Levite 2014-2015
Cantor Sarah Grabiner discovered her love of Jewish music and prayer growing up in the British Reform movement, from synagogue to summer camp. Alongside taking on formative leadership roles in her youth movement, RSY-Netzer, she discovered her creative spirit at Oxford University, where she founded the egalitarian student minyan “Oxford Egal”. Sarah was ordained as a cantor at the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion’s Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music in New York in 2019. She served as cantor of Radlett Reform Synagogue near London before moving to Jerusalem to teach rabbinical and cantorial students. As Associate Director of HUC’s Year in Israel Programme until 2025, she developed innovative programming in the art and craft of t’filah leadership and delved into the holy work of clergy formation. Her own approach to prayer leadership was profoundly shaped by her time singing, playing, learning, and praying with Nava Tehila. Sarah carries with her throughout her work the spaciousness of breath, a deep connection to text and melody, and the power of repetition to take the moment deeper and deeper—all this, and so much more, learnt from her time as a Levite.
Sarah is now based in London, where she works as a cantor at Alyth Synagogue and Finchley Reform Synagogue and teaches liturgy to rabbinical students at Leo Baeck College.
Alongside her cantorial work, Sarah holds degrees in Hebrew from Oxford University, Sacred Music from HUC, and Linguistics from University College London (UCL). She is currently writing her PhD thesis at UCL on “Prayer Book Jewish English,” the language of translation in Hebrew-English siddurim. She is passionate about exploring the relationship between language and meaning in prayer, and about studying contemporary Jewish worship, ritual, and liturgy.
:One thing I learned from Nava Tehila
To listen. To leave time. The value of flow. How to pray through the breath of my flute just as much as through the breath of my voice.
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