Meet the Team

Elaina Marshalek (she/her) – Teacher

Elaina loves studying Talmud, and likes to color code her daf in full rainbow. She recently returned from studying for a year at Yeshivat Hadar in New York, where she taught Talmud out of her living room in Brooklyn. She is excited to continue experimenting with “lay teaching” with SVARA, and to help support the vibrant learning community in her forever home of the Bay Area. When she’s not studying, Elaina works as Director of Strategy for UCSF Health.

noa g.e. (she/they) – Fairy

noa is a community facilitator, trauma worker, ritual leader, writer, street medic, atypical femme currently living on traditional and unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory. noa’s approach to the Teaching Kollel is bound up in a commitment to honour a covenant of radically just, diasporic Judaism, and a deep desire to uplift the holiness in the struggle. noa is excited to be part of the sacred tradition of queering text, and is particularly interested in upholding the Torah of Deaf and disabled people.

Sarit Cantor (they/them) – Fairy

Sarit is a community builder, artist, ritual leader, grief tender, prison abolitionist, off-the-derech femme. They are approaching the Teaching Kollel with a commitment to weave justice work with the work of the sacred. They see the Talmud as a direct connection to ancestral conversations that inform so much of what it means to be a diasporic Jew and they are excited to bring a thriving relationship with these holy texts into their life’s work. Sarit currently lives in Tkaronto/Toronto, Canada, where they write, teach, organize, pray, study, conspire & dream toward our collective liberation.

Olivia Devorah Tucker (they/them) – Program Coordinator

Olivia fell in love with Talmud when the local Moishe House asked them to lead a Unicorn themed Shabbat. They couldn’t resist the deep dive into Judaism’s supernatural creatures and have never resurfaced – the books on Jewish myth, magic, and mysticism never make it back to the bookshelf! Olivia sees recovering our ancestral knowledge of angels, demons, dreams interpretation, and the many witchy practices peppered throughout the Talmud, both as exciting gateways to ancient texts and powerful lenses for viewing and healing the world in unconventional ways.

A lifelong Pittsburgher (Shawnee land), they take part in vibrant theatre and leftist Jewish organizing, play tabletop role-playing games, collect queer sci-fi comic books, and bake challah inspired by the weekly Torah portion (“All Challahs Are Beautiful”). They always have their eye out for a machmir Bechdel-Wallace Test pass, especially when it comes to Talmud. Olivia puts trans in translation and the femme in ephemera. Stay hydrated!