Rabbi Haviva Ner-David chronicled her struggles to become an Orthodox woman rabbi in her celebrated book Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination (2000), before finally achieving her dream in 2006. Born Haviva Krasner-Davidson, Ner-David applied to Yeshiva University’s rabbinical program in 1993 but never received a response from the university. Undeterred, she wrote about her aspiration to the rabbinate in her book Life on the Fringes, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in 2000, and earned a PhD in Talmud from Bar Ilan University in 2006. That year, she was granted private ordination by Rabbi Aryeh Strikovsky, making her one of the first Orthodox women to claim the mantle of rabbi. She went on to become director of Mikveh Shmaya, the Masorti mikveh at the Hannaton Educational Center in the Galilee. In 2016 she was re-ordained by the One Spirit Interfaith-Interspiritual Seminary as a post-denominational inter-spiritual rabbi. In 2014 she published Chana’s Voice: A Rabbi Struggles with Gender, Commitment, and the Women’s Rituals of Baking, Bathing, and Brightening. She is the author of five other books covering a range of topics, including one book for children. Her short story “Blame” won the 2016 Lilith magazine short fiction contest.