Pushing the Envelope: SVARA Generates Space for Queer and Trans Jews

Written by Cole Krawitz

Feature

Nowadays you can’t escape the talk among older Jewish community members questioning how they are going to “reengage” young people in Jewish life. Numerous blogs, articles, rabbi’s sermons and non-profit organizations that bring young people on retreats in the woods all grapple with reinvigorating Jewish communities. Meanwhile, on college campuses, as Jewish students continue to build their lives in ways that may or may not be similar to how they were raised, the options available do not always provide opportunities for students to express or integrate all of who they are in Jewish settings.

Whether we were taught to read Hebrew without understanding what the words mean, were raised in secular political families, embrace Renewal meditation or daven with a mechitza in Orthodox shuls, many of us were not taught that the tradition is ours. Instead, we saw that a select group held the answers—and they were usually old, white, straight Ashkenazi men. We could drop our dollars and cents into tzedekah boxes or engage in tikkun olam—social change work, or literally, “repairing the world”—so long as it didn’t include reinterpreting Jewish text or changing tradition.

On a late summer morning in New York City, over twenty Jews, most of whom identified as queer and/or transgender, learned otherwise.

Rabbi Benay Lappe, Rosh Yeshiva (head teacher) of SVARA, a queer yeshiva dedicated to the serious study of Talmud, led a three-day workshop on teshuvah in New York City. Teshuvah, which literally means “return,” but is conventionally translated as "repentance," is based on the belief that people can change, and that, though the future is undetermined, we can change our relationship to the past. In this workshop, we were asked to take a risk and believe that the tradition was ours—that given the tools, we would learn how Judaism trusts learning and thoughtful Jews to push its bounds.

Steadfast in her teaching and dedication, Lappe is ardent in reaching out to Jews who have been disenfranchised by rabbinic leaders. Her advice to Jewish college students is to "start owning it."

“Start owning the tradition as yours,” she said. “Stop giving the power to those who claim to have it and who claim that you don’t. Stop giving it to those who would only transmit the tradition in their own image—It’s too valuable a tradition to give up—It’s not theirs. It’s ours.”

Lappe explains that study and engagement with text is a Jewish tradition that has always been radical. SVARA's name comes from the 2,000-year-old Jewish concept of recognizing one’s internal ethical impulse, when informed by serious Jewish learning, as a legitimate source of Jewish law that can trump even a verse in the Torah itself.

This notion has been central to the philosophy and evolution of the Jewish tradition. For Amy “Afo” Fornari, Executive Director of the program, “SVARA was a place for me to reenter Jewish community after college where the queer and Jewish pieces of me were separated. It brought me back to Judaism in an academic and political way that integrated what I had learned in college.”

Fornari spoke about SVARA as a place for people with both traditional and nontraditional Jewish backgrounds, where a single session can be both an introduction to Jewish text for some, and a source of serious scholarship for others—all in an explicitly queer setting. Reuben Zellman, a third-year rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College noted, “One of the purposes of SVARA is to give access to texts in a queer-affirming way and to bring queer consciousness to Jewish life—that is a unique purpose and doesn’t happen in the same way anywhere else.”

Echoing Zellman’s sentiment, Fornari explained, “The majority of American Jews don’t have an understanding of this type of learning. SVARA provides a place for people who have interesting things to say but who don’t normally come to the table, for queer people who are not able to be out in yeshiva or for trans people who are not safe or welcome in yeshiva.”

Micah Bazant, a 32-year-old transgender participant noted that the leaders admit to the program's shortcomings. “It is so great to have an experience with Benay who is very learned and open that she is in process and learning from her students," he said. "It is so rare in the Jewish world to hear a rabbi say they are fallible and make mistakes.”

In providing this type of learning space, Lappe is very conscious of the need for SVARA to have multiple teachers and perspectives and creates such an environment by focusing on the text itself. “This is not about me,” she explained. “I tell people not to listen to me, but to grapple with the text and see that it is the text that is speaking to them.”

Bazant retold his story about first participating in SVARA. “I didn’t think I could do it,” he said. “I hadn’t taken the time to prepare with work and I was an hour away on my bike. I called Afo up who said it was okay if I was late. Benay got on the phone. She said, ’Get out of bed, get in the shower, get dressed, get over here and study. We need you here.’ I got in the shower and was sobbing,” he recalled, “because I have never felt welcomed in that way. Older people want younger Jews to be engaged, and I’ve wanted a place to be seriously engaged with Jewish study for years, but didn’t have anywhere to go.”

