Welcome

Warm Greetings

As Yeshivat Maharat enters its 18th year, I want to reflect on its beginnings. When Rav Avi Weiss and I founded Maharat, the landscape of serious Torah learning looked very different. Important, foundational institutions existed but few were concerned with creating fertile ground for women to serve our community as rabbinic leaders and scholars. No institution like Maharat, Torah learned for the sake of leading communities, yet existed. It felt as though we were one tree standing in a barren field.

A single tree used to stand right outside of Maharat. Each spring, it would burst into blossom, and one year, a family tacked a note to its trunk reminding passersby to recite Birkat Ha’Ilanot. We say this brakha on the first blossoming fruit tree we see, praising God she-lo chisar be-olamo klum, who has left nothing lacking in the world. We say it over a single tree, not an entire orchard, and before a single fruit has appeared. Yet, we declare the world complete. Inherent in that first blossom is the recognition that beauty begets beauty, that one tree, tended well, gives root to many more.

That brakha stands in contrast to the one we say after eating, borei nefashot rabbot v’chesronan, who creates many living beings along with their needs. Perhaps God created us with chesronan, with what is lacking, precisely so that we would not be self-sufficient. The world is built on the assumption that when something is missing, someone will notice and rise to meet the need.

Maharat was born of noticing what was missing. Over the past 17 years, as our graduates received semikha, with titles and credentials that gave them the kavod, respect, they deserved, the field around us also flourished. Other institutions followed, and women increasingly came to be seen and treated as authorities, scholars, and leaders. Today, 107 Maharat graduates serve klal yisrael in over 50 communities around the world, on the bimah, in the classroom, in hospitals and chaplaincies, and at the helm of religious institutions. Our learning now reaches from bnei mitzvah through semikha and beyond, and women can now sit for the rabbinate exams in Israel. The proliferation of programs centered on women’s learning and leadership is a testament to the success of Maharat’s mission and to the generous partners who made it possible.

To our students, alumnae, faculty, and supporters: you did not only bless one tree. You nourished and watered an entire field so that it could blossom. Each year, as a new class of graduates plants its own roots, I hope your hearts are filled with pride.

The field of Orthodox women’s Torah leadership is truly blossoming.

Baruch atah Hashem… she-lo chisar be-olamo klum.

With warmest regards,

Rabba Sara Hurwitz