Loving the Tradition Until it Transforms

This past Wednesday, the SVARA community gathered for Shaping Tradition, our annual celebration of the radical, rooted, and resilient Torah we’re creating together. We were honored to lift up the visionary leadership of Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum and the transformative work of the Teshuva-Writing Collective, whose contributions have deepened our understanding of what becomes possible when we center the fullness of each and every person in our tradition. The evening also featured a soul-stirring musical offering from members of the Let My People Sing! community—including Yoni Avi Battat and Anat Halevy Hochberg—that reminded us of the power of joy, voice, and spiritual expression in the multidimensional worlds we’re building together.

Our founder and Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Benay Lappe opened the evening with words that were as grounding as they were galvanizing—an offering about the year behind us and the future we’re dreaming into being. We invite you to read her remarks, reflect on the transformation this year has brought, and step into the circle of sustaining SVARA’s work. We feel so blessed to have exceeded our fundraising goal of $20,000 thanks to the incredible generosity of so many folks. If you’ve been moved by this learning, this yeshiva, or the vision we’re building together, we hope you’ll join the growing circle of folks donating to keep this life-giving tradition in motion.

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Good evening, friends!  Welcome, welcome, welcome, to Shaping Tradition—SVARA’s annual celebration of the powerful, transformative learning—and learning community— we’re building together.

Whether this is your first SVARA gathering or you’ve been learning with us for years, thank you for showing up—not just to celebrate what we’ve built, but to recommit to the tradition we’re shaping together.

When we launched SVARA nearly 22 years ago, what we had was a dream. A dream that queer people—those who, at the time, were most often pushed to the margins of not just Jewish life but secular life—could not only belong, but because of the valuable insights gained from that experience on the margins, but could, but should, lead. The dream was that we could build a vibrant, visionary, radically inclusive yeshiva that would raise up a generation that would shape our tradition—not by leaving it behind, but by loving it so deeply that it actually transforms.

And while tonight is a celebration, it’s also a moment to tell the truth.

We are living through deeply painful, disorienting times. For many of us, this has always been true. Anti-LGBTQ violence and legislation continue to escalate. We’re still navigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The very planet we call home is in crisis. And across the world and in our own communities, we’re watching war, displacement, and devastation that spirals wildly beyond our control.

This is real. And it’s hard.

But if there ever was a moment when the world needed a yeshiva like SVARA, it’s now.

Because what we do in the SVARA bet midrash—what you all do in the bet midrash—is more than just learn. You’re practicing how to live with care and love and with a commitment to reimagining and fixing what isn’t working anymore. You’re practicing how to hold complexity and multiple, sometimes conflicting truths. How to hold different views from the person next to you while staying in relationship, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.

We are shaping a tradition that is not afraid of the hardest of truths. A tradition that is expanding right now, because of each one of you who has rolled up your sleeves to meet this moment. A tradition rooted in justice, in joy, and in love.  

So thank you. Each and every one of you—for learning with us, creating with us, dreaming with us, and shaping this tradition, every one of you, along with us.

And what a gift we get to celebrate all of that. Together.