It’s Just a Story
by Jhos Singer
We are, worldwide, at the threshold of two dramatic seasons supercharged by climate change. Here on the Pacific Coast in the Northern Hemisphere, summer is soon to yield her tempestuous…
Hot Off the Shtender
Mindful Returning
Elul is a month of doing. As we get ready for the world to be reborn, Hamelech ba’sadeh, they say: The king is in the field. The Aybishter leaves their…
Sharpened, Not Erased
1. On his thirtieth birthday, September 11, 1933, Theodor Adorno’s right to teach was revoked. The German term is venia legendi, the permission to read. Not permission to hold an…
Your Body Is A Temple: On Fasting, Transition, and Corporeal Co-Creation
by Binya Kóatz
Content warning: The topics in the subtitle will be heavily discussed. I remember the exact moment, many years ago, when I encountered this drash nestled in a corner of my…
The Origins We Imagine
It’s happening, y’all. As I write this piece, all of us here at SVARA are getting ready to gather at Queer Talmud Camp—the loving, rigorous, radical, and magical space that…
M’Ematai: An Invitation to Return to Each Other
by Lior Gross
Gemirna Kollel I Reflections With thanks to our teachers and our teachers’ teachers who convey and draw out Torah like water from our ancestors’ wells, and to the One who…
Only For Now
On a hot afternoon about 12 years ago, I was sitting on the red line heading from the north side of Chicago to downtown, a place Chicagoans refer to as…
People of the Cookbook
by Jhos Singer
I’m dedicating this piece to the memories of Baruch ben Baruch, Harry Shaich, Ursula Batz, and Mary Lou Johnson It is spring. The Northern Hemisphere is lurching away from the…
When the Arc Feels So Alive
by Julie Batz
Julie Batz (she/her) is a longtime SVARA faculty member who has accompanied many of our learners through Queer Talmud Camp, Queer Talmud for Beginners Mind, and our Open Bet Midrash…
What Do the Stammaim Want?
At SVARA, we often assert a belief that the Talmud was woven together. The metaphor of weaving implies both the presence of different pieces, as well as the presence of…
Let’s Boogie!
This past shabbes, I read The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. Only a few pages into the introduction I found myself…
Libation and Liberation
by Binya Kóatz
In this drash, I want to talk about wine, Purim and Passover, and how all of those connect to liberation in our time. But to do so properly, we first…