An open house of study, online and around the corner: classes from leading rabbis, minyanim and prayer times, and a live map of in-person classes in your own neighbourhood - with registration built in.
Torah content today is scattered between YouTube, WhatsApp groups and notices on a synagogue board. Someone looking for a class can't find out what's on this week in their own neighbourhood, and a rabbi who wants to spread a class depends on platforms that were never built for him.
Midrash.live joins the two worlds in one product: a curated video library and a live map of the physical community - classes, synagogues, minyanim and prayer times - with a studio that lets every rabbi run his own page.
The mark is a Torah scroll with a play button where the text would be - the whole idea in one shape: the oldest way of learning, opened like a video. The whole palette is derived from it: one blue family from its three tones - periwinkle for the parchment, techelet for the rollers, the deep azure of the tzitzit thread, and indigo for the arrow. In the wordmark, מידרש is light and חי is heavy, and the words lean together, because Hebrew has no true italic.
Symbol and logotype, in black, in white and in colour. In one colour, the arrow is cut out of the panel.
One hue family taken from the logo, so the interface never competes with the content.
Hebrew first, with English set in the same faces.
What separates this from a video site. An in-person class is an event with a place, a time, an audience and a registration, so it has its own data model rather than being squeezed into a video. The list and the calendar are two views of the same events, filtered by the same location.
A class page answers the three questions that decide attendance - where, when, and is it for me - and ends in a registration form, not a share button. Synagogues get their own search: pick a city and a nusach and see today's minyanim, with times worked out for the day - a minyan set to “20 minutes before sunset” moves with the sun.
Every rabbi gets a channel with the sections he chooses to show - videos, shorts, melodies, schedule and about. The rabbi controls what appears, so someone who only teaches Daf Yomi doesn't get a page full of empty tabs.
Short-form for the commute, a children's area with its own tone, and Midrash+ - an optional membership, “all of the Torah, without interruptions”, that funds the platform.
Classes are shared as links in WhatsApp groups, so mobile is the primary layout, not a squeeze of the desktop one: a bottom tab bar for the five things people come for - home, rabbis, classes, live and synagogues - and the search right under the thumb.
A page written for rabbis walks through the platform screen by screen and ends in a meeting calendar. The mark is a Torah scroll with a play button where the text would be, and the whole interface takes one indigo family from that logo - in light and dark.
