Meet Cohort 3 (Bios & Emails)

Annie Sommer Kaufman (she/her) teaches sewing, Talmud, and Yiddish; sewing at RefugeeOne, where she manages the sewing studio, Talmud at The Lace Midrash, which grew out of her training as a SVARA learner and teacher, and Yiddish at Chicago’s YIVO and Workers’ Circle. Anye is translating an American communist novel to English with the support of The Yiddish Book Center, and serves on the board of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Arielle Tonkin (she/her) is a queer mixed Moroccan and Ashkenazi Jewish artist, educator, and spiritual director based in so-called Berkeley, CA on Ohlone land. Arielle works to dismantle white supremacy through arts & culture work and Jewish and interfaith education work. Arielle weaves relationships, and materializes conversations: the Muslim-Jewish Arts Fellowship, Arts Jam for Social Change, Tzedek Lab, SVARA, and Atiq: Jewish Maker Insititute are among her networks of accountability, collective power, creative collaboration and care. Arielle’s artwork and social practice presences, queers, and form-alizes the belief that healing through relationship can shift the fabric of social space and eventually, one braided thread at a time, shift the structure of the physical world.

Binya Kóatz (she/they) is a sefardi/ashki/moroccan/argentinean/ukranian/french trans jewish torah-lover, who writes poetry, organizes jewish community and sings and dances with her foremothers. she revels in languages, and can’t *believe* the radical gay anarchist tradition she’s been tasked with carrying forth. originally from the alte heim in Queens, she currently resides on Ohlone Land in the East Bay.

Eliana Mastrangelo (she/her) is a compassionate and skilled community organizer, teacher and trainer. She is studying to be a rabbi at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies. Previously, she was a Lead Organizer at Together Colorado, a multi-faith, multi-racial organization committed to placing human dignity and care for creation at the center of public life. Eliana is committed to building the sacred power of organized people fed by a nurturing and agitational Torah. 

Jessica Belasco (she/her) is in her third year of rabbinical study at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where she is focusing on midrash and pastoral care, and is a Wexner Graduate Fellow. On her path to rabbinical school, Jess studied in Jerusalem for three years, as well as at Yeshivat Hadar in New York. Her interests include using Jewish sources to facilitate honest conversations about human and spiritual experience and developing disability-informed readings of Jewish text.

Lev Taylor (he/him) is a 3rd year rabbinic student at Leo Baeck College. Prior to training for the rabbinate, he worked in the charity and education sectors. He has been involved in the anarcho-Diasporist group, Jewdas. He lives in London with comrades who include a newborn baby.

noah ilana (she/they) is a community facilitator, trauma worker, ritual leader, writer, street medic, atypical femme currently living on traditional and unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory. Her 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. They are excited to be part of the sacred tradition of queering text, and are particularly interested in upholding the Torah of Deaf and disabled people. noah co-creates holy space and time in the ever-growing kehillah of which she is part and understands the work of being a Talmud community organizer as one which necessitates right relationship with all those also building liberation for all. When not learning/teaching, they can often be found davenning outside, climbing trees, playing music in the streets, and running (though hopefully not late for beit midrash).

Noah Rubin-Blose (he/him) is a rabbinical student at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Rooted in Durham, NC, the homelands of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, he spent the last fifteen years working as a chef, baker, and community organizer. He is a maker of queer ritual, builder of interfaith coalitions, teacher and facilitator, and lifelong student-participant in Southern movements for racial justice. When he’s not teaching or studying, you can probably find him walking by a river or cooking up something tasty in the kitchen.

Sarit Cantor (they/them) 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.