We are so excited to announce our 2026-2027 Va’Tichtov: She Writes Fellows. This year’s cohort will focus on book chapters or other long form writing projects.
| Lindsey Bodner is a writer and the Executive Director of the Naomi Prawer Kadar Foundation, where she leads grant making focused on Jewish education and communal life. Her essays explore the intersections of education, family, and contemporary Jewish experience, and have appeared in publications such as The Lehrhaus, The Times of Israel, and eJewish Philanthropy. Lindsey previously worked at the Anti-Defamation League and Oxford University Press. At CUNY Law School she served as Executive Articles Editor of the law review and in the International Women’s Human Rights Clinic before receiving her J.D. and practicing law. Lindsey lives with her family in Denver, Colorado. | |
| Rabbi Shoshana Cohen is the Rabbinic Educator for T’ruah – The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights Israel programming and serves on the board of Rabbis for Human Rights Israel. Rabbi Shoshana serves on the faculty of the Schechter Rabbinical School, leads the Beit Midrash for the Dorot Fellowship, and is a research fellow at the Kogod Research Center of the Shalom Hartman Institute, where she has also served as a senior faculty member, and program rabbi for the Hevruta gap year program. She previously taught at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem and founded the Takum beit midrash for social justice and Yeshivat Talpiot. She was on the founding faculty of Yeshivat Hadar and has completed advanced studies at Midreshet Lindenbaum, Matan, Hartman and Hebrew University. | |
| Dr. Ranana Dine is an Assistant Professor of Catholic-Jewish Studies and the Crown-Ryan Chair at Catholic Theological Union, where she also directs the Catholic-Jewish Studies Program. She joined the CTU faculty after finishing her PhD at the University of Chicago Divinity School in religious ethics. Originally from Washington DC, Ranana attended local Jewish day schools and has studied Jewish texts and Hebrew language at the Drisha Institute, Hadar Institute, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her research interests include modern Jewish thought and ethics, Jewish feminist thought, bioethics, and religion and visual culture. | |
| Dr. Miriam Feldmann Kaye, is Assistant Professor in the Dept of Jewish Philosophy at Bar Ilan University, and Associate Professor at Jewish Theological Seminary, NY. Dr. Miriam’s field of research is modern and contemporary Jewish philosophy, continental theology, philosophy of religion, the Study of Religion, specifically the schools of thought of Existentialism, deconstructionism and hermeneutics. She is a recipient of the Cambridge Theological Studies Prize, and holds a BA from Cambridge University. She holds an MA, and a PhD in Jewish Thought. A member of Beit Hillel and Kolech, she was listed in the ‘Top 70 Brits Shaping the Modern State of Israel’ by the Times of Israel. | |
| Dr. Geraldine Gudefin is a French-born historian of modern Jewry specializing in Jewish migration, family life, and legal pluralism. She holds an MA, and a PhD, and is currently a Visiting Scholar at the National University of Singapore. Her research adopts a comparative and transnational approach to Jewish citizenship, gender, and family law in migratory contexts. She is completing her first book manuscript, An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900–1939. Extending this work into an Asian context, her current project investigates Baghdadi Jewish family life, maritime mobility, and legal pluralism under British rule (1880s–1950s). She is also co-creator of Mahallah Project, a public initiative on Jewish histories in Singapore, and one of the hosts of the New Books in Jewish Studies podcast. | |
| Tamara Gutiérrez is a playwright and researcher. She holds a degree in Philosophy from the Complutense University of Madrid, a degree in Dramaturgy from RESAD, a master’s in Theory and Criticism of Culture from Carlos III University, and a master’s in Holocaust Studies from the University of Haifa. She also has training in Jewish Studies and participated in the Bet Midrash program at Pardes Institute. Among her theatrical works are Wish You Were Here (finalist for the International “Agustín González” Award, 2017), Galerna (directed by Ramón Barea and produced by DSS2016, Teatro Arriaga, Teatro Principal de Vitoria, and Victoria Eugenia Theatre in San Sebastián), Historia de un monstruo (VII Development Program for Contemporary Dramaturgies of INAEM), and Mis zapatos en Praga (Theatre Creation Grant from the Community of Madrid). During the 2023–2024 season, she was one of the playwrights participating in the residency program at the Centro Dramático Nacional (Spain’s National Theatre). In addition, in 2026 she wrote A bit more complicated, commissioned by the Spanish Embassy in Washington. She has led workshops in Spain, El Salvador, and Guatemala in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain. | |
