Mahawhat?: A Rabbi By Any Other Name

Sara Hurwitz: Challenge of new name “is that it doesn’t have any meaning — yet.”

Sara Hurwitz: Challenge of new name “is that it doesn’t have any meaning — yet.”

by Elicia Brown
Special To The Jewish Week

‘What is it again?” A well-wisher knits her brow, puzzling over the new title. She smiles warmly, desperately wanting to extend proper congratulations to “Maharat” Sara Hurwitz.
Mahawhat?
Hurwitz, who is 32, has the unique distinction of being the first Orthodox woman to hold a leadership position in an Orthodox synagogue, master a rabbi’s curriculum of study and pass the tests required to be ordained. In essence, she is a rabbi. But she is a rabbi by another name. Maharat, a new acronym, stands for “manhiga,” “hilchatit,” “ruchanit,” “toranit,” — leader in Jewish religious law, spiritual matters and Torah.
The moniker doesn’t roll off everyone’s tongue. Sally Mendelsohn, who studied Talmud with Hurwitz most afternoons for the past four years, says, “I will

be calling her Rav Sarah because that’s so clear that’s who she is. If she’s got a brit at 8 in the morning, doing a funeral at 10 a.m. and a shiva minyan at 4 — that’s a rabbi.”
“It seems like a cop-out to me,” says another woman who has been involved with the Orthodox feminist movement and asked not to be named. “It seems almost as if Rabbi [Avi] Weiss was flirting with the idea of giving semicha [ordination] but couldn’t quite gather enough courage to do so.”
But Sara Hurwitz isn’t complaining — at least not publicly. “I like that it’s new,” she says of the acronym, carefully choosing her words. “It doesn’t come with any baggage. The challenge is that it doesn’t have any meaning — yet.”
As an egalitarian Jewish woman and a chronicler of the Orthodox feminist movement, I would have been thrilled if the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale’s Rabbi Weiss had ordained Hurwitz as a rabbi (as rumors initially suggested might happen). But meeting Hurwitz in her tiny office space at the Hebrew Institute, where a baby’s bouncy seat rests beneath shelves of Jewish texts, I think perhaps others might be missing the miracle of the moment.
After all, as Hurwitz says, she “functions in the same capacity as a rabbi.”
When Hurwitz was 17, before she began Barnard College, her parents insisted that she take a vocational exam to determine what course of study to pursue. When the exam directed her to the clergy, Hurwitz laughed heartily, and then turned her attention to occupational therapy. It would be more than three years before even the first congregational interns would be hired, giving women a junior role alongside the rabbinic staff in Orthodox synagogues.
As an Orthodox woman, Hurwitz cannot serve as a religious witness or lead a complete service, but when she’s officiating at a funeral or filling the role of pastor at a hospital — or even when she’s getting a haircut, she calls herself “rabbi.” It’s simpler that way. “If you’re calling the funeral director and he asks, ‘Well, who are you?’ If you say, ‘I’m the rabbi here,’ the tone totally changes.”
On the rainy afternoon we meet, she laughs gently and often, her South African childhood occasionally apparent in her elongated vowels. I imagine that Hurwitz’s youth, modesty and inquisitive, respectful manner make her less threatening to the more conservative members of her world. But in the anecdotes of her life, I also note a recurrent refrain of persistence.
As a young teenager, Hurwitz demanded that the rabbi of her Orthodox synagogue in Florida open up a learning program to girls. As an older teenager, Hurwitz lobbied the high school to hold the Friday night graduation at an earlier time so she could attend. During these past six years, while working first as a congregational intern, and later as a “religious mentor” at the Hebrew Institute, Hurwitz has dealt with men walking out, or turning around, or looking down when she speaks. She has shrugged it off. “It comes with the territory.”
Hurwitz communicates frequently with the four other Orthodox women who hold leadership positions at American synagogues. As a group, they have requested inclusion in the newly formed association for Modern Orthodox rabbis, the International Rabbinic Fellowship.
And?
“We’ve just been finally invited to participate, but not necessarily with full membership.”
That’s disappointing, I observe.
“It is,” she concurs, laughing gently. “I just keep putting one foot in front of the other. If I keep thinking about the barriers I don’t think I would be here.”

Elicia Brown’s column appears the second week of the month. E-mail: eliciabrown@hotmail.com.