A 21st Century Vision for Jewish Culture
For nearly 60 years, the MFJC has been promoting the global regeneration of Jewish culture by supporting, developing, and connecting scholars, artists, filmmakers, rabbis, and Jewish communal lay leaders and professionals around the world.
Jewish culture encompasses the full spectrum of Jewish life that transcends geography and ideology and serves as the textual tapestry linking Jews and Jewish communities across the globe. Through our programs, fellowships and scholarships, the MFJC aims to inspire and empower individual scholars and leaders throughout the breadth of the Jewish world, from Mumbai to Montevideo.
“It is our hope that the foundation will blaze new paths and become the central instrument of world Jewry to preserve Judaism by educating Jews, teaching them the balance of Jewish values in the world today.”
–Dr. Nahum Goldmann, July 1964
72
Countries
The MFJC has supported scholars, rabbis and emerging leaders in 72 countries around the world
16,000
16,000 SCHOLARS, RABBIS AND LEADERS
The MFJC has supported 16,000 scholars, artists, filmmakers, rabbis and Jewish communal leaders over the last 52 years
53
Israel Prize Winners
53 recipients of the Israel Prize were supported during their careers by the MFJC
Support MFJC
Help transform the future of the Jewish World.
MFJC supports the regeneration of Jewish culture in communities around the world. We are a 501 (c)3 grant-giving organization. Your support helps future scholars, artists, filmmakers and emerging Jewish leaders contribute meaningfully to the growth of Jewish life globally.
MEET SOME OF OUR GRANTEES AND FELLOWS
Dr. Sharon Galper Grossman
Advanced Torah Fellowship
Dr. Sharon Galper Grossman is a radiation oncologist and former faculty member of Harvard Medical School where she also obtained a Masters in Public Health. She is a graduate of the Morot L’Halacha Program, a women’s advanced halacha learning program which focuses on the laws of niddah.
Dr. Sharon Galper Grossman
ADVANCED TORAH FELLOWSHIP RECIPIENT
Dr Galper Grossman’s current interests are in Women’s Health and Halakha, specifically issues related to preventing women’s cancers. She has recently published “The Angelina Jolie Effect in Jewish Law: Prophylactic Mastectomy and Oophorectomy in BRCA Carriers” in the Rambam Medical Journal, “Resolving the Debate Over Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) Vaccination for Cancer Prevention in the Religious World” in Tradition and Vape Gods and Judaism: E-Cigarettes and Jewish Law also in Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal. “BRCA Testing for All Ashkenazi Women: A Halachic Mandate?” has been accepted for publication in Hakirah, The Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought.
She teaches at Matan, Machon Puah, and Eden Center. Her blogs have been featured in The Times of Israel.
Dr. Jordan Katz
Ephraim Urbach Scholarship Recipient
Dr. Jordan Katz is the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Postdoctoral Associate in Modern Jewish History in the Judaic Studies Program at Yale University. She is a historian of early modern Jewry, with a focus on Jewish cultural history, history of medicine, and women and gender in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Dr. Jordan Katz
EPHRAIM URBACH SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENT
Dr. Katz’s current book project builds upon her dissertation, which examined the role of Jewish midwives within communal, intellectual, and medical frameworks in the early modern Ashkenazic world. Through an exploration of Jewish midwives’ medical influences, their engagement with administrative knowledge systems, and their intellectual status in the eyes of prominent male leaders, Katz’s study offers a new understanding of the structures of knowledge and authority that undergirded early modern European society. More broadly, she is interested in the ways in which expertise and special skills created pathways for interaction between Christians and Jews, and between Jews of different socioeconomic classes, that have not yet been studied.
Jordan has received an Doctoral as well as Ephraim Urbach Post-Doctoral Fellowship from MFJC; the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine; the Center for Jewish History; and the Leo Baeck Fellowship Programme. Her work has been published in Jewish Quarterly Review and a forthcoming article will appear in Jewish Social Studies.
In Fall 2021, she will begin a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Dr. Andreas Lehnertz
Fellowship Grant Recipient
Dr. Andreas Lehnertz is currently at the Department of History at Hebrew University in the ERC Group “Beyond the Elite. Jewish Daily Life in Medieval Europe”.
Andreas Lehnertz
FELLOWSHIP GRANT RECIPIENT
Andreas focuses his research on social, cultural, and religious history in Europe during the Middle Ages. His interests are daily life Jewish-Christian relations, marginal Hebrew and Yiddish charter notes, early Yiddish transmission, Jewish as well as general sealing practices, Jewish and Christian oath-taking, Jewish and Christian criminal history and currently especially Jewish (as well as Christian) craftspeople.
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Explore Our Programs
The Nahum Goldmann Fellowship
The Nahum Goldmann Fellowship is a week-long intensive seminar for emerging Jewish leaders to engage in Jewish learning across denominational, geographic, and ideological lines. We provide a unique environment wherein participants are able to freely explore issues of Jewish identity, Jewish community and global Jewish peoplehood.
In 2017, in honor of the 30th anniversary of the NGF, the MFJC conducted an extensive evaluation to understand the long term impact of the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship on past participants. The study indicated that the International Nahum Goldmann Fellowship is indeed helping emerging Jewish lay leaders and professionals: to connect more broadly across the Jewish world; to engage with serious Jewish learning; and to return to their home communities prepared to engage in greater leadership roles.
The effects of the program are summarized in three key areas in which the NGF succeeds: Link. Learn. Lead.
Doctoral Seminar
The purpose of the MFJC Doctoral Seminar is to create an international network of emerging scholars and foster the next generation of academics working in Jewish studies by providing financial assistance and peer and professional support.
ADVANCED TORAH FELLOWSHIP
The purpose of the MFJC’s Advanced Torah Fellowship program is to support the highest level of intensive Torah study for those who have the potential to become a Torah scholar-leader in a community or Torah institution.
EPHRAIM E. URBACH POST DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP
The International Ephraim E. Urbach Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Jewish Studies is funded and administered by the MFJC in cooperation with the World Union of Jewish Studies. Its purpose is to assist a limited number of outstanding recent recipients of the PhD in a field of Jewish studies in publishing their first book, launching their scholarly career, and/or furthering research in their area of special interest.
Fellowship Grants
The purpose of the MFJC Fellowship program is to assist well-qualified individuals in carrying out an independent scholarly, literary or art project, in a field of Jewish specialization, which makes a significant contribution to the understanding, preservation or transmission of Jewish culture.
