Meet the Team

R’ Bronwen Mullin(she/her) – Teacher

Bronwen (ord. 2017, MA Midrash JTS, BA in Theater and Religious Studies, Sarah Lawrence College) is the rabbi of Carov, an independent mishkan with a mission in Jersey City, and was the first-ever appointed Rabbinic Artist-in-Residence of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. She is the co-founder of Meta-Phys Ed with performance artist/director Jesse Freedman. Rabbi Bronwen has held teaching positions at JTS, The Schechter Institute in Jerusalem, The Academy of Jewish Religion in New York, Art Kibbutz New York (where she also served as Artistic Director), the Romemu Yeshiva, the JCC of Manhattan, and the 14th Street Y. She is a SVARA Teaching Fellow.

Selected works include: “Chalom: A Dream Opera” (Hebrew/Aramaic, International Fringe Festival/FringeNYC 2012); “Bat Yiftach: A Tragic Punk Opera” (English/Hebrew, The Kreischer Mansion 2016) and “Ca’asi Revaya: Nigunim For A Raging Heart” (album release Winter 2022). She is deeply proud and humbled at the same time to be on the faculty of SVARA where she gets to practice fully her most beloved art form—radical Judaism.

Noah Rubin-Blose (he/him) – Fairy

Noah is a rabbinical student at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Rooted in Durham, NC, the homelands of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, he spent the last fifteen years working as a chef, baker, and community organizer. He is a maker of queer ritual, builder of interfaith coalitions, teacher and facilitator, and lifelong student-participant in Southern movements for racial justice. When he’s not teaching or studying, you can probably find him walking by a river or cooking up something tasty in the kitchen.

Olivia Devorah Tucker (they/them) – Program Coordinator

Olivia fell in love with Talmud when the local Moishe House asked them to lead a Unicorn themed Shabbat. They couldn’t resist the deep dive into Judaism’s supernatural creatures and have never resurfaced – the books on Jewish myth, magic, and mysticism never make it back to the bookshelf! Olivia sees recovering our ancestral knowledge of angels, demons, dreams interpretation, and the many witchy practices peppered throughout the Talmud, both as exciting gateways to ancient texts and powerful lenses for viewing and healing the world in unconventional ways.

A lifelong Pittsburgher (Shawnee land), they take part in vibrant theatre and leftist Jewish organizing, play tabletop role-playing games, collect queer sci-fi comic books, and bake challah inspired by the weekly Torah portion (“All Challahs Are Beautiful”). They always have their eye out for a machmir Bechdel-Wallace Test pass, especially when it comes to Talmud. Olivia puts trans in translation and the femme in ephemera. Stay hydrated!