“Slik skrev hun Michelle Obamas taler med Sarah Hurwitz moderator Hans Olav BrennerI wrote (Obama’s) first college graduation speech, which was at Arizona State University,” Hurwitz said. “In 2009, our economy was crashing … and he was kind of busy. We could get a meeting with him, but he was really distracted.”
Michelle Obama had “high technical standards” for her work and frequently adjusted her speeches to insert her own voice,
“Every transition had to be perfect,” she said of her experience working with the former First Lady. “A lot of the flow with a brilliant lawyer in mind had to be asking her, because she would just hone in on whatever was weak.”
“It’s really a pleasure to come here and to be able to share that mission, that volume (and) to share what it is that is so meaningful about those 4,000 years of wisdom in the Jewish tradition and how it’s affected my career and my life,”
“Being a really proud, open Jew at a time like this is incredibly important,” Hurwitz told The Daily Cardinal. “I'm really grateful to have the chance to be a proud, open public Jew on campuses and to hopefully inspire Jewish students and all students to really appreciate [their] Jewish classmates and to appreciate [the] Jewish tradition.”
“Everyone's like, ‘Oh, you're on a spiritual journey.’ I was not. It could have been a karate class or ceramics class,” “This was 4,000 years of wisdom on the human condition. What it means to be a good person, what it means to live a worthy life, what it means to find profound spiritual connection. I just felt like, ‘where has this been all my life?’”
“So many Jews in America have so many friends and family members in Israel, and it is really devastating and wrenching,”
it’s been “devastating” having to repeat throughout the day “that kidnapping toddlers and killing babies and raping women is not resistance" and to have to "again and again" condemn "the celebration of the death of civilians on any side of any conflict."
“[The] kind that says, ‘Look, we're not going to hurt Jews. We're not going to kill Jews. We just ask that Jews kind of change themselves to fit whatever we find acceptable,'”
“It’s just been a tremendously hard week,” Hurwitz said. “I think [of] so many Jews in America, so many friends and family members in Israel, and it’s just … really devastating and wrenching.
And then I got hired on the Obama campaign and he won, which was a mind blowing new experience for me … And I got to go to the White House,”
You’re [the First Lady] there really to have a conversation with America, and to focus on issues being paramount,” Hurwtiz said. “I think Mrs. Obama’s [style] was also just much more operational, much more emotional. And that’s the kind of speaker and writer I am.”
“There were lots of intro ‘nuts and bolts books,’ which were fine,” Hurwitz said. “There were lots of very boring, esoteric academic books, which were less fine, and there was just nothing that spoke to someone like me who was like, ‘alright, I want the deepest, most transformational, most life changing wisdom, and I also need the basics’ and so I just thought maybe I can write a book like that.”
“When I was writing speeches for [Michelle] Obama, we were writing partners, right? It wasn’t me alone,” Hurwitz said. “She was giving me pretty much all the ideas … and suddenly writing a book — I was like, ‘Wow, just me’… It was very lonely.”
So when you have a Jewish law that says, if you loaned money to someone who was financially struggling, and you happen to see them coming down the street toward you, you should actually try not to run into them,” Hurwitz said. “Because you know what, if you know they’re still struggling, if they can’t pay you back? You’re gonna embarrass them, right?”
And so I think just getting used to beginning to understand how being a minority in a majority culture affects how they see themselves,” Hurwitz said about the purpose of her next book. “And how they see the traditions, and how we can begin to kind of peel away those layers and really engage authentically with our tradition in Jewish terms.”
“Speech writing is kind of a weird job,” Hurwitz said. “Right? You want to be a lawyer, you go to law school. You want to be a doctor, you go to med school. How do you get to be a speech writer? The answer for me was actually a lot of failure.”
“I made kind of an unusual White House career move: I went from the West Wing –– writing for the President –– to the East Wing –– writing for the first lady,” Hurwitz said. “I knew that I was a better fit for her voice. I just had a better feel for her. I was more interested in the subject she was talking about.”
“I think you can make arguments on all sides of the political spectrum using Jewish texts,” Hurwitz said. “I don’t think there is any one authentic Jewish position on immigration, poverty or healthcare. Conservatives can use the Torah and Jewish law, liberals can use Torah and Jewish law.”
“So often when people are preparing something they want to speak about, they want to know, ‘what can make me sound smart, or powerful, or funny? What does my audience want to hear?’” Hurwitz said. “These are all fine questions, but they should be your second or third question. Your first question should really be, ‘what is the deepest, most important, most helpful truth that I can tell?’”
“I don’t think I’m the only Jew who has viewed Judaism as if it were a distant relative whom I loved in a vague familial way and was required to see a few times a year but had no desire to get to know further,”
“What never fails to move and inspire me is her unshakable sense of right and wrong,” speechwriter Hurwitz says of her boss. “She has such a strong moral core and such a clear set of values, and she’s expressed that in pretty much every speech she’s given.”
