UI design for Koren Publications
The idea was born years ago but it gained very significant resonance during the Covid-19 period. I mean until now I wanted this idea for a few main goals- all of them based on our aspiration to guide the world of Torah learning and living to the next stage of the current transition. We firmly believe in Hashems presence in guiding reality, and see technology and technological advance as an opportunity, and not only a challenge. Any product or platform we would create would aim to provide for a qualitative improvement in learning, davening or communal activity, and our leading question is what would make people prefer to learn using this as opposed to a book. In the beit midrash concept, our goals are:
• A new level of torah collaboration, that only jews living in 2020 could envision. Chvrutot, chaburot, and communities from completely different parts of the globe and the spectrum of Judaism, forming and germinating new ways of learning, thinking and experiencing torah. Both for locating other people and movements that a user shares something in common with, and for discovering new styles and schools of thought that can broaden her current approach. In addition, this can enable Jews that have never been able to find a style of learning that truly compels him and engages him to connect with a rav, or a chavruta, or a study group, or a beit midrash that geographically is distant from him but conceptually close to his heart and mind.
• Finally creating one global repository of all the Torah innovations that are on each and every page. Im genuinely amazed that this has not been created yet, and the need for is is so blatantly apparent. Just this evening I was learning with my chavruta and when learning about the instance of a haystack separating two parts of a court, he asked why when the tenant takes enough hay off the top to bring the height under 10 tefachim does his personal eruv become obsolete? Shouldn’t it turn into a ‘petach’, i.e. he should get the option to choose if he wants to make a personal eruv or a joint one, like it says at the beginning of the sugya? This question is so straightforward that I was convinced that although I didn’t know the answer, someone in the world did. Not necessarily someone who is ‘doing the daf’ or even alive today. But it seems so trivial to picture myself whipping out my phone, going to the page in an app, tapping that phrase and in the pshat section finding that question and a string of answers. Indeed, it seems incredible that myriads of batei midrash from all over the jewish spectrum learn different masechtot in depth and hundreds of other topics, and all the chiddushim, questions, and elaborations all disappear at the end of each year.
• Finally creating one global repository of all the Torah innovations that are on each and every page. Im genuinely amazed that this has not been created yet, and the need for is is so blatantly apparent. Just this evening I was learning with my chavruta and when learning about the instance of a haystack separating two parts of a court, he asked why when the tenant takes enough hay off the top to bring the height under 10 tefachim does his personal eruv become obsolete? Shouldn’t it turn into a ‘petach’, i.e. he should get the option to choose if he wants to make a personal eruv or a joint one, like it says at the beginning of the sugya? This question is so straightforward that I was convinced that although I didn’t know the answer, someone in the world did. Not necessarily someone who is ‘doing the daf’ or even alive today. But it seems so trivial to picture myself whipping out my phone, going to the page in an app, tapping that phrase and in the pshat section finding that question and a string of answers. Indeed, it seems incredible that myriads of batei midrash from all over the jewish spectrum learn different masechtot in depth and hundreds of other topics, and all the chiddushim, questions, and elaborations all disappear at the end of each year.
• Forging learning communities that would continue to grow in their level of understanding in torah and in the ways they can implement it. Beyond a single chavruta, more than a one off shiur, this could enable gradual and incremental movements.
