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Each book uses a traditional storytelling structure — lyrics, midrash, folk tales — while pushing at the edges of what a form can contain, cramming it with modern human concerns, triumphs and tragedies.

The commissions will begin later this year with a beit midrash, or study period, for the writers, spearheaded by Sabrina Sojourner — herself a Jew of color who serves as a Rockville, Md.-based community chaplain promoting diversity and inclusion among Jewish people.

Rather, he did what great exponents of Midrash have done for centuries: He used the Bible as a canvas on which to paint new images, ideas and interpretations; metaphors for the age in which he lived.

Herzfeld spoke during a recent a tour through the 1,300-square-foot Northwest Washington house being renovated to be the yeshiva, where there are bedrooms for students to live, a massive basement of books and an open backyard being transformed into Reb Elimelech’s core Torah study room, in Hebrew called a beit midrash.

Take Rabbi Buechler, who in 2011 started Midrash Manicures, which makes nail decals customized for Jewish holidays — plagues for Passover, tiny shofars for Rosh Hashana, scales of justice for Yom Kippur.