Rabba Sara Hurwitz

Rabba Sara Hurwitz

Rabba Sara Hurwitz is the Co-Founder and President of Maharat and is a member of the Rabbinic staff at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale.

She graduated from Barnard College at Columbia University then completed Drisha’s Scholars Circle Program.  After an additional five years of study under the auspices of Rabbi Avi Weiss, in 2009 was ordained by Rabbi Weiss and Rabbi Daniel Sperber, becoming the first Orthodox woman to be publicly ordained.  Shortly thereafter, she helped found Yeshivat Maharat, a rabbinical school that trains and ordains women across the world to serve as spiritual leaders.

Rabba Hurwitz helped create the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance’s (JOFA) Gender and Orthodoxy Curriculum Project.  In 2013 she was awarded the Hadassah Foundation Bernice S. Tannenbaum prize and in 2014 was awarded the Myrtle Wreath from the Southern New Jersey Region of Hadassah.  In 2016 she was the Trailblazer Award Recipient at UJA Federation of New York and in 2017 Rabba Hurwitz was chosen to be a member of the inaugural class of Wexner Foundation Field Fellows.  Rabba Hurwitz has lectured at many venues including the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), Drisha, the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School, Jewish Community Centers, Lights in Action, Coalition for Advancement in Jewish Education (CAJE), the National Jewish Center for Leadership and Learning (CLAL), communities across the country. Rabba Hurwitz was named one of the Forward50 most influential Jewish leaders and Newsweek’s 50 most influential rabbis.  

She and her husband, Josh Abraham, are parents to Yonah, Zacharya, Davidi and Natan.