Maharat

Yeshivat Maharat is a Jewish educational institution in The Bronx, New York, which was the first Orthodox yeshiva in North America to ordain women. The word Maharat (מהר״ת) is a Hebrew acronym for phrase manhiga hilkhatit rukhanit Toranit (מנהיגה הלכתית רוחנית תורנית), denoting a female "leader of Jewish law spirituality and Torah". Semikha is awarded to graduates after a 3- or 4-year-long program composed of intensive studies of Jewish law, Talmud, Torah, Jewish thought, leadership training, and pastoral counseling. The ordination functions as a credentialed pathway for women in the Jewish community to serve as clergy members. In 2009, Rabbi Avi Weiss and Rabbi Daniel Sperber ordained Rabba Sara Hurwitz. She was the first woman to receive Orthodox semikha. That same year, Hurwitz and Weiss founded Yeshivat Maharat as an Orthodox Rabbinical School for women in New York, with Hurwitz as President. Four years later, the first three gradates received ordination and went on to take Orthodox leadership positions in Montreal and Washington, D.C. By 2023, 64 women had graduated from Yeshivat Maharat, and gone on to serve in clergy roles in Orthodox synagogues, schools, hospitals, universities, and Jewish communal institutions. In 2015, Lila Kagedan became the organization's first graduate to adopt the title Rabbi (רבי). Other graduates of Maharat have adopted titles such as Maharat, Rabba (רבה, a neologism), and Rabbanit (רבנית, traditionally denoting a rabbi's wife). In 2015, the Rabbinical Council of America passed a resolution stating that "RCA members with positions in Orthodox institutions may not ordain women into the Orthodox rabbinate, regardless of the title used; or hire or ratify the hiring of a woman into a rabbinic position at an Orthodox institution; or allow a title implying rabbinic ordination to be used by a teacher of Limudei Kodesh in an Orthodox institution.