Benay Lappe

Benay Lappe

Rabbi Benay Lappe is Founder, President, and Rosh Yeshiva of SVARA, a “traditionally radical” yeshiva dedicated to the serious study of Talmud through the lens of queer experiences, where Talmud study in the original language is made accessible, for the first time in Jewish history, to all who want to learn—queer, trans, straight, alef-bet beginners, experienced talmudists, secular, religious, Jews, and non-Jews—creating a new transformation and distribution system for Jewish wisdom. Ordained by The Jewish Theological Seminary in 1997, Benay is an award-winning educator specializing in the application of queer theory to Talmud study. In 2016, she was a recipient of the prestigious Covenant Award for innovative Jewish education. Benay believes that visionary leadership “requires us to retell our inherited master stories through the lens of our lived life experience,” and that “the entire Jewish enterprise has a coherent purpose—to create human beings who are profoundly empathetic, deeply connected to one another, who can tolerate paradox, contradiction, complexity, and uncertainty, are active rather than passive, challenging rather than compliant.” Her goal is to be—and to help others be—that kind of person through the study of Talmud as a spiritual practice.