What Does This Mean and Who Does It Serve
When we learn in the SVARA method, we begin with chevruta, a relational practice rooted in listening to and learning with and from a peer. It is here that we…
Hot Off the Shtender
Our Original Dream
by Benay Lappe
WOW, this week was a big one! After years of dreaming, planning, sketching, erasing, doing, undoing, rethinking, and dreaming some more, the SVARA faculty welcomed 28 students into the Gemirna…
From the End to the Beginning
Earlier this week, I got to experience one of my favorite moments of the year: chanting the last line of D’varim and the first line of B’reshit in a single…
You’ve Got a Friend
by Jhos Singer
Sukkot is upon us, with its promise that our species might find a little spiritual strength by intentionally dining, entertaining, and even sleeping outdoors in a flimsy, handmade fort with…
Something About How I Became A Rabbi
Photo by Joe Vaughn When I was thirteen, my mother Lynne pulled me out of Jewish day school because, in her words, she was afraid I was going to become…
A “Break” From Learning
As I return from my sabbatical, the nuanced, interconnected web of teaching and learning is on my heart. Over these past few months, I did some teaching and learning in…
Making the Daf Daf-y
During the month of Elul, my attention begins to turn toward the High Holy Days and the ways our tradition draws us into cycles and repetitions. There is beauty and…
More Than Mishnah
by Ren Finkel
In the wake of the COVID lockdowns of 2020, SVARA launched a daily learning experiment to help sustain our community with Torah. That experiment became the Mishnah Collective—and while I…
Pay Attention
So much of the medicine that is the SVARA method comes through its reliance on paying attention. When the news cycles through novel and terrible wonders more quickly than we…
A New Song For Tisha b’Av
I wrote a new song for Tisha b’Av this year, and even more so for the Three Weeks of grief and mourning, leading up to that greatest day of calamity…
Daf Shenati: Talmud at the Speed of Truth
by Benay Lappe
There’s this talmudic concept that’s often thrown around in Jewish learning spaces (not at SVARA!) that has rubbed me the wrong way ever since I first heard it decades ago:…
Remember To Forget
by Jhos Singer
To heal ourselves, we have to actively remember what to forget and not forget what we must remember. It’s summer in Northern California, where the weather will do as it…