Sara Hurwitz was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to parents Mervyn and Melanie Hurwitz, and has an older sister, Erica. Disheartened by apartheid politics, her family moved to Boca Raton, Florida, in 1989. After graduating high school in 1994, she spent a year studying at Midreshet Lindenbaum, a women's yeshiva in Israel. She attended Barnard College, Columbia University, where she co-founded Lights in Action, a student organization that connected Jewish students to Judaism through conferences and materials, and continued as its director after graduation. She later completed Drisha Institute's three-year Scholars Circle Program. Hurwitz serves as rabba on the rabbinic staff of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in Riverdale, New York. She is the first woman to be ordained as 'Rabba' in Orthodox Judaism, appointed by Weiss, and is the co-founder and president of Yeshivat Maharat, also in Riverdale, an institution that trains women for Orthodox Jewish clergy roles. She is aligned with the Open Orthodox movement within Modern Orthodox Judaism.