Ending speculation about the future of its program in advanced Talmudic studies for women, Yeshiva University recently procured supplementary funding from the Avi Chai Foundation that will ensure the program's financial viability through the year 2005.

As was reported by The Commentator in October of last year, the Avi Chai Foundation, a private charity endowed by the late Zalman C. Bernstein, provided Yeshiva with the initial funding for a two-year program for women in Talmudic and halachic studies. The original grant from Avi Chai came in the form of a three-year fiscal commitment, which would be applied toward the program's first two incoming classes, in the fall of 2000 and 2001, respectively, and would conclude with the graduation of the second incoming class in the spring of 2003.

Yeshiva's successful negotiation with Avi Chai regarding additional funding -- which, according to administrators at Yeshiva's Midtown Campus, concluded earlier this month -- essentially amounts to a doubling of the Foundation's original pledge, which will allow two more incoming classes to enroll in the program, in 2002 and 2003. Program administrators refused to speculate on whether Yeshiva will eventually assume the financial burden of the program from Avi Chai.

To this point, the program -- coordinated by its director Rabbi Ephraim Kanarfogel, E. Billi Ivry professor of Jewish History at Stern College -- has garnered much praise from Yeshiva administrators, from its member students, and even representatives of the Avi Chai Foundation. To date, approximately twenty women have enrolled in the program, which admits no more than ten students per academic year.