| Rabbanit Gloria Nusbacher has semikha from Yeshivat Maharat and currently serves as a community educator and editor of the Jofa Journal. She began serious study of Jewish texts after a career in corporate law, including almost 20 years as a partner at one of the 100 largest U.S. law firms. During her law career, she earned a number of professional recognitions, including being elected a Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel, being listed in Super Lawyers, and being named a thought leader in executive compensation by the National Association of Stock Plan Professionals. Rabbanit Gloria earned a B.A. from Barnard college and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. She has studied Torah at Drisha and Herzog College, from which she earned a Tanach Teaching Certificate. | |
| Rabba Alieza Salzberg Yizhar is a scholar, writer, and teacher. She received smicha from Maharat in 2025. Now Rabba Alieza is completing a doctorate at Bar Ilan University and writing on the intersection of gender and war in rabbinic literature and is a frequent contributor to MyJewishLearning.com. She has taught Talmud, Midrash, and Jewish History at various programs in Jerusalem, including Bar Ilan, the Conservative Yeshiva, the Rothberg International School at Hebrew University, and Pardes. She was co-founder and faculty at Yeshivat Talpiot in Jerusalem. Alieza holds an M.A. in Midrash and Aggada from Hebrew University and an M.A. Creative Writing from City College, CUNY. She has studied at Matan’s Intensive Talmud Institute, Drisha, and Midreshet Lindenbaum. | |
| Rabbanit Sarah Segal-Katz is a writer, scholar, and an activist whose work explores gender, religious authority, and the relationship between religion and state in Israel. She provides halakhic guidance to a broad public and writes on halakha for both scholarly and general audiences. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Gluya Magazine. Her writing also includes essays, op-eds, poetry, and liturgical texts. She has edited more than ten anthologies exploring contemporary Jewish life. She was one of six petitioners in an Israeli Supreme Court case that resulted in a landmark ruling allowing women to sit for the Chief Rabbinate’s halakhic certification exams. She founded the Dinah Partnership and co-founded Brit Emunim, initiatives dedicated to safeguarding and the prevention of sexual harm in Jewish communal spaces. She received rabbinic ordination from Beit Morasha, Beit Midrash for Israeli Rabbis, and Yeshivat Maharat. She holds an MA in Jewish Thought from Hebrew University’s Revivim program. | |
| Rabbanit Dr. Liz Shayne is the Dean of Academics at Yeshivat Maharat as well as an alumna. She came to Maharat after completing her PhD from University of California, where she studied the past, present, and future of digital reading. She loves old books in new forms, analyzes how halakha and technology can work together, and is a teacher committed to the idea that studying Torah can and must be for everyone. During her time at Maharat, she worked with Sefaria on the Sefaria & Maharat Women Scholar’s Writing Fellowship and interned at Skokie Valley Agudath Jacob and the Hebrew Institute of White Plains. She writes and teaches about everything from how the Talmud is like the internet to the future of robots in halakha. | |
| Rabbi Yali Szulanski is a writer, award-winning educator, and trauma-informed emotions specialist whose work weaves together Torah, developmental insight, and embodied experience. Her essays and practitioner resources have been featured in the Times of Israel, The Wisdom Daily, Sightline, the JOFA Journal, and The Jewish Link. She writes a Substack exploring Jewish parenting, emotional wellness, and the inner life of educators and caregivers. She serves as Director of Youth and Family Engagement at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, and founded The “I Am” Project, The Neshima Initiative, and Hineni Hub, bringing emotional wellness and resilience practices to schools and communities nationwide. She is the recipient of the Covenant Foundation’s Pomegranate Prize and The Jewish Education Project’s Robert M. Sherman Young Pioneer Award, and holds rabbinic ordination from Yeshivat Maharat and a master’s degree in Psychology and Education from Columbia University’s Teachers College. |