by Laynie Soloman, SVARA Faculty Throughout this pandemic, in my learning, in my teaching, and beyond, I keep returning over and over to the same anchoring questions: What does it mean to be a yeshiva during a pandemic? How do we understand our work during a time of upheaval? What is the role of a […]

by Rabbi Benay Lappe, Rosh Yeshiva The Talmud’s goal is to teach us how to tell more liberatory stories, and to help us become the people that we need to become to then live those stories out.  And it does this by creating in the learner an experience of ever-shifting perspective, purposely destabilizing us, training […]

by Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Benay Lappe, in chevruta with R’ Mónica Gomery Every year around this time, as Elul approaches, I begin to think about the weeks and months ahead, and how I’ll make use of this year’s High Holidays to do my teshuva work. While I try to do teshuva on a daily or […]

by R’ Becky Silverstein and Julie Batz, SVARA Fellows & QTC Head Fairies At Queer Talmud Camp this year, campers had access to a virtual portal which included all the information they’d need for camp. In it, one could read these words, under Expectations for Being Together: “SVARA is a home for queer and radical […]

by Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari, Queer Talmud Camp Faculty There is no question we are living through a crash. We are undoubtedly living through many crashes. The collapse of public education; the murder of George Flloyd and Breonna Taylor; the fear and uncertainty of this uncontained deadly virus, rising sea levels and tropical storms. And […]

by Rabbi Lauren Tuchman, SVARA Fellow Nachamu Nachamu ami, “comfort, comfort my people,”— the opening words of the Haftorah from the book of Isaiah, which we will read this Shabbat, ring particularly poignant this year. What does it mean for us to move from a period of mourning, fasting, and solemnity into a prolonged period […]

by Elaina Marshalek, SVARA Fellow Origin stories are powerful. They give names to our ancestors. They lift up voices, honor the courage and power of individual actions, and let us find heroes in our past. In the blur of what movements sometimes can look like, I find power and feel endless gratitude for identifying the […]

by Laynie Soloman What counts as Torah? Who decides? What makes it into the canon, and what remains on the outside, seen as merely a “folk tradition”? These are the questions at the heart of Pirkei Avot, the tractate of the mishnah that we’ve been moving through in the Mishnah Collective’s daily learning.  As a […]

by Rabbi Bronwen Mullin, SVARA Fellow When I became the rabbi of a small congregation in Jersey City’s Greenville neighborhood I thought this would be a transition job in a small city outside of NYC. Truthfully I was feeling disillusioned about being a rabbi at all—I had been forced out of my previous rabbinic position […]

The Revolution Will Not Be Translated by R’ Benay Lappe Last week I watched the Netflix film Disclosure. I’m never going to be the same.  It’s a documentary about trans representation in film and media. Only trans people appear on screen—which is revolutionary in and of itself—but as I watched it, and listened to each […]