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Jackie Hajdenberg | JTA.org
S efaria, the app that contains a digital collec-
tion of Jewish texts, has made everything
from Genesis to an essay on Jewish law and
gambling accessible at the tap of a finger.

But in one way, it’s the same as nearly every other
Jewish library in history: Almost all the texts, from
ancient times to the present, are written by men.

Now, Sefaria is hoping to chip away at that gender
disparity by organizing and supporting a group of 20
women Torah scholars who are writing new books
on Jewish texts.

“It’s relatively recent in the history of the Jewish
people that women have had access to as full a
Jewish education as men,” said Sara Wolkenfeld,
chief learning officer at Sefaria. “And so it’s even more
recent that women are able to create those works.”
She added, “When I spoke to women about this, I
discovered more and more that there were amazing
women teaching Torah and many fewer women who
were being encouraged to write books of Torah and
really have the scaffolding in place to do that.”
The participants in the new program, called
Word-by-Word, range from ordained clergy to
academics and teachers. They have expertise in
subjects ranging from early modern Jewish studies
to Jewish thought and Talmud. Most of them are
affiliated with Orthodox institutions or received
Orthodox ordination. There are no non-Orthodox
rabbis on the list.

Non-Orthodox women have been receiving
rabbinic ordination for more than half a century,
and recent decades have seen the proliferation of
advanced Orthodox Jewish educational institutions
geared toward women. In recent years, a growing
number of Orthodox women have received ordination
as clergy as well.

Word-by-Word aims to parlay their expertise into
texts about topics such as Sephardic women’s
halachah and rabbinic literature, villains of the Torah,
and environmental ethics. Many but not all of the
planned books will cover women’s issues: Rabbanit
Leah Sarna aims to produce a pregnancy and
childbirth guide for observant Jewish women and
Gila Fine in Israel will explore the six women named
in the Babylonian Talmud, for example, while Adina
Blaustein in Ohio will produce a book rooted in the
weekly Torah portion.

The program will provide the selected scholars
16 JUNE 1, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
with a support system
that will help them
put their knowledge
down on paper — and,
crucially, will pay them to
do so. Cohort members
will receive $6,000
per year for three
years to support their
work and will also get
professional coaching,
peer mentoring
and net working
opportunities with
publishers and authors.

The goal is for at least 15
20 women Torah scholars will write books as part of the Word-by-Word project.

to publish books by the
program’s end, in 2026.

Erica Brown, director of the Sacks-Herenstein and 75% of the 122 women who applied were,
Center and vice provost for values and leadership judging from the applicants’ resumes, “plausibly
at Yeshiva University, is leading the program Orthodox.” She also said the cohort’s denominational
with Wolkenfeld at Sefaria. (Sefaria’s CEO, Daniel breakdown may have been a result of the program
Septimus, is on the board of 70 Faces Media, JTA’s call for projects that closely analyzed Jewish texts.

“We got a lot of applications that were not actually
parent organization.)
“Word-by-Word is the program I most needed when close analysis of Jewish texts, but rather more, like,
I started writing books about 15 years ago,” Brown writing about themes in Jewish texts,” Wolkenfeld
said in a statement. “I needed help articulating my said. “To have a fellowship that was even more
table of contents, editing myself down, structuring diverse, we probably would have needed to have
my ideas, writing a proposal, and then connecting to different criteria.”
Pamela Barmash, a Conservative rabbi and a
publishers." The program builds on a sisterhood that has professor of Hebrew Bible at Washington University
been growing for some time — of Orthodox women in St. Louis, who is not involved in Word-by-Word,
engaged in leading Jewish communities. Many of the said the absence of non-Orthodox rabbis means
cohort’s members are themselves graduates of, or “the full orchestra of voices that make up the Jewish
teach at, Orthodox women’s educational institutions. community is not there.”
“We only see part of the colors in the spectrum,”
At least seven of the 20 have spent time at Yeshivat
Maharat, a liberal Orthodox institution that ordains she said. “We only see pieces of the Jewish world
women clergy. Others are affiliated with Orthodox and we’re missing much of the vitality and creativity
campuses such as Yeshiva University in New York and initiative that is found in the rest of the Jewish
City or Bar-Ilan University outside of Tel Aviv, or world.”
Wolkenfeld is an alumna of several Jewish
Orthodox high schools or synagogues.

At least six of the cohort members are Ph.D.s educational institutions and said she feels the
whose academic work mostly focuses on Jewish increasing gender diversity she sees in institutions
texts. Others are senior educators or hold prominent of Torah learning has been a boon. Soon, she hopes,
positions at Jewish educational institutions or some of the women she has studied with will see
nonprofits ranging from the Pardes Institute of their names on those institutions’ bookshelves.

“As opposed to where we were, let’s say, 20 years
Jewish Studies to the Shalom Hartman Institute of
ago,” she said, “I think we now have had the chance
North America.

Word-by-Word was open to women of all to start reaping the benefits of what happens when
denominations and its organizers aimed for their you have both men and women involved in
advertising to reach a broad Jewish audience. But learning Torah and teaching Torah and disseminating
Wolkenfeld estimates that somewhere between 50% Torah.” ■
Courtesy of Sefaria via JTA
Digital Jewish Library Aims to Add
Women’s Torah Scholarship to Its Shelves



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