Scribing the future: Matan’s fellowship paves the way for women’s Torah literature

‘Women have what to say,” says Rabbanit Malke Bina, founder and president of Matan, the Sadie Rennert Women’s Institute for Torah Studies. In February 2022, when Matan launched the Kitvuni Fellowship, a pioneering program to support outstanding female scholars and educators to write and publish books of Torah scholarship, Bina and program head Yael Ziegler hoped that the project would attract high-caliber women who would, in Bina’s words, “catapult women scholars onto the Torah bookshelf as authors.”

Almost three years later, they are thrilled with the progress of the program. This writer recently visited Matan and met with Bina and Ziegler to discuss the program, as well as with participants in the program, many of whom are graduates of the Matan Beit Midrash, to learn what it has accomplished to date and what its plans are for the future.

Bina says that from the outset, Ziegler systematically designed the program to encourage and assist writers, such that the program would produce a consistent number of books annually. “This is the third year of the program,” says Ziegler, “and we already have one book out, with another five books in production at Koren Publishers, as well 12 books in various stages of development. We are blown away by the success of these women.”

Ziegler and Bina explain that Kitvuni is named in tribute to Queen Esther’s wisdom in recognizing the importance of the written word and her notable accomplishment in persuading the sages to preserve her book in writing as part of the canon, as she said:  “Kitvuni l’dorot” –  “Write me for generations.” Says Ziegler, “The Matan writers are engaged in writing that will impact upon future generations.”

The Kitvuni Fellowship provides funding, mentorship, and professional support to the women, who are part of a year-long three-day-a-week framework that includes one day in the Matan Beit Midrash in Jerusalem, working with a personal adviser, professional seminars, and a fellows’ writing group.

In the context of the current war, Bina tells of one author who is completing a book on the Talmud. She was from a moshav in southern Israel, displaced from her home and was living with her family in a hotel in the Dead Sea for several months last year. “When the midrasha (Torah seminary) where she taught closed, she had her computer and continued writing. The book was an anchor and gave her a purpose in life,” Bina points out.

Recalling the origins of the program, Ziegler recounts, “We felt that the Jewish bookshelf did not reflect the level and the impact of women’s Torah as it has been felt in classrooms around the world in various institutions. There are a lot of academic Judaic books written by women that are wonderful and make an important contribution.“But if you go into a beit midrash (study hall) or a Jewish library, you want the Torah from the world of high-level Torah learning to be reflected. That’s part of our goal. We also wanted to bring good Torah to the world.”

THE FIRST book Matan recently released under the Kitvuni imprint through Koren Publishers – Meohel Moed l’Ymei Moed (From the Tent of Meeting to Days of Celebration) – fits this description. Written by Rabbanit Adina Sternberg, a fellow in the first cohort of the Matan Kitvuni Fellowship, the book, written in Hebrew, presents a new, in-depth exploration of questions related to the Jewish holidays.

The book explores and analyzes three halachic sources from which the festivals were shaped: the Bible, the Mishna, and Midrashim. It presents relevant, and sometimes surprising, meanings for our time. “This book really showcases the high level of scholarship that the women are bringing to Kitvuni,” says Ziegler.

Sternberg teaches at Matan and is the co-host of Matan’s Hebrew-language podcast on the weekly Torah reading, with Chaya Bina-Katz, CEO of Matan. She says that writing this book was a fulfilling experience and hopes that it will add meaning to the current literature on this topic.

“Writing this book was a dream come true. It enabled me to take the sources I’ve been learning and ideas I’ve been teaching for years, and define and refine them for the benefit of the Torah world and general audience. I got the financial and social support I needed to believe in myself and my ideas and to dedicate my time and energy to make my contribution to the growing Jewish library.”

While Sternberg approaches Judaism from the halachic viewpoint, veteran educator Rivka Kahan is exploring the emotional component of various biblical narratives. For instance, how does the Bible approach the experience of grief, shame, and guilt? The tentative title of her book is Da Levavi – Emotional Landscapes in Tanakh.

“One example is in the chapter about grief, which I am finishing now,” she says. “I look at narratives throughout the Bible that describe the loss of a child through the lens of commentaries and midrashim, and analyze how each emotional experience of grief is different from the others, what’s unique about each one, and what’s the picture that the Bible presents about the universal experience of grief.”

Kahan’s book is based on curricula she has developed over several years during her educational career. The audience for the book, she says, are serious students of Torah who are interested in new perspectives. One goal is to look at biblical narratives in a different way than the classical commentators have read the texts, she says.“One example is to read the Book of Job not as a book about theodicy and God’s justice but as a book of an individual human being experiencing grief.”

SHULAMIT LEHMAN is researching and writing a book that compares the traditions of the Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of Hassidism, that he passed to his grandson – Rabbi Ephraim of Sudilkov, and great-grandson, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov – with those that he gave to his two students Rabbi Dov Ber ben Avraham of Mezeritch (known as the Maggid) and Rabbi Ya’akov Yosef of Polonoy.

The book, Shofaro shel HaBesht (The Shofar of the Ba’al Shem Tov), is based on her doctoral dissertation and is intended for those interested in Hassidism who want to renew and deepen their connection with God.Ayelet Hoffmann Libson, another veteran educator and Matan Beit Midrash graduate, is writing a book that introduces each tractate of the Talmud, focusing on its central idea.

The book, which she expects to complete in time for the beginning of the next Daf Yomi (daily Talmud learning) cycle in June 2027, is intended for beginning Talmud students who need an overview of the tractate, as well as advanced Talmud students who want to understand the overarching themes and ideas of the tractate.

Jordanna Cope Bodenheimer, a participant in Matan’s Kitvuni program, is researching an upcoming volume about assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in Jewish law. “I hope to address several of the difficult dilemmas facing us in Halacha, as well as in Israeli law [and all legal systems], such as what to do when a lab mistake is discovered, or the permissibility of posthumous parenting and by whom, and under what conditions,” she says.

Her book will present actual stories and cases – with details changed to protect the identities of those involved – and using her approach to the subject, will attempt to arrive at halachic conclusions. Ziegler points out that the Kitvuni fellows “are the superstar educators, most of whom have not yet written a book.

“We don’t make that a criterion for acceptance, but we are very thrilled to put out somebody’s first book. It gives women a whole new way to communicate their [perspective] to the world. Books leave a different mark, and it’s a different way to enable our scholars to leave their Torah in the world.”

“We want our voices – the voices of women – to be heard,” concludes Bina. Adds Ziegler, “and to reach the Jewish people in a new way.”

 This article was written in cooperation with Matan – the Sadie Rennert Women’s Institute for Torah Studies.