For nearly four decades, Duke University professor Eric Meyers has been known best as an archaeologist and teacher. But his passion is singing, and on the Jewish High Holiday he serves in the rarefied role of a cantor.

His commanding lyric baritone will fill the sanctuary tonight to mark the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, considered the holiest day of the Jewish year.

For Meyers, 67, the work of the cantor, or musical prayer leader, is not so much a sideline as a lifelong love. From the time he was 8, growing up in Norwich, Conn., Meyers has been singing -- first in his childhood synagogue's choir, and later in pulpits in Massachusetts and New York, and in concert halls across the Triangle. Through singing, he said, he has been able to connect with a spiritual side -- one his academic work can't fully touch.

"Music keeps one human," Meyers said. "It's a totally different experience in the brain and heart. It takes you to a different place."

Tonight and during services Saturday, he will chant some of the most celebrated hymns of the Jewish tradition, including the Kol Nidre, the solemn prayer introducing Yom Kippur. For the past 37 years, Meyers' venue has been Beth El Synagogue in Durham, a Conservative Jewish congregation where he is a member.

Except in the biggest synagogues, a full-time cantor is increasingly rare. But most Jewish congregations still employ a cantor on the High Holidays, when Jews search their souls and commit to reforming their ways and returning to God. In Jewish tradition, the cantor is not a soloist so much as a guide. He -- or increasingly she -- is the community's voice before God, a kind supplicant in chief.

It's a role that stretches back to ancient times. Some think the cantor was introduced when people's knowledge of Hebrew declined. Others say it was Jews' desire to enhance the beauty of the liturgy through music. Whatever the case, the cantor -- or hazzan, in Hebrew -- is there to give congregants the musical cues they need to understand the emotional highs and lows of the liturgy.

During the High Holidays, most of the tunes are sung in a minor key. In fact, the High Holidays are the only time of the year when the Shema, the central Jewish prayer, is sung in a minor key. That lends most of the High Holiday music the quality of a lament.

"The poignancy of some of the melodies suggests suffering and persecution and the troubling but proud place of Jews in history," Meyers said. "It nurtures sadness."

Judaism isn't the only religion to chant its prayers. In Islam, chanting the Quran is an age-old tradition. And while much of the Christian world prizes group singing in choirs, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions still have a role for a solo singer who chants the liturgy.

George Gopen, a professor of the practice of rhetoric at Duke, said Meyers throws himself into his cantorial work with his whole heart.

"He doesn't just perform it," Gopen said. "He lives it. He's got all the inflections and the cultural and religious understanding of being Jewish."

Transformed by song

Meyers, who grew up with musical parents and grandparents, considered becoming a full-time cantor or professional opera singer. But his father, a Holocaust refugee, dissuaded him, fearing the life of a singer would be difficult.

Instead, the Harvard-educated Meyers settled on an academic career in Bible, Jewish history and archeology. During his years at Duke, he has led more than two dozen summer excavations in Israel, most alongside his wife, Carol Meyers, also a Duke professor and an expert on women in the biblical world.

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