Dates & Time:
Tuesdays, October 29th through December 17th
8-9:30pm ET | 7-8:30pm CT | 5-6:30pm PT
Teacher: Laynie Soloman and Amir Starr Weg
Fairy: Ma’ayan Seligsohn
Zoom Link: Access shiur here! (Meeting ID: 850 7021 5855)
Course Type: Chevruta + Shiur
About this Bet Midrash: What are the limits of consent in a world of coercion? In this sugya, the Rabbis explore notions of individual autonomy and rabbinic authority through case studies of selling personal property and marriage. In this shiur, we’ll look at how the Rabbis use (and create!) various interpretive tools to grapple with unjust transactions and explore the implications of their approach for us today. This is a juicy mix of Hebrew and Aramaic, and is perfect for anyone eager to deepen their Aramaic and add new frameworks to their lexicon of radical rabbinic “moves.”
Content note: This text contains some explicit misogynist themes about women being coerced into marriage in the time of the Rabbis.
Learners are expected to meet in chevruta for 1-1.5 hours each week in addition to shiur.
If at any point you’re feeling lost or could use an extra boost, reach out to Laynie, Amir, or Ma’ayan. You can also grab time in fairy hours where our team is available to connect one-on-one and offer support for your learning or whatever’s on your mind.
This portal should have all of the goodies you need as we navigate our online learning together! Use the menu on the left to help you find what you’re looking for. We’ll add more content as we get closer to our start date.
This shiur is specifically designed to support you in deepening your practice of learning in chevruta. As such, you and your chevruta will meet for a spacious chunk of time before each shiur to prepare the material for the upcoming session (SVARA-style, of course! For a reminder about SVARA-method learning and the steps you and your chevruta should take, check out “How to Learn SVARA-Style”). When we meet for our shiur, we’ll unpack the text, and then you’ll bring those insights back into your chevruta for chazarah, then move on to the new material.
Here’s a reminder about the flow of our learning:
Questions? Comments? Confusions? Hit up Fairy Hours here to connect with a Fairy or Faculty member to help you and your chevruta get unstuck.
We will be learning from Masechet Bava Batra, dapim 47b-48b. We will provide you with a full masechet (volume of Talmud) if you do not have one already, and we provide enlarged copies of the dapim (pages) upon request. Additionally, a digital copy of our dapim is available in this portal. We recommend learning from printed materials whenever possible—whether that is a full printed masechet or a print-out of the digital daf.
If you have any questions about accessing printed learning materials, please be in touch with Olivia.
There are two dictionaries necessary for doing the work of this bet midrash:
The Jastrow Dictionary is essential for your learning. You can find this dictionary at your local Jewish bookstore, or order online directly from the publisher. Used copies are also often available but, please note that the Jastrow Dictionary you’re looking for has about 1,700 pages. (There is a shorter truncated version which is not useful for Talmud study—Steer clear!)
The Jastrow is unfortunately printed in a small and somewhat fuzzy typeface. Below you will find information about Jastrow accessibility and two ways to access the Jastrow dictionary online.
In addition to Jastrow, you will need the Frank Dictionary. You can order the Frank dictionary from your local Jewish bookstore, or directly from the publisher. The “Frank” is currently available digitally as scanned pages on the website Archive.org. You may need to make a free account in order to access it. (Bonus: for learners seeking to deepen their Aramaic skills, Frank’s other excellent Talmud resource, “Grammar for Gemara” is found on Archive.org too! One may purchase a physical Grammar for Gemara at this link – always make sure you’re getting the full 300pg version, and not the earlier more limited one.)
Jastrow Accessibility and Online Versions
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. Some folks find the online versions of the dictionary more accessible for various reasons. Below is information about two free online editions:
Only you know what you need in order to learn best! We’ve found that having printed materials and a hard copy of the Jastrow dictionary is supportive for many folks, especially as a contrast to our learning online, and we encourage you to try this if it’s accessible to you.
