Xava looks toward the camera. She is indoors, wearing a fuchsia head scarf and red cardigan.

Xava De Cordova

( she/her )
SVARA Fellow

Rabbi Xava de Cordova is a disabled, Sefardi, Mizraxi trans woman and co-host of the world’s first Queer Talmud podcast, “Xai, how are you?” She is a long-time SVARA-style Talmud learner who got her start as a teacher by creating Beit Midrash Behind Bars, an organization that facilitated Jewish learning opportunities for incarcerated people in Washington State. She is also the co-founder of Shel Maala, an online-first queer yeshiva, which she co-founded with SVARA fellow Binya Kóatz. She lives in Providence, RI, where she regularly produces Jewish ritual theatre (or did, before the pandemic) and does her best to steward the radical tradition she’s been blessed to inherit.