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A digital Jewish library aims to add women’s Torah scholarship to its shelves — by helping them write it
(JTA) — Sefaria, the app that contains a digital collection 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,” Sara Wolkenfeld, chief learning officer at Sefaria, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “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 halacha 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 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 networking opportunities with publishers and authors. The goal is for at least 15 to publish books by the program’s end, in 2026.
Erica Brown, director of the Sacks-Herenstein Center and vice provost for values and leadership at Yeshiva University, is leading the program with Wolkenfeld at Sefaria. (Sefaria’s CEO, Daniel Septimus, is on the board of 70 Faces Media, JTA’s parent organization.)
“Word-by-Word is the program I most needed when I started writing books about 15 years ago,” Brown said in a statement. “I needed help articulating my table of contents, editing myself down, structuring my ideas, writing a proposal, and then connecting to publishers,” she said. “There is a huge difference between knowing how to write and knowing how to publish a book.”
“Writing can also be lonely,” she added. “But it doesn’t have to be. With Word-by-Word, we’ll be creating a new Jewish sisterhood.”
The program builds on a sisterhood that has been growing for some time — of Orthodox women engaged in leading Jewish communities. Many of the cohort’s members are themselves graduates of, or teach at, Orthodox women’s educational institutions. At least seven of the 20 have spent time at Yeshivat Maharat, a liberal Orthodox institution that ordains women clergy. Others are affiliated with Orthodox campuses such as Yeshiva University in New York City or Bar-Ilan University outside of Tel Aviv, or Orthodox high schools or synagogues.
At least six of the cohort members are PhDs whose academic work mostly focuses on Jewish texts. Others are senior educators or hold prominent positions at Jewish educational institutions or nonprofits ranging from the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies to the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
The funders of Word-by-Word include three foundations that have supported Orthodox women’s learning and advancement: Micah Philanthropies, which allocated nearly a quarter of its grant money from 2021-2022 to Orthodox women’s leadership; the Walder Foundation, which has given grants to projects focused on Orthodox women’s education and leadership; and the Arev Fund, which has provided funding to Yeshivat Maharat, the educational center Nishmat, and other organizations geared toward Orthodox women.
Word-by-Word was open to women of all denominations and its organizers aimed for their advertising to reach a broad Jewish audience. But Wolkenfeld estimates that somewhere between 50% and 75% of the 122 women who applied were, judging from the applicants’ resumes, “plausibly Orthodox.” She also said the cohort’s denominational breakdown may have been a result of the program call for projects that closely analyzed Jewish texts.
“We got a lot of applications that were not actually close analysis of Jewish texts, but rather more, like, writing about themes in Jewish texts,” Wolkenfeld said. “To have a fellowship that was even more diverse, we probably would have needed to have different criteria.”
A predecessor to Word-by-Word launched in 2021, when Sefaria and Yeshivat Maharat partnered to create a writing fellowship for Jewish women scholars. Participants received training and, at the program’s conclusion, each presented a 3,000-word piece at a virtual event. The 14 scholars and rabbis who participated in that program included graduates of Orthodox, Conservative and transdenominational rabbinical schools.
Pamela Barmash, a Conservative rabbi and a professor of Hebrew Bible at Washington University in St. Louis, who is not involved in Word-by-Word, said the absence of non-Orthodox rabbis means “the full orchestra of voices that make up the Jewish community is not there.”
“We only see part of the colors in the spectrum,” she said. “We only see pieces of the Jewish world and we’re missing much of the vitality and creativity and initiative that is found in the rest of the Jewish world.”
Wolkenfeld is an alumna of several Jewish educational institutions and said she feels the increasing gender diversity she sees in institutions of Torah learning has been a boon. Soon, she hopes, some of the women she has studied with will see their names on those institutions’ bookshelves.
“As opposed to where we were, let’s say, 20 years ago,” she said, “I think we now have had the chance to start reaping the benefits of what happens when you have both men and women involved in learning Torah and teaching Torah and disseminating Torah.”
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Iran Parrots Isolationist Right-Wingers Opposing US-Israel Strikes as Trump Denounces Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly
Megyn Kelly hosts a “prove me wrong” session during AmericaFest, the first Turning Point USA summit since the death of Charlie Kirk, in Phoenix, Arizona, US, Dec. 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin O’Hara
US President Donald Trump’s decision to launch joint military strikes on Iran with Israel has provoked an epic fury of opposition from parts of his so-called “America First” base, whose talking points have now apparently inspired Iranian officials to echo them.