If purchasing dictionaries or a magnifying glass is beyond your means, please be in touch with Nat.
To participate in shiur most fully, you will need a computer with high-speed internet access capable of supporting video conferencing. Shiur will be hosted on Zoom—we recommend downloading Zoom’s free software (Zoom Client for Meetings) for the smoothest experience. If you are unfamiliar with Zoom, check out Zoom tips!
The other learning materials you will need for this Bet Midrash, including the Hint Sheet, Supplemental Texts, and reference works are available through this portal and will printed copies be mailed to you. Large-print (20-point font) materials are available in print upon request at registration and are available in this portal.
SVARA envisions a future in which liberatory expressions of Judaism equip individuals and communities to realize a just and healed world. As a learning community, we hold ourselves to a set of cultural norms to help shape a bet midrash experience that enables each person to be fully present, supported, and nurtured.
We know that building a culture that is responsive, healing, and connective is not static work. And just as we approach our time in the bet midrash as a space to practice liberatory learning, we know the work of creating a community that is growthful takes time and practice. We hold the wisdom of bell hooks in our commitment to keep striving:
“The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.”
Thank you for your partnership in growing this incredible movement, for holding us accountable to our actions, and for your commitment to holding these community norms as they evolve over time.
We understand our project as queer in our effort to move towards a more just, inclusive and accessible world in which all people are able to live out their most fully human lives by allowing the insights of those on the margins to be brought to bear on the world.
Queerness is about thinking, living, and learning in radical ways. It is about challenging society’s norms not only related to gender and sexuality, but also more broadly challenging the silences and injustices around us, while creating subversive, brave, joyful culture that celebrates who we are. Like Jewish insight, queer insight is drawn from the experience of being on the margins and the wisdom gained from it. We believe that in their creativity, resilience, and radicalism, the Rabbis of the Talmud were queer. The innovators of the Jewish future will be queer. To be deeply Jewish is to be queer.
There are folks in our batei midrash with many different identities, and we are committed to making sure that everyone feels comfortable bringing their most dazzling, embodied, fabulous queer selves into the room. We invite you to bring the full range of your experiences and identities to the learning, something queer folks are rarely invited to do in Jewish community. We also welcome allies, and are grateful for their self-awareness and humility while engaging with queer culture and participating in queer-normative space. We ask that you:
Throughout history, the Talmud has been accessible to just 1% of Jews. We believe in expanding the Talmud’s teaching to the other 99%, and we commit to ensuring accessibility in the bet midrash for all people who are seeking to learn.
All of our online programming includes:
When we are in person, we utilize venues that meet or exceed ADA requirements and allow full access to folks who use scooters, wheelchairs, and other mobility tools, and we seek out locations that are easily accessible by public transportation.
We invite participants to share specific access needs with us in all of our registration processes and do our best to support our learners by designing an environment that works for them. Identities and access needs shared privately with the staff will never be shared outside of SVARA’s administrative team and immediate teaching team, and anything shared internally is on a need-to-know basis. All participants are expected to show the same level of discretion when their peers share personal information.
As a general rule, we invite each person to reflect on the ways in which we occupy positions of privilege, as opposed to asking those who are in a marginalized group to explain their oppression. These kinds of inquiries may be experienced as intrusive, insensitive, misguided, or hurtful – so be mindful before asking questions.
If you feel uncomfortable with the way another participant is engaging in the space, please reach out to a staff person privately to let them know. The SVARA bet midrash is, in its most powerful moments, a healing space and we ask everyone to treat each other with kindness and love.
