The Esther App: For cultural diversity in the Jewish community

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1. What is your project? [1 sentence]

Creating an app to promote a diverse Jewish community by reaching out to marginalized groups and providing them with easy-to-use tools that help them master and own Jewish musical ritual cultures.

2. How will your project use mobile tools and approaches? [2 sentences]

The Esther App will enable all users to easily learn, master and enjoy Jewish ritual musical cultures used on the holiday of Purim (“The Scroll of Esther”), reaching out to groups that are often excluded and marginalized, and do not have access to the cultural knowledge. The app makes cultural knowledge freely accessible to all, enabling all to learn and master the beautiful traditional musical cantillations and receive all important accompanying information, and thus become central participants and actors in communal traditions

3. Who will use it and why? [1 sentence]

This will be used by people who have been previously excluded or marginalized from the community — such as Orthodox Jewish women who in many places are banned from learning and publicly singing — and will be used by groups that want to reach out to formerly excluded groups in order to form inclusive communities of men and women of all backgrounds in traditional song.

4. Please list three ways they would learn about your project.

* Social media — FB, Twitter, newsletters, pinterest, etc

* Traditional media/ blogging — reviews by relevant news and blog outlets (eg the Forward, Lilith, JWA, feministing, jezebel, etc)

* Networks — groups and networks of people seeking greater gender and cultural diversity in the Jewish world (eg Women Holding up Half the Sky, the AHA foundation, etc)

5. What connections have you made, or will you make, with others [communities, organizations or networks] about your project? [2 sentences]

We have strong relationships and partnership with many organizations that promote diversity and gender issues, as well as with many Jewish communal groups, and belong to several round-tables around Jewish women’s advancement and leadership. We also have very strong synagogue networks, and maintain synagogue databases and a 6000+member list of relevant parties and groups, as well as FB, twitter and newsletter lists, the populations of which would be very interested in this project. 

6. What part of the project have you already built? [1-2 sentences, feel free to include links]

The project is in development. The programmers are working with the woman recorder, and have the work plan ready to begin.

7. What does success for your project look like? [1-2 sentences]

Success would be: at least 1000 downloads, followed by the creation of 25-30 new communities organizing gender-diverse public readings of the Scroll of Esther around the holiday of Purim, each of which draws in a crowd of 25-50 people connecting in a culturally vibrant and gender-diverse beautiful communal traditional practice. 

8. What resources do you need to succeed? [1-2 sentences]

We need $10,000 to create a really fantastic app and accompanying materials (including logo). The rest of the plan for success is ready to go.


Additional details:
Please list who is on your team: Dr. Ali Yares (Associate Director, doctorate in communication design), Heather Stolz (digital communication manager) , Rachel Lieberman (program manager), Dr Elana Sztokman, (Executive Director), and an outsourced company for programming the app.
Expected number of months to complete project: 3-4 months
Estimated Project Cost: $10,000
Name: Elana Sztokman
Twitter: JOFAorg
Email address: elana.sztokman@jofa.org
Organization [if applicable]: JOFA, the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance
City:NYC
Country: USA
How did you learn about the contest? PND alerts (Foundation Center)