“Mr. Rubio admitted what we all knew: US has entered a war of choice on behalf of Israel. There was never any so-called Iranian ‘threat.’ Shedding of both American and Iranian blood is thus on Israel Firsters,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted Monday on X, referring to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “American people deserve better and should take back their country.”
A brief excerpt of statements offered by Rubio explaining the rationale for the war began circulating online suggesting Israel had directed the attacks, eliminating the full context of his remarks which emphasized his view that the Iranian regime posed a threat to the US and the world. “The imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us,” Rubio said.
“No matter what, ultimately, this operation needed to happen,” he added, arguing that Iran was building up its missile arsenal to such an extent that it could “hold the whole world hostage” while having a degree of “immunity” from outside action due to the damage it could inflict.
Nonetheless, Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, wrote in all capital letters Monday on X that “TRUMP HAS BETRAYED ‘AMERICA FIRST’ TO ADOPT ‘ISRAEL FIRST.’”
In a Monday appearance on SiriusXM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show,” former US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican and outspoken opponent of the Jewish state, said, “I was out there on the front lines for ‘Make America Great Again.’ And ‘Make America Great Again’ was supposed to be ‘America first,’ not ‘Israel first,’ not any foreign country first, not any foreign people first, but the American people first in our problems.”
Pointing her finger and raising her voice, Greene told Kelly that “[US Vice President] JD Vance promised it. [US intelligence chief] Tulsi Gabbard promised it. All of them promised it. And we’re a year in, and we’re in another f**king war, and we’ve got American troops being killed. I think it’s time for America to rip the band-aid off, and we need to have a serious conversation about what the f**k is happening to this country, and who in the hell are these decisions being made for and who is making these decisions?”
Greene later added to her comments on X: “And just like that we are no longer a nation divided by left and right, we are now a nation divided be those who want to fight wars for Israel and those who just want peace and to be able to afford their bills and health insurance.”
Kelly praised Greene’s posting on her show, saying that “X is completely saturated in neocons, the pro-Israel crowd, and people who would love to cheerlead us right into another Middle East ground war that’s endless. I was grateful for your contrary perspective, Marjorie.”
Making her position further explicit, Kelly added, “I don’t think those four service members died for the United States. I think they died for Iran or for Israel … this feels very much to me like it is clearly Israel’s war.”
The next day, Trump was asked at the White House if Israel dragged the US into conflict with Iran and rejected the notion.
“I might have forced their [Israel’s] hand,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office as he met with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. “We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. If we didn’t do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that.”
Beyond Kelly, far-right podcaster Tucker Carlson promoted a comparable point of view as reports circulated that over the past month, he had met with Trump three times in the Oval Office to make the case against a regime change war in Iran.
On Monday, Carlson released a new installment of his show — a monologue running more than 100 minutes — titled “Israel’s war and what it means.”
Carlson said within the first 60 seconds, :First, why did this happen? Now in this case there’s a really simple answer. This happened because Israel wanted it to happen. This is Israel’s war. This is not the United States’s war. This war is not being waged on behalf of American national security objectives to make the United States safer or richer. This war’s not even about weapons of mass destruction.”
Far-right podcaster Candace Owens said the same thing in an interview with Piers Morgan.
“The reason America wants a regime change in Iran is because Bibi Netanyahu is demanding it,” she said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “There was no imminent threat to the United States when Trump made this decision to do what Bibi wanted. I want to be clear here. This was not Trump’s decision; it was Bibi Netanyahu’s decision. And that is why he did it. We’re very aware that Israel is dictating our foreign policy and we would now like that to stop.”
Owens wrote in response to a clip of Trump saying that US soldiers could die that “Goyim always must die so the Khazarian mafia can expand their borders,” a promotion of the conspiracy theory claiming that the origins of the Jewish people trace back not to Israel but to a Turkic population in the Middle Ages.
Continuing with her months long-efforts to link Israel to the murder of her friend, Turning Points USA chief Charlie Kirk, Owens wrote on Saturday: “Remember when they tried to gaslight us last June by calling us ‘Panicans,’ claiming we were lying about serial killer Bibi Netanyahu’s aims? The ONLY reason this war didn’t begin last June was because of Charlie Kirk. They eliminated that reason on September 10th.”
White nationalist podcaster Nick Fuentes — who has celebrated Adolf Hitler and encouraged his “Groyper” followers to rape women — also filtered the attack on Iran through an antisemitic conspiracist ideology.
“This war has nothing to do with nuclear weapons, terrorism, or dead protesters,” Fuentes wrote on Saturday, referencing the Iranian regime’s recent massacre of tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators. “For decades, Israel has openly pursued an agenda to topple Iraq, Syria, and Iran. They orchestrated all of these wars in order to eliminate their rivals and gain total hegemony over the Middle East.”
