Sample Classes
What makes ‘Feminist Torah’ feminist?
In this class, we will engage with decades of diverse feminist approaches to Jewish sacred texts, from critical-historical to theological, to ask: what makes "feminist Torah" feminist? We will experiment with applying multiple feminist reading techniques to the same Talmudic story about the scholarly woman figure Beruriah, asking: what makes a reading strategy feminist? How can we expand our Torah study by consciously applying different approaches? All backgrounds welcome.
Torah in the Home, Torah as a Home
How do we find a home in Torah? How do we make our homes spaces for Torah – defined both broadly and narrowly? This class explores these overlapping questions, seeking to ground ourselves in the depth of ancestral wisdom as we blossom from steady roots. Engaging our own experiences, Jewish ethics, halakhic texts, and rabbinic stories, this session asks how we can dwell more intentionally in both our physical surroundings and our religious inheritance.
'They Were Strict With Themselves:’ Queerness, Niddah, and Belonging
In this class, we will use ancient and modern texts to ask what it can mean for niddah (Jewish practices around menstruation and sex) to be queer – both in the sense of what it can look like for queer Jews to develop a niddah practice, and what niddah can become when read in conversation with queer frameworks and experiences. This class aims to illuminate the halachic process and its relationship to our own bodies and agency for people of all identities and learning backgrounds!