By Rabbi Benay Lappe (originally posted in August, 2013) It all started when I bought a toy flour mill for my two-year-old daughter Molly a few weeks before Passover. I was preparing for the tot Shabbat program I lead each month, and, while we usually make challah every month, it was obvious that for our […]

by Rabbi Becky Silverstein, SVARA Fellow With gratitude to Beyn Kodesh l’Chol “Learning for Liberation” Bet Midrash for deepening my understanding of this text. As Passover approaches, many of us are creating or editing haggadot, figuring out if and how we want to engage in virtual seders, making shopping lists, and otherwise preparing for the […]

by Rabbi Benay Lappe in chevruta with Laynie Soloman My chevruta Eddie once told me a story that I’ll never forget. It’s a story his father told him. And, now, it’s a story I’d like to tell you. When Eddie’s father Jay was a teenager, he got a job as a camp counselor at a […]

by Rabbi Mónica Gomery This week, as we all navigate a constantly shifting landscape of change, uncertainty, and global pandemic, SVARA began convening a daily Mishna Collective. It has been incredibly grounding to plug in daily to the diasporic SVARA learning community during such an overwhelming time. The opportunity to move slowly and methodically through […]

by Laynie Soloman Chanukah is filled with miracles—long-lasting surprise pockets of oil, an unexpected military victory, the legacy of zealous resistance in the face of hegemonic powers—but one of the most miraculous aspects of this holiday is how we even came to practice it at all. Many scoff at the popularity of Chanukah, noting its […]

by Rabbi Benay Lappe in chevruta with Laynie Soloman The Jewish new year season tends to have one “star of the show”—teshuva, the practice of recognizing whom we’ve harmed and repairing that harm, addressing where we might have fallen short in becoming the people we want to be, and returning to right relationship with ourselves, […]