Emanu El is pleased to launch the 2024-2025 Endowment Speaker Series, The Power of Words, featuring authors and journalists whose work center around social justice, current events, and marginalized populations.
The Emanu El Endowment Speaker Series is made possible by Nathan Berg Lecture Series Fund, Caplovitz Lectureship Fund, Eleanor & Frank Freed Fund, and Helen & Harry Reichek Fund.
Congregation Emanu El welcomes author, speechwriter, and speaker Sarah Hurwitz on Wednesday, December 11. Sarah’s latest book, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life – in Judaism shares profound insights Sarah discovered on everything from Jewish holidays, ethics, and prayer to Jewish conceptions of God, death, and social justice.
Sarah Hurwitz was a White House speechwriter from 2009 to 2017, starting out as a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama and then serving as chief speechwriter for First Lady Michelle Obama. Sarah worked with Mrs. Obama to craft widely-acclaimed addresses –including her 2008, 2012, and 2016 Democratic National Convention speeches – and traveled with the First Lady across America and to five continents. Sarah also worked on policy issues affecting young women and girls as a senior advisor to the White House Council on Women and Girls.
Before working at the White House, Sarah was chief speechwriter for Hillary Clinton during her 2008 presidential primary campaign. She then joined the Obama campaign, serving as a senior speechwriter for then-Senator Obama.
Sarah has been profiled in The Washington Post, People.com, The Boston Globe, and The Guardian; interviewed on The Today Show, Morning Joe, Amanpour & Co., and NPR; and featured in The Forward as one of 50 Jews who impacted American life in 2016 and 2019.
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Matti Friedman is a journalist and the award-winning author of four works of non-fiction, most recently, Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai.
Matti’s work as a reporter has taken him from Israel to Lebanon, Morocco, Moscow, the Caucasus, and Washington, DC. A former Associated Press correspondent and essayist for the New York Times opinion section, he currently writes a monthly feature for Tablet Magazine. His writing has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, the Atlantic, and elsewhere.
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Leah Lax is an award-winning author and congregant of Emanu El who has also written libretti for some of America’s top composers. Her first book, Uncovered, about her 30 years among the Lubavitcher Hasidim as a mother of seven and closeted lesbian went worldwide and became an opera. Her latest book, Not From Here: the Song of America, presents extraordinary immigrant testimonies that she says changed her life, as a Jew and as an American.
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