We stive to be an anti-racist space, which we understand to mean one that is actively working to dismantle white supremacy culture and lift up the voices and insights of Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color in our community. Guided by SVARA’s Justice & Equity committee we are committed to:
SVARA is a home for queer and radical Torah, and we are committed to building a culture where we are all students and teachers to each other. We strive to create an environment of mutual respect, where a myriad of voices and perspectives are welcome. We believe that words create worlds, and we commit to thoughtful speech with integrity. We invite you to play an active role in manifesting this commitment by:
Inevitably, there are moments where we let one another down, misstep, misspeak, hurt others, or get hurt ourselves. This is part of the deal when building community (not to mention when just being human!), and it can get messy. Harm can happen on multiple levels and we are here to nurture a community where it’s okay to own mistakes and work towards repairing them. While we always strive to reach resolutions that lead to an ongoing relationship with SVARA, we reserve the right to restrict people from learning with us for a given period of time or, in some cases, indefinitely, as they move through a teshuva process.
Harm from Surfacing Past Events
Harm Between Participants in the Present Moment
Harm Between Participants and SVARA’s Staff, Faculty, or Fairies
Throughout history, the Talmud has been accessible to just 1% of Jews. We believe in expanding the Talmud’s teaching to the other 99%, and we commit to ensuring accessibility in the bet midrash for all people who are seeking to learn.
We invite you to share specific access needs with us in all of our registration processes, and we’ll do our best to incorporate your requests as much as possible to ensure that the bet midrash is an environment that supports your learning.
Below, you will find the latest accessibility systems we are using to support our online learning. We know that systems don’t always work, or fail to live up to their greatest dreamiest potential. If something isn’t going right for you in a learning space, please be in touch with your fairies, your facilitator, or James, SVARA’s point person for supporting access needs.
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!
Feel free to turn your video on/off as needed throughout the session. While you are encouraged to have your video on during shiur, we honor that at times learners may need to have their cameras off. You always have the option of declining to read when you’re called on, and teachers will not call on you if you have your video off unless you have previously notified the teacher otherwise.
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.
All shiurim provide instructions for using Zoom, as well as options for increasing contrast and font size on your screen.
We have large-print copies of materials available to send along with printed materials. If you would like enlarged printed materials, please indicate this on your registration form and we will send them to you. Many students also choose to use a magnifying glass to read small print texts—we recommend the Magnabrite Magnifier.
Each shiur session will have an online learning portal with all bet midrash materials available digitally. Materials will be available in 13-point font, 20-point font, and in Google Doc formats compatible with screen reader technology and other formatting options.
After each session, we will upload recordings of the session, along with the Hebrew/Aramaic pronunciation of the text covered and inside/outside translations of the text onto the Class Portal.
There are two dictionaries that you will use when learning Talmud in the original at SVARA (or anywhere else!): a “Jastrow” (Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Bavli, Talmud Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature, by Marcus Jastrow), and a “Frank” (The Practical Talmud Dictionary, by Yitzhak Frank). The Jastrow is unfortunately printed in a small and somewhat fuzzy font. Below you will find information about Jastrow accessibility and two ways to access the Jastrow dictionary online.
Many of our learners and teachers use a Magnabrite magnifying glass to increase the optical 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. Some folks find the online versions of the dictionary more accessible for various reasons. Below is information about two free online editions:
Only you know what you need in order to learn best! We’ve found that having printed materials and a hard copy of the Jastrow dictionary is supportive for many folks, especially as a contrast to our learning online, and we encourage you to try this if it’s accessible to you.
If purchasing dictionaries or a magnifying glass is beyond your means, please be in touch with Nat.
No one will be turned away for lack of funds: during the registration process, you will be asked to identify the tuition amount that you would like to pay. All classes have a sliding scale tuition structure. If the tuition scale remains prohibitive, you will be offered the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution that is right-sized for your budget. You will be asked to choose a tuition or contribution amount in step two of SVARA’s two-step enrollment process.
Payment options include the opportunity to pay all at once or in a 2- or 3-installment pay plan.
If you have any other needs for making your learning experience with SVARA accessible, please don’t hesitate to James, SVARA’s point person for accessibility. We’re learning more each day about how to make online learning more accessible, and we’re grateful to everyone who shares feedback and ideas!
