Concert fulfills her destiny

The woman behind the Voices of Hope concert on Friday night, cantor Estherleon Schwartz, says she was destined to help children.

“I feel a tremendous amount of joy and peace inside to know I am fulfilling my father’s prophecy to serve and assist others,” says Schwartz, who left her family business (the chain of House of Cashmere stores) in 1994 to pursue cantorial singing and spiritual leadership full-time.

That prophecy is rooted in her family history, which she recounts thusly: Born in France in 1941, she and her Jewish parents were saved from the Nazis for three years by nuns. In 1944 her father hurled her over a barbed wire fence into the arms of Swiss soldiers and proclaimed: “God save my daughter and she will serve you forever.”

She has gone on to become involved in storefront reading rooms, record an album of her music and give liturgical music and poetry presentations at venues around Los Angeles.

Schwartz first met the International Children’s Choir of Long Beach at the Hacienda Heights Buddhist Temple H’si Lai in January, when they all performed at the Prayer for World Peace ceremony.

“When I met the children at the Buddhist temple I thought it was all predestined, because from then on things started to happen,” she says. “The children came to me and I came to them. It’s my first time to do a concert with children.... Just around the corner your dream can come true if it’s for good things.”