On Sunday, Fuentes wrote that “this is a war of aggression for Israel. Americans will die in terrorist attacks and in missile strikes so that Israel can expand its borders in every direction. Trump, Vance, and Rubio sold us out.”
Matt Walsh, a populist-nationalist podcast host for Owens’ former employer, The Daily Wire, said in response to Rubio’s comments that “he’s flat out telling us that we’re in a war with Iran because Israel forced our hand. This is basically the worst possible thing he could have said.”
Trump has rejected Carlson and Kelly’s criticism, however.
“I think that MAGA is Trump — MAGA’s not the other two,” he said in an interview with independent DC newsletter The Inner Circle on Monday night. “MAGA wants to see our country thrive and be safe. And MAGA loves what I’m doing — every aspect of it.”
Noting Kelly in particular, Trump stated she “was opposed to me for years when I ran the first time and nothing stopped me.” He said that “some people are against — and they always come back. She came all the way back. But now I guess she maybe doesn’t like the idea of this war, but I do because I have to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Iranians.”
Giving Carlson an apparent green light to continue with his outbursts and conspiratorial provocations, Trump said that the podcaster “can say whatever he wants; it has no impact on me.”
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FBI Investigates Antisemitic Threats at Stanford University
The Hoover Tower rises above Stanford University in this aerial photo in Stanford, California, US. Photo: REUTERS/Noah Berger
A recent antisemitic incident at Stanford University in which someone sent threatening notes to the California campus’s Hillel chapter is being investigated by the FBI and local law enforcement officials.
According to The Stanford Daily, the missives were signed by an entity claiming to represent a faction of Stanford alumni based in Europe which calls itself “exposingstanfordjews.” It vowed to “monitor” campus Jewish life and claimed to have knowledge of “acute credible threats against the personal safety of Jewish Stanford undergraduate and graduate students.” Several campus organizations received the notes, including the Daily, public safety, Stanford’s office for religious and spiritual life, and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies.
The FBI’s involvement in the matter comes amid a spate of attacks on Jewish institutions and individuals across the US.
Last month, for example, two men trespassed the grounds of the Olami Dallas Center in Texas and demanded entry to the home of its rabbi by claiming to be window cleaners. In January, an assailant set the Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi on fire over its “Jewish ties.” Another arsonist struck the San Francisco Hillel building in December.
Stanford University said on Monday that it “strongly condemns the targeting of our Jewish community in this manner,” adding, “The security of and wellbeing of our campus is our top priority, and we are following up with the affected individuals to provide all necessary support.”
In another statement, Stanford Hillel Rabbi Jessica Kirschner said, “The best way I know to combat hate is to be proudly, deeply Jewish, and to keep building community with each other and with caring people across Stanford.”
Antisemitism has previously been an issue on Stanford’s campus. School officials acknowledged the university’s failure to identify and respond to a spate of incidents in a comprehensive 2024 report. Across 148 pages, the document cited the desecration of Jewish religious symbols, swastika graffiti, extreme anti-Zionist activism, and other incidents as causing a hostile environment which deprives Jewish students of a normal college experience.
“Some of this bias is expressed in overt and occasionally shocking ways but often it is wrapped in layers of subtlety and implication, one or two steps away from blatant hate speech,” the report said. “We learned of instances where antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias reached a level of social injury that deeply affected people’s lives: students moving out of their dorms because of antisemitic acts or speech; students being ostracized, canceled, or intimidated for openly identifying as Jewish, or for simply being real, or expressing support for Israel, or even refusing to explicitly condemn Israel; students fearing to display Jewish symbols or reveal that they were Jewish for fear of losing friendships or group acceptance.”
Other elite colleges continue to deal with campus antisemitism nearly three year after it emerged as a major social phenomenon in the aftermath of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
A significant portion of Jewish students at the University of Pennsylvania still find the climate on campus to be hostile and feel the need to hide their identity, according to a 2025 survey of Jewish undergraduates at the school.
The survey, conducted by Penn’s local Hillel International chapter, found that 40 percent of respondents said it is difficult to be Jewish at Penn and 45 percent said they “feel uncomfortable or intimidated because of their Jewish identity or relationship with Israel.” Meanwhile, the results showed a staggering 85 percent of survey participants reported hearing about, witnessing, or experiencing “something antisemitic.”
