A song and a prayer

Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, president of Hebrew College, is also a baritone in a choral group. (Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff)

NEWTON - Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, the new president of Hebrew College, is also a baritone with the Zamir Chorale, so it was only fitting that at a recent concert he sang the part of a rabbi in a duet of the Yiddish folk song "Zog Zhe Rebeynu," in which a rabbi is asked about the Messiah.

Indeed, Lehmann's first taste of the pulpit came when he studied with a cantor and led services as a teenager in upstate New York and then served as a cantor in Paris at age 18. In his office a few days before the concert, Lehmann outlined his plans for the 87-year-old college he has led since July.

Lehmann's vision centers on a pluralistic view of the Jewish community. His predecessor, Rabbi David Gordis, launched a nondenominational rabbinical school and joint programming with the Andover Newton Theological School, whose grounds the college shares. Lehmann, 46, who was founding headmaster of Gann Academy, a pluralistic Jewish high school in Waltham, strives both to build on that legacy and strengthen the finances of a college that has laid off more than 30 staffers since 2007. "It's forcing us in a very serious way to think about our model," Lehmann said.

Lehmann dreams of bringing programs to the NewBridge retirement campus Hebrew SeniorLife is building in Dedham. "We have the opportunity to transform Jewish education for people in retirement," he said. He sees untapped energy in the young adults who have taken free trips to Israel through the Birthright program. "We want to be one of the major institutions thinking about how do we create high level educational opportunities for that cohort," he said. He seeks to integrate the arts into Jewish education and explore the role of Jewish ethics in people's professional lives.

"We're poised to have a much more significant impact than we have in the past because of the dynamics of the community," Lehmann said. "This is also a time when there's a great deal of searching for how people's identity, religious and cultural, intersects with other parts of their lives. I don't think it's obvious how their Jewishness fits in."

Lehmann still fields questions about his appearance in "Hineini," a 2005 film about the formation of a gay-straight alliance at Gann Academy. The inquiries lead to conversations about his new role.

"It fits into the vision of someone who's willing to be challenged by students, who's willing to think seriously about what pluralism in the Jewish community means, and someone who wants to engage in serious issues about what it means to be a Jewish community," he said. "What we're trying to do at Hebrew College is become a destination for those questions."