Dara Silverman, another participant and the Director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, an NYC membership-based Jewish social justice organization remarked on the necessity of spaces like SVARA: “I wish someone had talked to me,” she said, “about how there is space in Jewish communities for us to be and bring all of our selves—our fabulous selves, our queer selves, our freaky selves—and that that’s a part of being Jewish.” Silverman continued by noting how these issues impact not just individuals, but Jewish organizations as well. She relays her experience with JFREJ. “which has always had leadership from women and queer people,” and how that reality has, “to a certain extent, marginalized us within Jewish communities.”

Lappe, too, is candid about how much she needs the community SVARA creates, particularly after studying in intensely homophobic and transphobic environments. “I want to dispel the notion that the tradition is unchanging and that it is a ‘take it or leave it’ scenario,” she said. “Right now, people feel that they have to suppress what they think is right to stay inside, or that they have to reject the tradition to not suppress their ideas of right and wrong, and that is such an incredible crime. It’s not true—it forces the people who have the most to give to leave it.”

Kibitzing over the phone later this fall, Lappe explained a portion of text about fasting and the evolution of the laws that sprung from it, as an example of how the tradition has increasingly valued the insight of individuals even over and against either a text—even a biblical text—or the judgment of authorities. Textually, she explained, the Torah teaches that everyone is required to fast on Yom Kippur. Five hundred years later, the Mishnah, the first code of the Jewish Oral Law, completed around 200 CE, reevaluated the edict to exempt those who have permission from an expert, presumably a doctor. Several hundred years later, Lappe said, the Gemara, (on page 83a of Tractate Yoma) which is commentary on the Mishnah from approximately 500 CE, “further opened up this reading to say that the individual is their own expert even in the presence of a conflicting opinion from a rabbi or doctor. "Halev yodeya marat nefasho:" "the heart knows the bitterness of one’s soul." The individual is ultimately the arbiter of what is an averah [a transgression] for them. And in this case, if they should or should not fast. The implication is that every person knows the truth of their body, their life and who they are.”

The Yoma text has been evoked to elucidate a number of issues, including abortion, to give individuals agency over their own bodies. It tells us that only individuals know who they are—that only we can know what is the right decision for ourselves. No external judge can say otherwise.

This source provides a basis for revolutionizing the way queer and trans people see themselves in relation to tradition. Serious in her work and vision of transforming Jewish life, Lappe remarked, “It is an unconscionable violence that the mechanisms for making the tradition more true are there, but the people who know them don’t want others to have them, and that is what SVARA is all about—giving people the tools so that they can read texts like these to know the truth of their own tradition.”

The last time I wrote about issues of Jewish law and LGBTQI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex) issues, I wrote about how halachah didn’t reflect me but, rather, the interests of gatekeepers who aren’t invested in my wellbeing. I, and many others, have needed that defense to secure a sense of self amidst teachings and rabbis that cast us outside the tradition. We have needed this to respond to text that has been used against us by rabbinic leaders, rather than as something that embraces us. So the real question SVARA asks us is to stay; to let down our guards and reclaim a tradition that has always been ours.

This is no easy task.

Staying within communities whose leaders are terrified of our existence and who rely on our ignorance to maintain power leaves us with a daunting challenge—to our communities, ourselves, and our tradition—to heal. Bazant remarked that he saw all of us in the room as doing teshuvah with Judaism. “It is sweet and beautiful,” he said, “and what a lot of us need to do regardless of background, in being secular or religious. If we engage through song or prayer—to come to more peace with who we are, our culture and heritage and that goes beyond identity—it applies to everyone.”

And the work continues. Not only of teshuvah, but of tochecha, of engaged and thoughtful critique of Judaism, which is a central part of the teshuvah process. Many participants took huge risks to enter the room, learn Talmud and engage with a rabbinic leader. By the end, very few wanted to leave. Discussions and email lists circulated for staying in touch and continuing a monthly queer Talmud study. Rabbi Lappe reflected on the process underway. “Rabbinic Judaism,” she said, “used to be outside the mainstream, while the Temple was the main show. When the Temple was destroyed, the fringe alternative survived, and here we are today with Rabbinic Judaism at the core.” Just as the Temple did not stand forever, Lappe states that neither will what is currently understood to be mainstream Judaism, and that we must all remain to create alternatives that are in serious conversation with the tradition.

SVARA is doing just that.

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For more information on SVARA, or to have SVARA come to your campus to host a workshop, email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit www.svara.org

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.