“She was a proud Roosevelt Democrat, and as a young woman, she dreamed of going to law school and having a career in politics – but women didn’t really have those kinds of opportunities back then,”
“It never ceases to amaze me that just two generations later, I have walked through the Northwest Gate of the White House every day for the past eight years to get to work.”
“I start by talking with her, and she’ll lay out the points she wants to make. We work together during the editing process until it’s precisely what she wants to say,”
“Everyone there seemed to know each other from Jewish summer camp and be in on some inside joke to which I was not privy, and I couldn’t follow any of the prayers or rituals,”
“I signed up less to fulfill some existential longing and more to fill a couple of hours on a Wednesday night that would otherwise have been spent feeling lonely in my apartment,” she notes in “Here All Along.”
I fell in love with the texts,” Hurwitz told J. in a recent interview, explaining how a spark had been ignited. Her days of “pediatric Judaism”
“If someone has something of value” to add to her understanding, Hurwitz said, their religious or political affiliation matters little to her. She references scores of Jewish thought leaders throughout “Here All Along” as she charts her religious and spiritual journey.
“It is very much a spiritual practice for me. A lot of joy has come from the basics,” she said. When she understands what a prayer means,
“The belief that every single one of us is created in the image of God has been cited as the defining Jewish idea,”
The most important lesson I’ve learned about speechwriting is very simple: Say something true. When people are thinking about giving a speech, they’re often thinking, “What will make me sound smart or interesting or witty or powerful?” Or they’re thinking, “What does the audience want to hear?” Those really shouldn’t be your first and most foundational questions. Your first question should be, “What is the deepest and most important truth that I can tell at this moment?” Whether you were giving a speech to 1,000 people or talking to your board or leading an informal meeting, it’s really important to say something that is clearly and glaringly true. I think that it makes people trust you. It makes them respect you. It shows your authenticity. I think it makes you credible and it’s a really good way to start. I’d say it’s also a good way to continue and end a speech.
The defining truth about working with the first lady is this,”“She always knows what she wants to say—period.”“She has an unwavering sense of who she is and exactly what points she wants to make.”
“But I sat back and really started to think about it and realized that if … my real passion was government and politics, then I’d better do this,”
“For me, speechwriting is about telling the stories that too often just don’t get told,” Hurwitz said. “There’s a lot of quiet daily heroism in this country—people who get up every day and build lives driven by love, courage, and self-sacrifice.”
“I’m not sure what comes next,” she said. “For now, I’m just trying to enjoy every minute of this once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
"There isn't really a university major in speech writing,"
"A lot of the time you are spending alone in your office, sitting at a computer, just trying to come up with the right words for the moment,"
"The line, 'When they go low, we go high.' That was her line. That was not my line. That was Mrs. Obama's line entirely,"
I just typed it into the speech. That's one I'm very proud of."
If you wouldn't say something to one person don't say it to many people.
"A good rule of thumb is if you wouldn't say something to one person don't say it to many people. It actually doesn't get better,"
"In the political world it's all these slogans like, 'We need to put hard-working, middle-class-family values first,' or in business you get a lot of, 'We need to catalyze our platform to leverage transformational change.' You know, you never speak to your friend, your spouse, like this. That's not how normal people speak."
“Mrs. Obama is … a fundamentally authentic, honest person. She doesn’t say something unless she truly believes it, and people respond to that,”
“But I sat back and really started to think about it and realized that if … my real passion was government and politics, then I’d better do this.”
“I knew I wanted to work in politics somehow, but I had no idea where,” she said. “It’s hard to know what these jobs actually entail when you’re just a student.”
“Writing for Harkin — I just didn’t really know how to write a speech. I was sort of freelancing, just doing my best. But by the end of the year, I think they were really happy that I decided to go to law school,”
“He really helped me understand what makes a good speech,” said Hurwitz. “He really taught me the art of writing to be heard, as opposed to read, which I don’t think I quite understood.”
“I was so incredibly proud to work for Hillary. I love her. She’s been one of my heroes since I was a kid. But I also came to really respect and admire Obama, and so when she conceded I was really thrilled to be able to go work for him.”
“The speech always starts with her — sitting down with her and having her articulate what she wants to say, how she wants to say it, what her tone will be, what her message will be,” said Hurwitz. “That’s the heart of the speech.”
“I think a great speech is something that says something profoundly true, period. So often, people ask the wrong questions when they’re thinking about delivering a speech. They ask, ‘What will make me sound smart,’ ‘What will make me sound powerful,’ ‘What will make me sound funny,’ ‘What will make the audience like me?’”
“I want them to understand that success in politics is not about a well-ordered, linear series of successes … Nobody succeeds in politics that way,”
“People succeed in politics by taking risks, having failures, recovering from those failures, working really, really hard, being a good person, helping others and, over the years, collecting a real community of people … who will help you out when you’re struggling, and people you need to help out when they’re struggling,”
“Harvard students need to understand it’s OK to fail. That’s really a sign that you’re challenging yourself and growing.”
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