Matan – The Sadie Rennert Women’s Institute for Torah Studies is launching the Kitvuni Fellowship, a new program to support outstanding female scholars and educators to write and publish books of Torah scholarship in the fields of Tanakh, Talmud, Halakha and Jewish Thought, in English or Hebrew. The program will be directed by Dr. Yael Ziegler, Matan’s Rosh Batei Midrash and Academic Director.
Matan was founded in Jerusalem in 1988 by Rabbanit Malke Bina and now has eleven branches throughout Israel. It has been at the frontier of high-level women’s Torah study with advanced Batei Midrash, community learning programs, tens of thousands of students worldwide, and scores of distinguished graduates who are educators and leaders.
While there has been a significant and impactful influx of female teachers and leaders, written Torah scholarship by women still lags behind. With this in mind, Matan has founded The Kitvuni Fellowship. The goal is to provide funding, mentorship and professional support to a cohort of women whose books will fill Jewish bookshelves and join the sacred corpus of Jewish texts. Rabbanit Bina commented, “Kitvuni, Matan’s exciting new project, is a game-changer, catapulting women scholars onto the Torah bookshelf as authors.”
Applications for the first cohort of Kitvuni Fellows, starting in September 2022, are currently available on the Matan website. Qualified candidates will be part of a yearlong three-day-a-week framework that will include one day in the Matan Beit Midrash in Jerusalem, working with a personal advisor, professional seminars, and a fellows’ writing group.
This project will be in partnership with Koren Publishers Jerusalem, who will offer consultations and workshops to the writers throughout the project. Matthew Miller, Publisher of Koren, said, “As we begin our 60th anniversary celebrations, we are absolutely thrilled to be partners in Matan’s new Kitvuni Fellowship, which will allow us to share our professional expertise with an extraordinary cohort of writers and spread their written Torah worldwide.”
Dr. Ziegler added, “Thanks to the efforts of pioneers of women’s Torah education, an entire generation of learned women has arisen. The time has come to enrich the Jewish bookshelf with a substantial collection of high-quality books by these women."
"Kitvuni is named in tribute to 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. The Matan writers will be engaged in ‘kitvuni l’dorot’ – writing that will impact upon future generations.”
For further information and applications, email kitvuni@matan.org.il or visit www.matan.org.il.
The final deadline for applications is Tuesday, March 22, 2022.