Cantor Ben Ellerin is the Senior Cantor of Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, the oldest and largest Reform congregation in Maryland, where he has led the community in prayer since 2018. His bimah is diverse and highly musical, with High Holy Day services accompanied by organ, piano, and both a professional band and choir, monthly musical meditation services featuring melody and poetry, and a year-round rotation of congregational choirs and music groups.
His music travels well beyond the walls of Baltimore Hebrew Congregation. His setting of Ahavah Rabbah has been performed by the URJ Biennial Choir at the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial, taught in consecutive years at the Hava Nashira songleading workshop, and has been sung in congregations and camps across North America, Europe, and Israel. His songs appear in Transcontinental Music’s landmark Shabbat Anthology and Shireinu Volume II songbooks; he serves on Transcontinental’s review committee and recently edited its new Kol B’seder for Choir anthology, alongside a large catalog of self-published works. In 2026, his Adon Olam set to Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” written at the request of a congregant for her Bat Mitzvah, was featured by Kveller, which called the performance “pretty much flawless,” adding, “I just can't stop kvelling about it.”
Cantor Ellerin’s path to the cantorate ran through the concert hall. He earned degrees in Vocal Performance and Choral Conducting at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, where he founded and directed Hooshir, the university’s first Jewish a cappella group, and was ordained in 2015 by Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, which also awarded him a Master of Sacred Music.
Before Baltimore, he served as cantor and music director of Temple Israel of Northern Westchester, sang from the pulpits of Park Avenue Synagogue and Congregation Rodeph Sholom in Manhattan, and served congregations Darchei Noam and Tzur Hadassah in Israel, a path that has carried his voice from Jerusalem to the White House. As a conductor he recorded four albums produced by Park Avenue Synagogue documenting its historic and contemporary commissions of Jewish music, including several of his own works. He remains an active concert artist, a frequent soloist with Bach in Baltimore and in chamber programs with AmiciMusic, with repertoire spanning classical, Israeli, Yiddish, American folk, and contemporary music alongside his own compositions.
In Baltimore, his voice has become part of the city’s Jewish life beyond the synagogue’s walls, from the annual Rosh Hashanah Under the Stars service to gatherings of solidarity and remembrance. Whether teaching trope to b’nai mitzvah students, leading adult learners, or setting a beloved prayer to new music, he treats every encounter as an opportunity to share the depth and joy of Jewish music.