Tamar’s research lies at the intersection of language, art, spirituality, identity, and politics. Her current work focuses on contemporary Hebrew literature and culture, countercultural movements, and emerging voices. She is particularly interested in moments of language crisis, when words cease to carry shared meanings and language itself becomes a contested space, as well as in the possibilities within language—particularly poetry and literature—to recover meaning and imagine new realities. She traces the emergence of a transnational Hebrew literary culture shaped by Israeli migration across Europe and the Americas, and the movement of Hebrew culture from a single dominant center toward multiple cultural centers. With particular attention to recent years and to Mizrahi and Sephardi poetic voices, she examines how this changing geography reshapes relationships among language, place, identity, and belonging, and how writers confronting war, migration, and displacement negotiate who they are and what they are becoming, and imagine new cultural, spiritual, and political possibilities.

What might language reveal when we attend not only to what words mean, but to what they invite us to experience and imagine? What can language awaken in us? This workshop explores language as a spiritual medium—a pathway to expanded awareness and connection. Through experiential activities, we will explore embodied approaches to Hebrew that move beyond decoding and invite curiosity and wonder. We will also engage with poetry as a space for exploring identity and entering another person’s experience. Together, we will consider how language can expand the boundaries of our own experience, deepen our awareness of others, and awaken a sense of awe in the presence of one another.

Tamar Levin, of Temple Sinai, is a scholar and educator whose work moves between scholarship, Jewish learning, and spiritual education, with each continually informing the other. Questions that emerge in her research find their way into her classrooms and learning spaces, while her work with learners continually opens new questions for her scholarship. Her teaching spans Jewish text, tradition, and literature; Mussar and ethical formation; Hebrew language and culture; and questions of identity, belonging, Israel, and Palestinian perspectives, with an emphasis on creating spaces of sacred complexity grounded in curiosity, responsibility, and compassion.