Yeshivat Maharat, a four-year program training Orthodox women as spiritual leaders, will graduate its first class in June, a milestone bound to intensify the debate over women’s roles in Modern and centrist Orthodoxy. Sara Hurwitz, 36, a protegé of Rabbi Avi Weiss, is the school’s dean. Avi Weiss, 69, is the the maverick rabbi behind the Open Orthodoxy movement. In June his Yeshivat Maharat will graduate its first class of Orthodox women trained, essentially, as rabbis, but called “maharats” to signify the distinction (and perhaps to placate the critics who believe women cannot be Orthodox rabbis).
This year marks his 40th as the spiritual leader of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, the Bronx, N.Y., synagogue known for its activism. He has mentored more than two dozen rabbis who have assisted him on the bimah, and through his rabbinic seminary, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Weiss has trained more than 80 rabbinic leaders committed to a more pluralistic, progressive brand of Orthodoxy. Weiss will step down as president of YCT later this year—a move, he said, that will prove that the movement he fathered transcends his leadership. (2012: No. 11)