Rabbis of LA: Rabbi Sherre Hirsch – The Power of Jewish Wisdom

When she was in eighth grade, Rabbi Sherre Hirsch announced to her family that she was going to be a rabbi. 

“Everybody laughed,” she said. “My father said that wasn’t a good job for a nice Jewish girl, and my mother asked who would marry me.”

But it turns out that being a rabbi was in her blood. Her grandfather went to rabbinical school, her uncle was a rabbi and her cousins were all ordained. 

Still, she didn’t pursue the rabbinate right away. After a stint at Smith College, where she majored in American Culture, she transferred to Northwestern and met an Orthodox rabbi at Hillel who would change everything for her.

“In passing, he told me he thought I’d be a great rabbi,” she said. “I thought about it and I couldn’t let it go.”

In 1998, she became ordained through the Jewish Theological Seminary and attended American Jewish University (AJU). But before she landed in her current position as chief innovation officer at AJU, she made history as the first female rabbi of Sinai Temple.

“The first year there, I was a deer in headlights, and I think the congregation was as well,” she said. “They were struggling to find their leadership and they took a risk having a female rabbi. It was about engendering trust to discover we were really on a mission to bring Judaism and Jewish wisdom to the forefront and elevate Sinai in the community.”

Hirsch stayed there for eight years, and during that time, she’d gone through a number of life changes: She got married and had three kids, her father died and her mother became sick. 

“You don’t usually leave a job when you love it, but I was no longer able to do it because of my life,” she said. 

After this, she saw an opportunity to spread Jewish teachings by accepting a small request to be on a segment for the Hallmark Channel’s “New Morning.” That led to appearances on PBS and the Today Show, and eventually a book deal with Random House. She wrote “We Plan, God Laughs: What to Do When Life Hits You Over the Head” and “Thresholds: How to Thrive Through Life’s Transitions to Live Fearlessly and Regret-Free.” She also started running Jewish-themed retreats for women of different backgrounds. 

“I taught women all over Los Angeles Torah,” she said. “I could see the power of Torah to transform and elevate humans, regardless of their religion.”

One of her children struggled with autism, so Hirsch began looking into mental health as well. When she worked as Hillel International’s senior rabbinic scholar, she developed Hillelwell, which offered preventative mental health services on college campuses. She said she was “taking Jewish wisdom and enabling people to see how it could be transformative.”

In her role at AJU, Hirsch and her team created B’Yachad Together: Spirited by American Jewish University, at the start of the pandemic.   It offers what they call “immersive experiential digital learning,” combining adult education and programs that draw on AJU’s faculty and diverse and inclusive community to advance ideas, dialogue and debate. Starting December 1, that program will be called Maven, which means, “to understand” in Hebrew. 

“Not only do we bring Jewish wisdom to the world, but we also provide communities that are understaffed or don’t have experience in this new digital age with the ability to give enhanced adult education,” she said. “We have a lot in the works to reimagine what is the Jewish value proposition in the future, and how institutions can understand that and be equipped to serve Jewish communities and the greater world.”

“I want people to feel really transformed, empowered and informed by their Judaism.
I want to be an agent for that change.”

No matter what she is working on, Hirsch keeps one Jewish teaching at the forefront of her mind: “We work in partnership with God, and our job is not to ever take that lightly,” she said. “I have a very strong mission, and I feel urgency in the world to empower individuals, communities and institutions. I look forward to a day when there are no rabbis needed anymore. I want people to feel really transformed, empowered and informed by their Judaism. I want to be an agent for that change.”

Fast Takes With Sherre Hirsch

Jewish Journal: What do you and your family do for fun together?

Sherre Hirsch: We volunteer for Operation Provider. 

JJ: What’s your favorite place to travel to?

SH: Costa Rica. I love to surf.

JJ: Is there one Jewish food you really love?

SH: I love my grandmother’s kreplachs – not the taste of them, but the memory of them and her love from them. 

JJ: What’s your Shabbat ritual?

SH: We eat Shabbat dinner, and afterwards we plop down on the sofa and everyone does their own thing. What I love about Shabbat afternoon is everybody knows we’re home, so people stop by left and right. 

JJ: What’s your favorite yoga position?

SH: Triangle pose. It reminds me of how much the world is constantly in change and how my job is not to fight it, but to embrace it.