Mishnah Collective

Ren Finkel (they/them) is a multimedia artist, community organizer, and student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia. They’re a part of the Pittsburgh diaspora, where they majored in Photojournalism, first learned about anti-capitalism, and were brought back to Jewish practice. They are deeply committed to healing work and restorative justice. After a summer at Queer Talmud Camp, studying ancestral Jewish text has become the heart of their spiritual practice. They tend to study Talmud with a 2:1 ratio of respect to irreverence. In their spare time, they like to make Sefaria source sheets, specifically about how gay certain Talmudic Rabbis are, specifically Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish—and all they need is one line of Berakhot to prove that Rabbi Gamliel was a twink who believed in disability justice. They are incredibly excited to be working on the Mishnah Collective and hope that the text may provide us with a semblance of sense and solace in such uncertain times.

Rabbi Becky Silverstein (he/him) | SVARA Fellow. Becky believes in the power of community, Torah, and silliness in transforming the world. He is passionate about creating and participating in spaces that celebrate queer lives and are explicitly anti-racist. Becky is the founder and rabbi of Beyn Kodesh l’Chol, an emergent Jewish project in Jamaica Plain, MA. Becky loves most things SVARA learning, is a SVARA Fellow, and is chair of SVARA’s Board of Directors. He also chairs the board The Jewish Studio Project, and sits on Keshet’s board, where he is the chair of the Racial Justice Team. Becky finds joy in being a dad, working out, and connecting with loved ones. He grew up in Great Neck, New York, holds a B.S. in Engineering from Smith College and Rabbinic Ordination from the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College. Becky lives in Jamaica Plain, MA with his spouse, Naomi, and their kiddo, Edie Gefen. (SVARA Fellow, Cohort 1)

Rabbi Benay Lappe (she/her) | SVARA Faculty, Rosh Yeshiva. Benay is the Founder and Rosh Yeshiva of SVARA. Ordained by The Jewish Theological Seminary in 1997, Benay is an award-winning educator specializing in the application of queer theory to Talmud study. Benay was named to Jewrotica’s Sexiest Rabbis List of 2013 (and is a little embarrassed about that but also a little tickled), The Forward’s 2014 List of Most Inspiring Rabbis, is a Joshua Venture Fellow, a recipient of the prestigious 2016 Covenant Award for excellence and innovation in Jewish education, and was named to The Forward’s 2018 list of Sexiest Jewish Intellectuals Alive (and is both tickled and embarrassed again, and also more sheepish about the intellectual part than the sexy part). While learning and teaching Talmud are her greatest passions, Benay is also a licensed pilot, shoemaker, and patent-holding inventor. Queer Talmud Camp is Benay’s Happy Place and the highlight of her year! (SVARA Faculty, Rosh Yeshiva)

Elaina Marshalek (she/her) | SVARA Fellow. Elaina loves to color code her daf (page of Talmud) in full rainbow. She is hungry to help uncover the Torah and wisdom that y’all SVARA-niks carry and is excited to be back at camp! Elaina was born, raised, schooled, and still resides in the Bay Area, Ohlone territory. She has a background in math, forestry, and organizational transformation, and currently works as Director of Strategy for UCSF Health. She is excited to continue experimenting with “lay teaching” with SVARA and to support the rad, vibrant learning community at her home and beyond.

Frankie Sandmel (they/them) | SVARA Fellow. Frankie is an educator, community organizer, and rabbinical student in Boston, MA. They are originally from the Chicago area where they learned to love teaching, Talmud, and teaching Talmud while working and studying at SVARA and the Jewish Enrichment Center. Now on their way to becoming a rabbi, Frankie continues to teach students of all ages, to organize the Jewish community towards justice, and to bake cookies whenever possible.

Maggid Jhos Singer (he/him) | SVARA Fellow. Jhos is a professional Jewish educator, community and congregational leader, writer, and speaker. He is an out transman, a parent, spouse, mixologist and skillful home chef. He relishes his time spent in Jewish text study, hiking, and facilitating spiritual experiences for his flock and students. His credentials include Maggidic ordination by fire, smoke, song, stick,and sea conferred by Rabbi Gershon Winkler in 2002, and just to be safe, he holds an MA in Jewish Studies from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkelely, CA (2012). He is stupid in love with Head Fairy Julie Batz, to whom he is gratefully married.

Laynie Soloman (they/them) | SVARA Faculty. Laynie is a passionate teacher of Jewish text and thought, and they believe deeply in the power of Talmud study as a healing and liberatory spiritual practice. They love facilitating Jewish learning that uplifts the piously irreverent, queer, and subversive spirit of rabbinic text and theology. Laynie holds a M.A. in Jewish Education from The Jewish Theological Seminary, is a Schusterman Fellow (Cohort 5), and received the Covenant Foundation’s 2020 Pomegranate Prize for Emerging Jewish Educators. Laynie is an Ashkenazi third generation Philadelphian, and when they’re not learning Talmud, you can find Laynie reading about liberation theology, collecting comic books, and singing nigunim.

Rabbi Hayley Goldstein (she/her) is just your average frum, queer, rabbinical student from Minnesota. Though she has studied Talmud in a dozen different settings, she fell in love with Talmud when learning from a queer teacher in a queer beit midrash at Svara’s Queer Talmud Camp in Wisconsin. She is a passionate Jewish educator who’s experiences range from teaching 2nd graders Aleph-Bet Yoga in a Brooklyn classroom, to feeding goats with 7th graders at Ramah of the Rockies in Colorado, to teaching chassidus in the woods to teens, and more. Hayley’s other passions include, but are not limited to: acapella, puppeteering, pottery, cooking, yoga, and her fat, glorious cat, Yossi.

Rabbi Lauren Tuchman (she/her) received rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2018 and is, as far as she is aware, the first blind woman in the world to enter the rabbinate. A sought after speaker, spiritual leader and educator, Rabbi Tuchman has taught at numerous synagogues and other Jewish venues throughout North America and was named to the Jewish Week’s 36 under 36 for her innovative leadership concerning inclusion of Jews with disabilities in all aspects of Jewish life.

Rabbi Bronwen Mullin (she/her) (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.

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.