Rabbi Cantor Jessica Lynn Fox was ordained as a cantor from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music in 1998 and as a rabbi from the Academy of Jewish Religion in 2024. She holds undergraduate degrees in vocal performance and English with honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. For her master’s thesis, she completed the only English language comprehensive study of the first female Israeli composer, Verdina Shlonsky.
In 2024, she was awarded the Lada’at Hokhmah Award for Outstanding D’var Torah Informed by Science by Religion by the Academy of Jewish Religion in association with the Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stonybrook University. In addition, she was also awarded the Rabbi Hershel J. Matt Creative Liturgy Award by the Association of Rabbis and Cantors.
She served Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, New Jersey as cantor from 1998 until 2005. In 2005 she became the cantor at Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston, New Jersey where she serves today.
She has been active in the Reform cantorate on a regional and a national level. She was a member of the American Conference of Cantors Executive Board, is a former vice-president, was the editor of the ACC’s national publication, Koleinu, and helped to plan the New York City 2003 ACC Convention. A former member of the board of ARZA/World Union, she was asked to serve as a delegate to the World Zionist Congress meeting in Jerusalem in July 2002.
She has performed in synagogues in New York, New Jersey, Florida, California and Jerusalem. She also had the honor of singing Ben Steinberg’s Shalom Rav at the 2001 National UAHC Biennial in Boston during a tribute to the late Rabbi Alexander Schindler. She can be heard singing the music of Max Helfman and Ben Steinberg on Transcontinental Music’s CD “Kol Dodi: Jewish Wedding Music.” Her thoughts on Parashat Terumah can be found in “Living Torah: Selections from Seven Years of Torat Chayim.” (URJ Press, 2005).
Rabbi Cantor Fox lives in Glen Ridge, NJ, with her three daughters.