Rabbi Anthony Fratello

Rabbi Anthony Fratello was born in 1972 in Long Beach California. He is third child of Richard and Roberta Fratello, long time residents of Long Beach, California. In his childhood, he was a member of Temple Beth David, a Reform congregation in Westminster, CA. While a student at Temple Beth David, he was religiously and intellectually inspired by Rabbi Henri Front (z’’l). Rabbi Fratello graduated from Pomona College in Claremont, CA in 1994, with a BA Degree in History. His undergraduate thesis was on the Inquisition of Crypto—Jews in Colonial Mexico. In the summer of 1994, Anthony began his studies toward the Rabbinate at the Jerusalem Campus of the Hebrew Union College. He returned to the United States and continued his studies at the Cincinnati campus in 1995. While in seminary, Rabbi Anthony served congregations in Mississippi, Indiana, and Illinois. In serving those pulpits, he had the great honor of teaching and praying with congregants from all age groups and walks of life. He earned his MAHL Degree from the Hebrew Union College in 1998, and was Ordained as a Rabbi in June 1999. His rabbinic thesis was on The Maharal, and his commentary on Pirkei Avot.

Rabbi Fratello is married to his Hebrew Union College Classmate, Rabbi Joanna Tract, a Chaplain with Hospice of Palm Beach County. The couple have one child, Samson Malcolm, born in May 2003 and live in Lake Worth, FL.

Cantor Karen Braunstein

Cantor Karen Braunstein is the granddaughter of a cantor and has always had a great love of music, Judaism and Yiddishkeit. She grew up in Baldwin, Long Island and went on to study classical voice at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she received a Bachelor of Music degree in 1981. It was there that she became very involved in Klezmer and cantorial music, and began studying, researching and performing Yiddish and Klezmer music and started the band “Shirim.” In 1984, Karen moved to New York to study at the Hebrew Union College-School of Sacred Music. While in New York, she performed Yiddish and Cantorial music extensively, and was invested in 1988, receiving her Master of Sacred Music degree. The summer of her investiture, she toured Israel with ten other cantors, singing at kibbutzim throughout the State.

She has served various pulpits as cantor and guest-cantor in New York, Pennsylvania, Florida and Texas. She moved to Wellington from the Philadelphia area in 1997 and is in her 7th year at Temple Shaarei Shalom.  She is the proud mother of Alex and Emily.

(Updated: 10/23/07 tlh)