Hover your mouse over your own video feed and click the ⋯ button in the top right corner. Select ‘rename’ and type your name as you would like it to appear. Add your pronouns if you’d like after your name.
There are two views available in every zoom meeting and you can toggle between them whenever you want. Speaker view enlarges the video of whoever is speaking at the time and switches between speakers as new people begin speaking. (If you want to stick with one person’s feed, even when new people start speaking, see the next tip.) Gallery view shows up to 25 meeting participants in a grid of video feeds. If more than 25 people are in the session, you can scroll between different subsets of participants.
When in speaker view you can switch to gallery view by clicking the speaker view button in the top right corner of the zoom window. When in gallery view you can switch to speaker view by clicking the gallery view button in the top right corner of the zoom window.
The faculty will sometimes use physical whiteboards to present ideas in shiur. If you would like to stay with their video feeds even when other participants are speaking, you can pin their video by hovering your mouse over their video feed, click the ⋯ button in the top right corner, and select ‘pin video’.
If you want to stop seeing your own video feed, hover your mouse over your own video feed, click the ⋯ button in the top right corner, and select ‘Hide Self View’. Note well: Hiding self-view keeps your camera on and other participants will still be able to see you. If you want to turn your video feed off for everyone, turn off your video.
In the toolbar at the bottom of the screen, click ‘stop video’.
Closed captioning will be available throughout our shiurim. To turn on captioning, select the CC button from the toolbar at the bottom of the window.
Unfortunately, chat notifications interfere visually with the closed captioning. To avoid this challenge, click the chat button in the toolbar to open the chat feed in a side panel, and thereby shut off the notifications.
Step 1: Log into zoom and hit your profile icon in the top right corner
Step 2: From the drop down menu that will pop up, select ‘Settings.’
Step 3: Select the “Accessibility” settings at the end of the list
Step 4: Move the slider to adjust the closed captions size. Below the sample closed captions, you can choose how big you’d like your chat to be.
Bonus: While on a zoom call, click the chat box as if you were going to write a message. If on a mac: hold down the “command” key and then hit the “+” key to increase the chat font size or “-” to decrease! If on a PC: hold down the “ctrl” key and then hit the “+” key to increase the chat font size or “-” to decrease.
Facilitators will periodically use ‘screen share’ to share important information with you in writing. Screen share produces a split-screen effect in which you will see the shared content on the left pane and the speaker’s video feed on the right. You can control the size of these two panes by clicking the center of the bar separating the two panes and dragging left or right.
Coming soon
At SVARA, we approach Talmud study as a spiritual practice for developing radically empathic, mature, evolved human beings who will create a more just, peaceful, and healthy world. We believe that radically courageous, compassion-driven change is native to the tradition, should be revived, and that every person can be given the tools to participate in it. The SVARA-method is designed to support the process of Talmud study in the original language. If you can sound out your alef-bet, you can learn Talmud as a spiritual practice!
The SVARA-method is what we use to build a traditionally radical culture of Talmud study in the original language (i.e. without translation), enabling our students to own the text and the tradition. The four steps of the SVARA-method are (1) chevruta, (2) shiur, (3) chazara, and (4) recitation.
Start with a check- in. Take turns, and share with your chevruta how you are, what’s on your mind, whatever you need them to know about you right now so that you can become fully present.
Dedicate: In the Jewish tradition, learning is believed to carry within it the power to repair, to heal, and to transform. It is our custom at SVARA, as it has been the custom in many yeshivas in the world for thousands of years, to begin our learning by directing that power to someone or something in need of healing, strength, or encouragement. Or you might dedicate your learning to someone in whose honor or memory you would like to learn, perhaps someone whom you think would be very proud to know that you’re learning in this moment. Hold the person, people, or community you’d like to dedicate your learning to, in your mind and heart, and then say “I’d like to dedicate my learning today to _______.” Feel free to explain to your chevruta or your learning comrades why this dedication is on your mind.
