Full biography
One life. Many forms.
A single purpose.
Some people build careers by moving from one field to another. Rabbi Gedaliah Gurfein’s work reveals something more coherent: a single question pursued across Torah study, technology, writing, film, animation and digital media.
How can profound Jewish wisdom remain fully alive — and become genuinely accessible to the people living now?
For Gedaliah, accessibility has never meant reducing ancient texts to simplified modern slogans. It means creating a meeting place between worlds: connecting the contemporary Jewish soul with a tradition shaped through centuries of learning, argument, imagination and spiritual experience. His work does not flatten the texts. It builds new doors into them.
A teacher before the platform
Gedaliah has been teaching Talmud and Jewish wisdom since the 1970s. His style is grounded in the discipline of traditional learning, but animated by an instinct for the unexpected question: the question that interrupts habit, awakens curiosity and reveals how directly an ancient discussion can speak to modern life.
The idea that would eventually become The People’s Talmud began taking shape in 1986, while he was studying seven pages of Talmud a day in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. Immersed in the scale and richness of the text, he began imagining a different kind of map — one that could help people enter the “Sea of the Talmud” through the subjects, dilemmas and questions that already mattered to them. The technology did not yet exist to build that map. The vision did.
Building technologies before they had familiar names
By the mid-1990s, Gedaliah was working in Israel’s emerging high-tech industry. His technological career took him through Jerusalem, New York and Beijing and into leadership roles spanning mobile development, interactive entertainment and digital media.
As a co-founder of TeleVend, he helped pioneer early mobile commerce at a time when paying through a telephone still sounded futuristic. In 1999, the company’s technology — which transformed an ordinary vending machine into a connected, interactive point of sale — was covered by Time, The New York Times, Business 2.0, The Washington Post, Forbes and Good Morning America.
He later co-founded and led ZOW Ltd., developing voice-based interactive entertainment built around virtual performers, user participation and stories that changed in response to human input. Patent filings dating to 2001 describe autonomous virtual characters, conversational interaction and responsive narrative systems — ideas that anticipated features now associated with conversational AI and interactive generative media.
His wider technology and media work has included mobile development for international markets, creative development at IDT Entertainment, senior leadership at CDI Systems, and projects spanning film, animation and digital storytelling. Yet the deeper continuity is more important than the list of positions: long before technology could generate endless content, Gedaliah was already asking how technology might create a more personal, intelligent and meaningful encounter with ideas.
The People’s Talmud
In 2018, more than three decades after its original conception, the first public alpha version of The People’s Talmud was unveiled at the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in Tel Aviv.
The platform offers free access to thousands of carefully developed entries drawn from both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. Rather than presenting another linear translation, it allows users to navigate by subject, question and association — following a thought from one end of the Talmud to the other. Its Brain Teasers turn surprising contemporary questions into gateways to source material, while its wider library connects users with educators, institutions, videos, podcasts, art and original texts.
The goal is not to replace traditional Talmud study. It is to awaken the desire to begin. The People’s Talmud has reached learners and communities across countries, cultures and levels of Jewish education. It has been used in classrooms, yeshivot and independent study, while Gedaliah continues to teach students in person and internationally. Today he serves as a Rebbe at Torah Tech, where the worlds of serious Torah learning and technological enterprise meet naturally.
From the Talmud to the Zohar
The People’s Zohar extends the same vision into the literature of Jewish mysticism. It seeks to present mystical teachings as living companions for modern readers — preserving their mystery while making a genuine relationship with them possible.
Together, The People’s Talmud and The People’s Zohar form an expanding digital bridge between foundational Jewish texts and people who may never otherwise discover how much those texts have to say about consciousness, relationships, society, responsibility, creation and the human soul.
A writer across forms
Gedaliah’s writing moves through many registers: Torah commentary, philosophical questions, intimate reflection, cultural observation and speculative encounters between ancient wisdom and future technology.
His earlier books include Good Morning, Moon and I Never Prayed for My Father. His 2026 book, Counting Towers: The Path of Secrets, explores the spiritual architecture of Creation through the seven Sefirot, the traditional daily Psalms and the cycle of the week. Written in direct, accessible language, the book opens complex mystical relationships without presenting them as abstractions removed from ordinary life.
His essays have appeared in The Jerusalem Post, The Jewish Press and other publications, addressing subjects ranging from Talmud, unity and the Jewish calendar to ecology, artificial intelligence and the distinction between artificial and Divine intelligence. His creative work has also crossed into film, animation and visual art, including participation in the 2019 Jerusalem Biennale and serving for three consecutive years as MC for the Jerusalem Film Festival Animation Competition.
Across these forms, the method remains recognisable: begin with a question, refuse the predictable answer, and allow an ancient source to illuminate something urgently present.
Midrash X
Midrash X is the publishing and media home for this body of work — and for what comes next. It brings together books, digital learning platforms, films, animation, short-form teaching, live lectures and new creative collaborations.
Its name expresses the method: Midrash as an active encounter, and X as the unknown point where an ancient text meets a new person, medium or possibility.
At a time when technology can generate more content than any human being could absorb, Midrash X begins with a different question: what kind of content is worth bringing into the world?
For Gedaliah, the answer is content that does more than capture attention. It should deepen attention. It should help people think, connect, remember and grow. It should carry the light of Jewish wisdom into forms capable of travelling through the world today — and remaining alive tomorrow.
This is the thread connecting the teacher, the inventor, the writer and the media creator. Gedaliah does not stand between tradition and the future as if one must be chosen over the other. He brings them into the same room, charges the encounter with curiosity, humour and creative energy, and invites others to enter.
The work is not to dumb down ancient wisdom for the modern world. It is to create the conditions in which the timeless soul can encounter its own fullest depth.