Cantor Sarah Grabiner (DFSSM ’19) has been appointed Coordinator of Cantorial Studies and Worship for the Year-In-Israel Program. With the YII centered around inner growth and a dynamic and inclusive beit-midrash to cultivate students’ creative thinking about Jewish tradition and their personal religious development and practice, Cantor Grabiner will help ensure that future clergy and educators see their own spiritual development as inspiration for their eventual interaction with Jewish-seekers of all kinds.
“With her return to the Jerusalem Campus in this new leadership role, Cantor Grabiner will share her love for the Hebrew language, cantorial studies, liturgy, prayer, text, and Israeli music to help create a spiritually nourishing, musically vibrant experience for our first-year students,” stated Rabbi Reuven Greenvald.
Ordained by HUC-JIR’s Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music in 2019, Cantor Grabiner comes to the YII program most immediately from serving as cantor at Radlett Reform Synagogue in the UK, and studying for a masters in Theoretical Linguistics at University College London. Ordained by HUC-JIR’s Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music in 2019, Cantor Grabiner comes to the YII program most immediately from serving us cantor at the Radlett Reform Synagogue in the UK, the second Reform cantor to serve in that country. In addition to her distinguished cantorial and Hebrew studies at Oxford University and HUC-JIR, Cantor Grabiner brings a wealth of Israel and informal education experience from her lifetime involvement as member, staff, and leader in the British Reform Movement, RSY-Netzer.
She volunteered with Eritrean refugees in Tel Aviv during her gap year studying in Jerusalem. She served student pulpits at Temple Avodat Shalom in River Edge, NJ and at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, NY, as well as an internship at the Women’s Prison Association during her cantorial studies at HUC-JIR.