The Talmud tells us that in order to shape Jewish tradition, one needs both gemirna (rigorous learning) and sevirna (deep moral intuition). At SVARA, we believe that people who have navigated the world from the margins often carry an essential kind of sevirna: a deeper capacity to sense injustice, imagine alternatives, and hold complexity. As Judaism — and the world — continues its ongoing crash, we are responding not only with more learning, but with learning for those whose insights are critical to the future of our tradition, and have too often been excluded. By pairing deep immersion in Talmud with the wisdom unique to marginalized people, we cultivate leaders equipped to build a more just, compassionate, and liberatory Jewish tradition.
With tremendous excitement for our next cohort of the Gemirna Kollel, we encourage all applicants to read the full program description and course details before beginning their application.
The Gemirna Kollel is a multi-year, multi-level intensive Talmud study program designed to give students the learning they need to build the Judaism that we all need. As our world unravels and new expressions of Judaism take shape, the Gemirna Kollel offers students an opportunity to respond to rupture with a skillful command of our tradition and the courage to use it. Through immersive Talmud study, students gain the ability to navigate complex texts while building confidence, creativity, and grounding to build Jewish futures that are rooted in our past and responsive to the present.
Across multiple levels, the Gemirna Kollel offers a pathway for students to develop the skills needed to read, translate, and interpret Talmud in the SVARA Method. Students will gain deep proficiencies in the language and structures of a sugya, with close attention to historical layers, rabbinic logic, and the sources that have propelled our tradition forward for millenia. Alongside this text work, students will engage in the ongoing spiritual practice of learning in chevruta, in community, and in relationship with the tradition as a living, breathing conversation.
The Kollel structure includes two two-hour shiurim and at least four hours of chevruta study each week, offering a rhythm of rigorous engagement and spacious reflection. Faculty support students at each of four levels as they dig into each word of the text, and as they uncover the chidushim—insights and innovations—that emerge from their own experiences, questions, and moral intuitions. Eventually, students will be ready to create their own Torah—writing, teaching, interpreting, and crafting new elements of the tradition, from rituals to holidays to practices to sacred objects, and beyond, that will be deeply responsive to the world around them.
We believe that Talmud study is a transformative, relational, and liberatory practice. At a time of profound upheaval in Jewish life and the wider world, we need interpreters and leaders who can engage our tradition with courage, integrity, and depth. The Gemirna Kollel is for those already dreaming and building the practices, rituals, and ideas that will carry us forward—and who want to do so with greater skill, depth, precision, and connection. This is not a program for those who simply want to “take another class”—it’s for those ready to step into the joyful, rigorous work of becoming more gemirna in service of building a tradition that will ground us in the present and guide us into an expansive future.
Admission is by application only, and admitted students will be placed in the appropriate level by the SVARA faculty. Each level can be taken on its own, and those wishing to pursue advanced study—including the possibility of ordination—may be invited into continued learning beyond Talmud III at the discretion of the Rosh Yeshiva.
Applications for the Gemirna Kollel must be submitted by Monday, May 25. After reviewing applications, our faculty admissions team will invite applicants to a brief learning session and diagnostic. If you haven’t learned with SVARA previously, we highly encourage you to connect with one of our faculty members for a discovery call before applying.
For the 2026-2027 academic year, we are offering Talmud I, Talmud II, and Talmud III to those who are accepted into the Gemirna Kollel.
Schedule: 2–4 pm ET on Mondays and Thursdays, October 19–May 20, with an additional 4 hours of chevruta per week
Total time commitment per week: 8+ hours
Prerequisites: Completion of multi-session SVARA-method course(s) at SVARA or taught by a SVARA-trained Fellow. Prior participation in Queer Talmud for Beginners Mind or Queer Talmud Camp are strongly recommended.
In Talmud I, students will develop the ability to learn towards deep understanding and embodiment of the text. Students will learn to translate and interpret talmudic texts for themselves, and gain fluency with the characteristic structures, agendas, and historical layers of a sugya. Exploring multiple sugyot through the SVARA Method over the course of the year, students will learn to read talmudic texts below their surface content, accessing SVARA’s revolutionary orientation to Talmud as a manual for the radical transformation of the tradition.
Incoming students are expected to:
- Have practiced learning in the four steps of the SVARA Method
- Consistently identify prefixes and suffixes and break down most words to their roots in chevruta
- Correctly pronounce Hebrew words in vocalized texts and be attentive to vowels when they are provided in a dictionary or by a teacher
- Confidently navigate the Jastrow and Frank dictionaries and come to shiur having looked up every word of an assigned text
In Talmud I, you will:
- Learn to translate, analyze, and interpret Talmud along with Rashi’s commentary, with clarity and precision
- Practice liberatory chevruta that deepens both personal and collective learning
- Understand the core structures, logic, voices, and sources that shape a sugya
- Experience and learn to utilize the Talmud as a guide for radical transformation
- Claim your role as an interpreter and shaper of tradition
Students may enroll in Talmud I more than once to complete learning goals.
Schedule: 2–4 pm ET on Mondays and Thursdays, October 19–May 20, with an additional 4 hours of chevruta per week
Total time commitment per week: 8+ hours
Prerequisites: Completion of multi-session SVARA-method course(s) at SVARA or taught by a SVARA-trained Fellow. Prior participation in Queer Talmud for Beginners Mind or Queer Talmud Camp are strongly recommended.
