BY RABBI JACK RIEMER | SEP 11, 2019
Every kid who goes to Hebrew school learns the story of the man who came to Shammai and then to Hillel and asked the scholars there to teach him the whole Torah in the time he could stand on one foot. Sarah Hurwitz’s “Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life — in Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There)” (Spiegel & Grau) is the book these two sages might have given him to read, if he came to them today.
Like many kids, Hurwitz had only a token Jewish education as a child. Not much stayed with her, and by the time she went through college and got a job as a speechwriter for former first lady Michelle Obama in the White House, whatever she knew about Judaism was only a dim memory. Then — and who can say why things like this happen — she took an interest in Judaism, making the rounds of rabbis and teachers in the Washington, D.C., area. Hurwitz found out (much to her own surprise) that the Judaism she had sloughed off in her childhood had the power to speak to her soul in adulthood.