by Maggid Jhos Singer, SVARA Fellow I’ve been studying with SVARA for a long time—25.806% of my life, to be precise—and for much of that time I was a stalwart grammarphobe. Until one day, in 2016, my face buried in a masechet under the oaks at Queer Talmud Camp, I finally grokked that diacritical dots, […]

by Laynie Soloman, Associate Rosh Yeshiva Y’all know I love Talmud, and there are few things beyond it that captivate me the way that learning does; grabbing my attention and energy for hours on end, helping me enjoy a sense of ‘flow,’ joy, and simultaneous presence and transcendence. Another thing that makes me feel this […]

by R’ Becky Silverstein, SVARA Fellow & Board Chair Somewhere along the way, I internalized the story that to seek comfort, or to be comforted, is both a weakness and a betrayal of the work I try to do to build a more just and equitable world. I came to understand the reality of my […]

by R’ Bronwen Mullin, SVARA faculty Though it’s not the most glittery holiday in the Jewish calendar, Tisha b’Av is an important day for our lineage as SVARA-niks. Tisha b’Av was the day when, for our Option 3-fairy-queen-rabbi- ancestors, the crash was undeniable (remember the crash theory?). In some ways, Tisha b’Av is like the […]

by Laynie Soloman, Associate Rosh Yeshiva *This piece and the Torah behind it has been informed by almost a decade of friendship, chevruta-ship, and learning from & with SVARA Fellow Jess Belasco (b”H, thank G!d!). Over the past 16 months, I have felt over and over and over as though I am entering a new […]

by R’ Hayley Goldstein, SVARA Fellow It seems that no matter what time the sun sets on Friday evening, there is never enough time. It’s a complete mystery how it happens but even at the summer solstice, when Shabbat comes in around 9pm, my partner and I are running around the house scrambling to set […]

by Ayana Morse, Executive Director “When we honor our commitment to each other then our communities will flourish with rain at its proper time, grain, wine, oil, and grass in our fields. When we do not fully commit, we risk the future of our very community. So we call in our community to re-imagine our […]

by R’ Benay Lappe, Rosh Yeshiva Many years ago, my brother Murray gave me a beautiful pewter paperweight with the words “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” etched into the top. It sits on my desk, encouraging me every day to go for it, whatever the “it” might […]

by Julie Batz, SVARA Fellow One of the most powerful moments in a SVARA Bet Midrash happens at the first session of class, just as we are about to begin to study Talmud for the first time. If we’re in person, the facilitator and fairies present a masechet/volume of Talmud to each learner, connecting with […]

by R’ Benay Lappe, Rosh Yeshiva & Dan Libenson, SVARA Board Member At the beginning of his book A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking shares the well-known story of the old woman who raises her hand at the end of a scientist’s lecture on astronomy to declare that the scientist’s theory that the sun […]