Another 31 percent of Jewish Penn students said they feel the need to hide their Jewishness to avoid discrimination, which is sometimes present in the classroom, as 26 percent of respondents said they have “experienced antisemitic or anti-Israel comments from professors.” Overall, 80 percent of Jewish students hold that anti-Israel activity is “often” antisemitic and that Israel’s conduct in war is “held to an unfair standard compared to other nations.”
In December, StopAntisemitism, a Jewish civil rights advocacy group, assigned mediocre and failing grades to over a dozen elite American colleges in a new annual report, citing the institutions’ failing to mount a meaningful response to campus antisemitism.
Of all the Ivy League universities assessed by StopAntisemitism, only three — Cornell University (C), Dartmouth College (B), and Princeton University (D) — merited higher than an “F.” StopAntisemitism, which is led by executive director Liora Rez, said other schools in the conference, such as Harvard University and Yale University, continue to offer Jewish students a hostile environment, citing as evidence feedback it has received from Jewish students who attend them.
“At Harvard, Jewish students report high levels of self-censorship and antisemitism, with federal authors finding the university showed ‘deliberate indifference.’ Despite new initiatives, the campus climate remains tense and accountability uncertain,” the report said. “At Yale, Jewish students faced harassment, exclusion, and blocked access, prompting a federal investigation. Despite policy changes, the campus remains hostile and unsafe for Jewish students.”
Other elite schools such as the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Wesleyan University didn’t perform well either. Ds and Fs were given to the lot. Meanwhile, in the Washington, DC metropolitan region, a destination for students aspiring to future roles in government, American University and Georgetown University earned Ds.
“Even since the recent Gaza ceasefire agreement, antisemitism remains loud, bold, and unchecked, revealing that none of this is about Israel but instead is about Jew-hatred, plain and simple,” the report said. “Coordinated protests, ideological harassment, and institutional apathy continue to endanger Jewish students. Families must confront the facts: Are you prepared to send tuition dollars to a school that allows your children to be threatened, targeted, and blamed simply for being Jewish?”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Hegseth Praises Israel’s ‘Unmatched Skill’ in Battle, Says Allies to Have ‘Complete Control of Iranian Skies’
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth holds a briefing amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, US, March 2, 2026. Photo: REUTERS / Elizabeth Frantz
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday said that American and Israeli forces will soon achieve “complete control of Iranian skies,” warning that Iran “will be able to do nothing about it” while praising Israel’s military prowess and precision strike capabilities as a defining strategic advantage.
“I stand before you today with a clear message: America is winning unequivocally and without mercy,” Hegseth said during a press conference at the Pentagon alongside Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “We are only four days into the operation; the achievements are amazing and there are more forces on the way.”
The Pentagon chief emphasized that US and Israeli forces are rapidly expanding their operational reach over Iran.
“We’ve taken control of Iran’s airspace and waterways without boots on the ground,” Hegseth continued. “We control their fate.”
He also praised Israeli cooperation and rejected media reports claiming Israel was dragging Washington into war. Those reports followed remarks by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that were taken out of context and circulated on social media explaining the timing of the strikes, which officials said was a deliberate and coordinated strategic decision.
Hegseth described Israel as a “steadfast partner,” praising its military performance and saying the campaign is being carried out with “unmatched skill and iron determination.”
“Our ally Israel is demonstrating tremendous capabilities. Extraordinary cooperation with such an ally is amazing and necessary. We salute you and appreciate you,” he said.
“The combination of Israel’s defense capabilities and our force is amazing. The Iranian regime knows it is finished,” Hegseth continued.
The defense chief also pledged that Iran will never obtain a nuclear weapon, echoing past remarks by US President Donald Trump that Washington remains committed to the effort and prepared to continue the campaign “for as long as we need to.”
Hegseth warned that continued Iranian aggression would bring “death and destruction from the skies,” stressing that the United States is “playing for keeps.”
Amid conflicting media reports and isolated Iranian drone breakthroughs, he also accused segments of the press of attempting to undermine Trump by framing the campaign in ways that downplay US and Israeli military progress.
Hegseth also assured reporters that the United States has prioritized protecting its troops “ahead of everything else,” noting that before the conflict, roughly 90 percent of American forces in the region were repositioned outside Iranian weapons range.
During the press conference, Caine emphasized that US forces are prepared to maintain operational pressure while prioritizing the safety and protection of American personnel in the region.
“We are attacking and destroying the Iranian missile system to neutralize the threat to the United States and its allies. We are destroying the Iranian navy to prevent them from attacking the US Central Command, and we are making sure that Iran does not rebuild its capability during the war,” he said.
“Iran’s missile capability has decreased by 86 percent since the beginning of the war, 35 percent just since yesterday,” the top uniformed US military official added.