Growing up as an Orthodox Jewish woman, Hadas Fruchter thought the only way to help lead her community was to marry a rabbi. Today she is the ordained “rabbanit” of a pioneering Philadelphia congregation.
The ‘rabbanit’ of a Philadelphia congregation believes the pandemic has fostered an ‘appetite for community’Hadas Fruchter never aspired to be a rabbi when she was growing up. She couldn’t: The job didn’t yet exist for Modern Orthodox women. Eager to combine her knack for “making people feel loved and seen” with her devotion to Judaism, she figured she would run a Jewish nonprofit and try to marry a rabbi.
Her life took a turn in 2011 when she met Rabba Sara Hurwitz, the first Orthodox Jewish woman in America to be publicly ordained. Rabba Hurwitz talked about Yeshivat Maharat in the Bronx, N.Y., the only U.S. seminary that ordains women as Orthodox clergy, which she co-founded in 2009. Rabbanit Fruchter says she felt a kind of tingling: “I realized this was exactly what I was supposed to do.”