman Institute training.
They married, moved to the U.S. and Memphis, and eventually moved back to Florida, which was “a homecoming — I love Florida. This is like heaven on earth.”
Her parents made the move, too, becoming Floridians. And now hers and Feivel’s children are also musicians — Joseph, 13, Eden, 11, and Slijah, soon to be 7 — her son on drums, her middle child a guitarist, and her youngest a guitarist and singer, like her mother.
That’s not because she pushes them. She doesn’t. But they’re on all her albums.
And the people she sings to, and with, and for — they’re in her heart.
“When I sing, I can make them cry,” she said. “They cry and feel something, I don’t care what color skin, what nationality, what religion.”
Music, for her and for many, makes that possible.
“Part of me says, now is the time to show people, there is another way. We can still sing together. We can still pray together. We can focus on fear and hate, or we can do the exact same thing on the other side and focus on faith and hope and life.”
IN THE KNOW:
What: Cantor Abbie Strauss
Where: Institute of Jewish Rock, Palm Beach Gardens
Albums: Available on all major streaming platforms