by R’ Melanie Levav, SVAVA Board Member Between the war in Ukraine, anti-trans legislation in Texas, the end of mask mandates that protected our most vulnerable, “don’t say gay” to a young kid in Florida, and God only knows what else, it feels like once again, the world has literally turned upside down.  In Russia, […]

by Elaina Marshalek, Director of Programs This week (and in countless weeks before), I watched people who hold tremendous power do tremendously terrible things. With heinous anti-trans and anti-queer legislation proliferating in the United States – alongside the wars in Ukraine and around the world – I see my comrades cycling through hopelessness, calls to […]

by Laynie Soloman, Associate Rosh Yeshiva “Halakha is so rigid!” “Judaism is all about binaries.” “In Jewish tradition, it’s either one or the other.” I often hear these claims in Jewish spaces, and they reveal an assumption that non-binary thinking is discordant with our tradition.  Somewhere, somehow, a very successful public relations campaign promoting binary […]

by Maggid Jhos Singer, SVARA Fellow and Founder of QueerCore Talmud JCCSF I grew up on a scrappy strip of Southern California beach. As a kid in the 1960s, I spent hours on end walking up and down the boardwalk.  On a warm and sunny day around 1968, my 10ish-year-old self was skipping along that […]

by Rabbi Becky Silverstein and Laynie Soloman, co-Directors of the Trans Halakha Project Halakha is all about questions: What’s the blessing to be said in response to this particular experience? What counts as “taste”? When does evening truly begin? And ultimately, how can I express myself authentically through sacred Jewish language? Asking questions and developing […]

by Elaina Marshalek, Director of Programs & SVARA Fellow I was easily in the bottom of the class in my graduate engineering program. I remember one seminar-style class in particular where we’d rotate reviewing and sharing academic papers of mathematical proofs. We worked in pairs. My partner and I, comrades at the bottom, spent hours […]

by R’ Hayley Goldstein, SVARA Fellow It was a freezing, albeit sunny, Ithaca day. I had invited members of my community to brave the January cold to learn about wild foraging in honor of Tu b’Shvat. I couldn’t feel my toes so I ripped open a couple of hand-warming packs, shook them vigorously to get […]

by Laynie Soloman, Associate Rosh Yeshiva For me and Talmud, it was love at first sight. Like Yentl, I remember walking through a crowded room of learners that was loud and buzzing with a sense of organized chaos. I sat at the table, across from my chevruta, opened up the masechet that I had purchased […]

by Elaina Marshalek, SVARA Fellow & Director of Programs At SVARA, we know that we are players. That means it is our role to take the skills of the rabbis— their bold, creative, drash-filled tools—to interpret our text (and our life) toward a more just and liberatory world. And yet, all too often, when I […]

by Ayana Morse, Executive Director It’s not uncommon in meetings on Team SVARA for someone to say at some point, “There are no Talmud emergencies.” Usually, it’s in reference to shifting timelines for a project or to ease away from imagined urgency. It tends to bring about a good chuckle. But just as underneath that […]