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I learn every day with my chavruta in Israel using Sefaria sources. So I’m delighted to be interviewing Rabbanit Sara Tillinger Wolkenfeld, Chief Learning Officer at Sefaria, the online database and interface for Jewish texts.

Sara is passionate about Talmud education and about expanding Jewish textual knowledge and its accessibility for all. She writes and teaches widely about Jewish texts and Jewish law, and her current projects focus on applying Talmudic ideas to questions of advancements in digital technology.

We discuss ways she uses AI to improve accessibility on Sefaria, her goals for women’s learning in the future, and worrying trends in access to texts commonly cited by antisemites.

Sara is also a member of Class Six of the Wexner Field Fellowship and an alumna of the David Hartman Center at the Hartman Institute of North America. She serves as Scholar-in-Residence at Ohev Sholom Congregation in Washington, DC and her research and writing focus on the intersection between Jewish ethics and advancements in technology. Sara’s writing has been published in The Atlantic, First Things, and Religion Dispatches, as well as numerous Jewish publications.