Bless: The blessing for Torah study closes dedications and elevates learning into the realm of mitzvah, the language that the Rabbis used for what mattered most to them. You can find the blessing for Torah study here.
Learn: Now you’re ready to start learning!
The teacher will call upon a student to “read.” “Reading” is done in three steps: “Read,” “Inside Translation,” and “Outside Translation.” “Read, Inside, Outside. Read, Inside, Outside” is the mantra that keeps the learning focused on deep ownership of the text rather than a mere cursory, surface-level drive-by of what’s going on in the text.
It is important to take really good notes during shiur (on everything you can, including pronunciation, roots, grammar notes, meanings of words, etc.) so that you can refer to these during your next chevruta session when you are reviewing the text unpacked in shiur during Step 3: Chazara!
Read—in the original Hebrew/Aramaic, in small chunks
If you are called upon to read, you will read out loud a short chunk of text, making your best guess at pronouncing the one, two, three, or maybe four or five words which make up the smallest meaningful idea in each phrase or sentence. Your teacher will help you as you go along.
Inside translation
You will then go back and make your best guess as to the “inside” translation, i.e., the hyper-literal translation, of each word, in the order in which the words appear, following the syntax of the original. When you’re giving an inside translation, it will sound quite choppy and not flow in a smooth, colloquial translation.
Every single prefix and suffix should be represented in an inside translation (i.e., החובל בחברו would be translated as the one who injures in his friend). Nothing that isn’t represented in the letters of each word should appear in one’s inside translation. For example, rabbinic literature often implies an “if” at the beginning of a case: “if one injures his friend.” But that implied “if” should not appear in the inside translation.
Outside translation
After giving your inside translation of each phrase, go back and give your best guess at the “outside” translation—a colloquial translation that flows smoothly in modern English, and sounds like something you’d actually say, in the way you’d actually say it. Then, if necessary, explain out what the phrase means, adding any additional background information that would be necessary to help an uninitiated imaginary listener understand what’s going on in that phrase.
Every reader gets enthusiastically clapped up before the next reader is called on!
Unpacking
Along the way, ask yourselves: What does the text say? What does the text mean? And what might the Rabbis have been trying to tell us in saying what they said in the way in which they said it? Beyond the surface content of the text, what might the text be conveying on a meta level about how you, as the learner, are being taught to see the tradition and how it works? How does the text affect how you see yourself as a leader and your role vis-à-vis the received tradition and the future of Judaism? How is your process of learning this text helping you gain insight into yourself and the world around you?
It’s all about chazara! This is where the magic happens. Chazara serves, first and foremost, to help you diagnose where the weak points in your understanding of the text are, and then to deepen your understanding of the text beyond where you even realized it could have been deepened! This is where the text’s molecules and your molecules come together. This is where you try to gain complete clarity of understanding (which, of course, will always be temporary and enhanced the next time you learn the text). Here’s where you come to own the text, and own the tradition! Without chazara, text study can actually reinforce a sense of powerlessness. If you don’t achieve absolute clarity on the meaning of the text and how each word means what it means—which can only happen through chazara—the teacher will remain the only one in true possession of a) the text, b) most of the “smart ideas” about what the text is saying, and c) the tradition itself.
Recitation is always the last step of the chazara process done in chevruta. But a typical shiur at SVARA always begins with a selection of students being called on, one at a time, to recite the material they mastered during chazara. After each student recites, the room explodes into boisterous applause!
Fairies are a beautiful part of the SVARA bet midrash. These folks are here to support the teaching and learning within our community and serve as wisdom-givers and text-wranglers.
If you have a question or need some encouragement, grab some one-on-one (or two-on-one) time with a fairy or faculty member from the list below! Let them help you (and your chevruta) get unstuck in a text, talk Talmud, or just chat about whatever is coming up in your learning.
