Presented by Erica Riddick

Click here to register for this virtual event. 

This text study session will focus on the Torah characters of Bilhah and Zilpah and will explore their contested status and the power of naming. The conditions in which the reader finds these two women—not having autonomy over their bodies, being named and categorized by others, having their voices silenced, having identity and control exerted over their children, and being invisible in plain sight—are realities which still resonate in the lives of marginalized people today.

The source sheet used will contain Hebrew with English translation as well as secular auxiliary sources in English. This text study session is open to all levels of Hebrew comprehension and text study experience.

Erica Riddick is Special Projects Manager with Beloved Garden; the founding director of Jews of Color Sanctuary, creating infrastructure for Jews of Color in Cincinnati and the Midwest; the creator of the Bilhah Zilpah Project, elevating and reclaiming these Jewish matriarchs. She is currently a Jewish Women’s Archive Twersky Education Fellow and Jewish Studio Project Creative Facilitation Fellow. While studying at the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, she was a 2022 Pardes Mahloket Matters Fellow. She was the 2021 National Havurah Committee Hollander Social Justice Fellow, and a 2018 URJ JewV’Nation Fellow. Her text studies use social justice and narrative lenses to create embodied learning/teaching that is also fun. She has been a Jewish educator at Mayyim Hayyim, Ammud Jews of Color Torah Academy, Temple Israel in Boston, and Mercaz Conservative High School in Cincinnati. She has been published in the Pardes Etz Chaim Journal, Indie Game Reading Room, and Jewish Women’s Archive’s monthly Educator Updates.