Explore my Torah
I share my Torah widely via writing for mainstream and academic outlets — as well as podcasts and recorded classes!
“Can’t Stop Scrolling,” hosted by Avidan Halivni and Rabbi Avigayil Halpern and sponsored by the Jewish Learning Collaborative is a podcast for Torah teachers, Torah learners, Torah lovers, and the Torah-curious. Each episode, Avidan and Rav Avigayil interview a millennial or Gen-Z Torah educator about their relationship to Torah, and learn a favorite text together. We just wrapped our second season!
Podcast: “Can’t Stop Scrolling”
Floral Torah: Toward a Theory of Femme Torah - in Tekiyah Gedolah
“Femme Torah sparkles like a tiara plucked from a dress-up bin and tells a story like a set of scarlet-painted nails emphasizing the gesticulations of a speaker. Femme Torah is over the top, joyful, glorious, and playful. Femme Torah looks at what is necessary and says, no, this is not nearly enough. This approach to Torah and justice work says, maybe Torah is not needed for justice work — but that is the wrong question to be asking anyway. Torah is wanted, Torah is delighted, Torah is sustaining and energizing and opens our souls ever wider.”
filler text as I update my website!
“What is feminist Torah and how do we do it?”— At Exploring Judasim
“This is what feminist Torah is all about – seeing Torah not as a set of resources but a relationship that we are engaged in deeply. The Torah pushes us and we grow; we push the Torah and the Torah grows. We must move away from commodification of the Torah and towards intimacy.”
filler text as I update my website!
“It is easy to imagine the Kohen as a paper doll, dressed in colored-in Priestly Vestments for the sake of a class project. But these were real people, doing literal ‘sacrificial labor’ as the burned animals, sprinkled blood, and burned incense. But they got to have underwear – they did not have to devote their entire selves to the Temple, to their passion for sacred work. Much of their clothing was for kavod and tifaret, honor and splendor. But the Chizkuni teaches that some of it was just because people get to have parts of ourselves we keep private.”
— “Tetzaveh: Sacrificial Labor” on my Substack, Approaching
“I want to suggest that niddah observance can align with a sense of queer time. It is an experience of time that is not based on an external, measured, “universal” calendar. Rather, it takes place in each person’s body, outside of “normative notions of the clock.” This is an offering from the laws of niddah to all of us:
How can we experience ritual and sanctity through the timelines of our own bodies, our own experiences?
— “Queer Niddah,” Life is a Sacred Text
“If intimate connection to the Torah is both part of royal power and part of the system of check on that power, then each of us building those intimate, personal connections with Torah is part of distributing power rather than concentrating it. When we engage with Torah as the people we are, if we build a Torah through learning it as ourselves, we challenge power structures that rely on Torah to uphold the status quo.”
— “Shoftim: Our Own Torah,” Approaching
“…the Rabbis offer us an opportunity to understand the biblical processes for responding to tzaraat as a mode for responding to sexual violence. Banishing someone “outside the camp” is a key part of a community’s response to such behavior. Time away, time outside, is necessary. And it is the responsibility of the culpable party to keep others safe, to prioritize their needs over his or hers. The person with tzaraat is commanded to caution others away, to warn passersby of their state.”
— “For #MeToo Transgressors, the Torah’s Presciption Includes Banishment,” New York Jewish Week