by Rabbi Bronwen Mullin, SVARA Faculty I like to think that our fairy-Rabbi-ancestors would have been proud to watch their descendants witness the nomination of the Honorable Ketanji Brown Jackson to the United States Supreme Court. Much of the coverage of this moment has focused on Judge Jackson herself: her identity as a Black woman, […]

by Ayana Morse, Executive Director Back in the fall, I found myself on the sidelines of baseball training for my oldest kiddo. The head coach in the league was attempting to corral a group of energetic 9-11-year-olds into a circle. He was yelling at them to come together, to listen to each other, and work […]

by R’ Elliot Kukla, SVAVA Faculty When my grandma Lily was dying, she traveled through time back to her childhood. Lily survived the Holocaust, as well as years of hiding, fleeing, loss, illness, pain, and relocation in mid-life. The grandmother I knew in old age was stiffened by scar tissue. She struggled with my trans […]

by R’ Melanie Levav, SVAVA Board Member Between the war in Ukraine, anti-trans legislation in Texas, the end of mask mandates that protected our most vulnerable, “don’t say gay” to a young kid in Florida, and God only knows what else, it feels like once again, the world has literally turned upside down.  In Russia, […]

by Elaina Marshalek, Director of Programs This week (and in countless weeks before), I watched people who hold tremendous power do tremendously terrible things. With heinous anti-trans and anti-queer legislation proliferating in the United States – alongside the wars in Ukraine and around the world – I see my comrades cycling through hopelessness, calls to […]

by Laynie Soloman, Associate Rosh Yeshiva “Halakha is so rigid!” “Judaism is all about binaries.” “In Jewish tradition, it’s either one or the other.” I often hear these claims in Jewish spaces, and they reveal an assumption that non-binary thinking is discordant with our tradition.  Somewhere, somehow, a very successful public relations campaign promoting binary […]

by Maggid Jhos Singer, SVARA Fellow and Founder of QueerCore Talmud JCCSF I grew up on a scrappy strip of Southern California beach. As a kid in the 1960s, I spent hours on end walking up and down the boardwalk.  On a warm and sunny day around 1968, my 10ish-year-old self was skipping along that […]

by Rabbi Becky Silverstein and Laynie Soloman, co-Directors of the Trans Halakha Project Halakha is all about questions: What’s the blessing to be said in response to this particular experience? What counts as “taste”? When does evening truly begin? And ultimately, how can I express myself authentically through sacred Jewish language? Asking questions and developing […]

by Elaina Marshalek, Director of Programs & SVARA Fellow I was easily in the bottom of the class in my graduate engineering program. I remember one seminar-style class in particular where we’d rotate reviewing and sharing academic papers of mathematical proofs. We worked in pairs. My partner and I, comrades at the bottom, spent hours […]

by R’ Hayley Goldstein, SVARA Fellow It was a freezing, albeit sunny, Ithaca day. I had invited members of my community to brave the January cold to learn about wild foraging in honor of Tu b’Shvat. I couldn’t feel my toes so I ripped open a couple of hand-warming packs, shook them vigorously to get […]