Finding My Possibility Model
It is hard, nay impossible, to adequately capture the feelings that came over me when I learned about the passing…
Hot Off the Shtender
How We Question
I like to think that our fairy-Rabbi-ancestors would have been proud to watch their descendants witness the nomination of the…
Culture, Care, and Our Shared Definitions of SVARA
by Ayana Morse
Back in the fall, I found myself on the sidelines of baseball training for my oldest kiddo. The head coach…
Sacred Time Travel: Crip Time, Queer Time, and Torah Time
by Elliot Kukla
When my grandma Lily was dying, she traveled through time back to her childhood. Lily survived the Holocaust, as well…
Reading Megillah As An Invitation to Take Action
by R’ Melanie Levav, SVAVA Board Member Between the war in Ukraine, anti-trans legislation in Texas, the end of mask…
In Wisdom, in Numbers: Changing the Outcome With Collective Power
This week (and in countless weeks before), I watched people who hold tremendous power do tremendously terrible things. With heinous…
Halakha Beyond the Binary
“Halakha is so rigid!” “Judaism is all about binaries.” “In Jewish tradition, it’s either one or the other.” I often…
Finding Our Way
by Jhos Singer
I grew up on a scrappy strip of Southern California beach. As a kid in the 1960s, I spent hours…
Halakha as Communal Practice: Launching the Teshuva-Writing Collective
Halakha is all about questions: What’s the blessing to be said in response to this particular experience? What counts as…
Finding Strength at the Edge of Understanding
I was easily in the bottom of the class in my graduate engineering program. I remember one seminar-style class in…
Unlocking the Language of the Universe
It was a freezing, albeit sunny, Ithaca day. I had invited members of my community to brave the January cold…
Celebrating a Gemara-versary
For me and Talmud, it was love at first sight. Like Yentl, I remember walking through a crowded room of…