Benay Lappe

( she/her )
President and Rosh Yeshiva

Ordained by The Jewish Theological Seminary in 1997, Benay Lappe founded SVARA in 2003. An award-winning educator specializing in the application of queer theory to Talmud study, Benay has served on the faculties of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Temple University, The University of Judaism, The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, The Graduate Theological Union’s Center for Jewish Studies at UC-Berkeley, and The Wexner Institute. She also currently serves as Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Next Jewish Future in Chicago.

Benay was named to Jewrotica’s Sexiest Rabbis List of 2013 (and is a little embarrassed about this but also a little bit proud), The Forward’s 2014 List of Most Inspiring Rabbis, is a Joshua Venture Fellow, and in 2016 received the prestigious Covenant Award for innovative Jewish education. She was named to The Forward’s 2018 list of “Sexiest Jewish Intellectuals Alive” (and is both embarrassed again, and also more sheepish about the intellectual part than the sexy part), and was recently named to the 2020 Forward 50 list of most influential American Jews (she was #10, and is grateful that her name starts with a “b” because it was in alphabetical order). While learning and teaching Talmud are her greatest passions, Rabbi Lappe is also a licensed pilot, shoemaker, and patent-holding inventor.

Watch Rabbi Lappe’s ELI Talk or TEDx Talk, or read some of her essays.

Blog posts by Benay Lappe

On Visiting the White House

As I scanned down through my inbox a few weeks ago and saw “The White House” in bold letters, I…

A Letter to SVARA Learners

A Letter to SVARA Learners As many of you know, SVARA has been a refuge for me. In many ways,…

The Lost Talmud, Part Two

I was born at the tail end of the generation that can tell you exactly where they were when they…

A Sampler of Samplers, Part One

As I was preparing to start rabbinical school, my mother took me to our local Jewish bookstore and bought me…

A Letter to Our Students

A Note from Team SVARA: The past few weeks have been fraught and tumultuous–in the world, and in the Jewish…

The Future in its Infancy

I remember what it was like to be on the road, and get lost, before I had a GPS. I’d…

Say Little. Do Much.

  …שַׁמַּאי אוֹמֵר עֲשֵׂה תוֹרָתְךָ קֶבַע אֱמֹר מְעַט וַעֲשֵׂה הַרְבֵּה Shammai used to say: Make your learning fixed. Speak little,…

We Are The Talmud’s Fantasy

Each daf of Talmud presents us with a fantasy.  The fantasy is the record of an impossible intergenerational conversation across…

OK, We Left Egypt. Now What?

Passover’s over. Egypt is behind us. That first glimpse of liberation is exhilarating. You’re free! At least that’s the story…

I Don’t Know What Comes Next

My chevruta Eddie once told me a story that I’ll never forget. It’s a story his father told him. And,…