As Israel’s election season kicks into high gear, it’s pretty much impossible to find any of the country’s leaders on the same page politically. But on a new Israeli website called 929, you’ll find everyone from settler leader Naftali Bennett to far-left Meretz party head Zehava Gal-On on the same homepage. Their subject: the Bible.
Launched over Hanukkah, 929 is a $12 million Israeli initiative to turn the Tanakh into a national conversation. Drawing its name from the 929 chapters of the Hebrew Bible, the project aims to get hundreds of thousands of Israelis from all walks of life to complete the corpus over three-and-a-half years by covering five chapters a week. (The endeavor is akin to the Daf Yomi cycle, where participants finish the entire Talmud over seven-and-a-half years, but pitched to a broader and more diverse audience.) The hub of the enterprise is its state-of-the-art website, where readers can find commentary from a wide array of contributors, from celebrated secular authors like Etgar Keret and A.B. Yehoshua, to spiritual leaders like ultra-Orthodox former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau and progressive trailblazer Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum.
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