Sarah Moldover’s mom and brother regularly lead services at Congregation Beth Emeth. Her mom, dad and older brother serve as gabbaim for Saturday morning services, which the family dubs “The Moldover Show.”

So it’s only natural that Moldover is involved at the Herndon synagogue too.

The recent college graduate is back home for the summer, working as a camp counselor at Beth Emeth Early Childhood Center and as a young families intern at Agudas Achim Congregation.

She also helps lead Beth Emeth’s religious services on occasion, including the Pride Shabbat this June with her former bat mitzvah tutor, Gwen Sloan.

“She’s always encouraging me to get on the bimah and to lead services … so part of it is just having all those people around me that are doing these things, and it helps show me that it’s something that I can do as well,” Moldover said. “It’s something that I’m used to, and it’s something that is definitely important to me.”

For the past four years, Moldover attended The College of Wooster in northeastern Ohio. Small-town Midwestern living made her appreciate northern Virginia’s robust Jewish life.

“When I was at school, I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to embrace my Judaism,” Moldover said. “There was a Jewish student organization at the school and there was the local temple, but there wasn’t really a lot going on in terms of Jewish community.”

She began looking forward to summers, when she could reunite with the Beth Emeth community and familiar faces dating back to her childhood — Moldover is a 20-year member of the shul.

But it wasn’t always like this. The Sterling resident recalled attending Beth Emeth’s services at her mom’s encouragement: “She didn’t want us to feel like we were strangers in services.”

“When I was little, [my brother and I] would go and I didn’t necessarily always want to go,” Moldover said.

Her mom struck a deal that Moldover could bring a book and read during the Torah service, and the young bookworm was sold. Even within religious school, Moldover was one of the only kids who attended services.

Her mom asked her to start paying more attention as she neared bat mitzvah age.

“By the time I was a teenager, I still went to services occasionally, partially just because it was habit … and it was something that felt good,” Moldover reflected. “I liked seeing the people there. I was familiar enough with the service.”

The free lunch following services didn’t hurt either, she said with a laugh.

“It was my parents’ choice originally, but it was something that I kind of grew to love as I got older,” Moldover said.

These days, she can be found at Beth Emeth strumming her guitar and singing to a room full of 2- to 5-year-olds before leading a musical game. She’s worked at Beth Emeth ECC seasonally since the summer of 2022, returning for winter and spring breaks.

“I really love it there,” she said. “I love the kids. They’re really adorable and so funny. I like the kids and getting to know the families.”

Moldover also enjoys chatting with her coworkers: “I really love the people I work with and there’s a flexibility to [the job].”

“I’ll just bring in my guitar and even if we don’t have a music session scheduled, I’ll do music with the kids for 30 minutes,” Moldover said. “The teachers love it because I’m keeping the kids occupied, and I love it because I get to practice, and the kids love it because it’s music.”

She used to also lead a “Shabbat Sing” session with the kids on Fridays.

“I’ll also sing other Jewish songs,” Moldover said. “I’ll take requests from the kids, and sometimes they’ll ask for ‘Mi Chamocha’ or something like that. But a lot of times, I am just playing kids’ music or things that the kids want me to play.”

A fan favorite is “Puff the Magic Dragon,” a classic that Moldover grew up with.

Music is more than a hobby for her. Moldover graduated in May with a bachelor’s in music therapy and hopes to pursue that professionally.

In the meantime, the skills she’s picked up from Wooster — clinical musicianship, improvisation, sight-reading and general musicianship skills — have enhanced her musical programming at Beth Emeth.

“In between even the first and second summer that I worked at the camp, even [after] just that one year of college, I came back and I could tell that I had gained more skills in things like planning music sessions that had more to them than just me playing a song and kids listening, but had actual activities and sometimes goals in mind,” she said. “I had a much bigger repertoire of music that I could play for the kids.”

Her dream job is to be a music therapist, which Moldover said is likely going to be outside the Jewish community.

“But I also know that wherever I move, if I don’t stay in northern Virginia, I know that I’m going to try to find a local synagogue and a local Jewish community to still be involved with,” she said. “That might look like occasionally doing music sessions or helping lead services at the synagogue or teaching at religious school. Those are all things that I’m definitely open to doing that I did not necessarily think I would do as a kid.”

zbell@midatlanticmedia.com