Talmud II is for students who have built a strong foundation in the SVARA Method and are ready to level up. Students will encounter more complex sugyot and sharpen their interpretive instincts to be able to independently surface and analyze the stamma’s radical agenda and become shapers of the tradition. You’ll continue to work in chevruta and share out your insights, but with more autonomy and new interpretive tools.
In addition to the skills outlined in Talmud I, incoming students are expected to:
- Arrive to shiur with a confident working vocalization and inside translation of the majority of the Hebrew they encounter (including: identifying the person, number, gender, and tense of any Hebrew word, recognizing the meaning of all Hebrew binyanim)
- read Rashi script
In Talmud II, you will:
- Learn to map out the structure, flow, and agenda of a sugya
- Use historical and cultural contexts as interpretive tools
- Recognize and demonstrate the innovative, creative, responsive elements of rabbinic interpretation
- Develop confidence in your own interpretations
- Read and translate a sugya in chevruta
- Gain confidence in your best guesses at inside and outside translations
Schedule: 2–4 pm ET on Mondays and Thursdays, October 19–May 20, with an additional 4 hours of chevruta per week
Total time commitment per week: 8+ hours
Prerequisites: Completion of Talmud II or the SVARA Teaching Kollel. Applicants with comparable experience in the SVARA method are encouraged to reach out to Laynie ([email protected]).
Talmud III takes learners beyond the daf into the wide range of the Talmud’s subsequent interpretations by commentators. Students who are already comfortable translating sugyot independently (with a chevruta) will learn various tools for how to track down and decode these comments, and will familiarize themselves with the various literary genres in which they appear. We will study Rishonim with an eye towards empowerment, understanding that by “owning” a text we become active shapers of it instead of passive recipients. Bringing this orientation to our study of commentators, we will ask: How can we learn Rishonim in ways that make us more in touch with our own interpretive power? How can we learn Rishonim in ways that make us feel like active agents of tradition?
In Talmud III, you will:
- Develop facility with the tools that can aid in the study of Rishonim—including those on the daf and in the masechet
- Read, translate, and interpret comments from Rishonim, critically engaging with the innovative spirit of Talmud commentary
- Become familiar with key Rishonim and be able to place them within their cultural/geographic contexts and learning lineages
- Identify the various literary genres generated by Rishonim, and appreciate the creative, multi-vocal discourse that builds on the Talmud’s foundation
- Use comments from Rishonim to enhance and complicate the structure and meaning of a sugya, including enhancing your own interpretations
More information
A timeline of what to expect once you apply.
Applications for the Gemirna Kollel must be submitted by Monday, May 25. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and you should expect to hear back from our Faculty within 4 weeks of submitting your application. At that time, those selected to advance to the next stage of the application process will receive an invitation to participate in a short learning session with a Faculty member.
If you haven’t learned with SVARA previously, we highly encourage you to connect with one of our faculty members for a discovery call before applying.
SVARA is committed to financial accessibility for our students.
Tuition for Gemirna Kollel is pay-what-you-can. We firmly believe that our learning spaces are better when they include participants from varying socioeconomic backgrounds, and we strive to make Gemirna Kollel financially accessible for all.
Tuition covers a portion of the cost of program design, implementation and facilitation. The bottom of our recommended tuition scale reflects the “hard costs” of our program, which include the cost of synchronous teaching hours, materials, accessibility services, and core program operations. The top of our sliding scale reflects the “true cost” of our program, which includes all the hard costs as well as curriculum design, teacher preparation, evaluation, and year-round administrative support.
Tuition for the Gemirna Kollel is offered on a sliding scale from $3,000-$8,750. You may choose a tuition amount on, below, or above the recommended range.
We strive to make learning at SVARA empowering and comfortable for everyone. All of our learning spaces follow our accessibility protocols and aspire to our community norms.
We are committed to ensuring that learning at SVARA is broadly and specifically accessible for our students. The application forms we use for the Gemirna Kollel include places to designate any access needs you may have, which are always held alongside the following accessibility norms:
Print and Digital Materials
We produce digital and print materials to support learning at SVARA, using a 13-point font size and 8.5 × 11” paper sizes. Enlarged SVARA materials use a 20-point font size. Materials that come from Hebrew texts or reference books are enlarged to 11 × 17. SVARA’s digital materials are designed to be accessible with screen readers.
Many of our learners and teachers use a Magnabrite magnifying glass to help increase the size and clarity of the printing. We also recommend this magnifier with two flat edges, which can fit in closer to the inner binding of a book.
Timing and Breaks
We learn for 1.5-2 hours at a time on Zoom. There is a break scheduled for all learners during 2-hour shiurim. At all times, you are welcome to sit, stand, lay down, stretch, get a snack, drink some water, and take breaks according to your own needs. Please do what you need to do to take care of your body and yourself.
Live Captions
All full-group learning will be live-captioned by our captioning team, and all Zoom rooms support automatic integrated live-captioning. At various moments throughout our sessions, we may make use of breakout groups for chevruta (one-on-one learning) and smaller group discussion spaces of 3-6 people. Upon registration, you will be asked if you would like your chevruta and breakout groups to be captioned by one of the members of our captioning team.
Video Settings
We ask that all students avoid using virtual backgrounds or blurred backgrounds, as these types of backgrounds can trigger migraines. If you need to make specific plans to be in a place where your background can be visible, please do so.