Presented by Tamar Biala and Yael Kanarek

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What legacy do we leave for our daughters? Beit Toratah comes as a response to that question, posed in light of the astonishing void of women-centered sacred texts in the Jewish canon. Israeli-American artist Yael Kanarek and Jewish educator Tamar Biala have been rewriting the Torah in Hebrew and English to reveal the feminine divine as a central presence in the Hebrew sacred texts.

The Beit Toratah adaptation aims to unsettle habitual thinking promulgated by our ancient stories and instead codify women’s experience in the sacred. New matriarchs in central positions come to life, as well as patriarchs who seek to secure their daughters’ place in the social order.

When both narratives come together, they create a vision and a reading for a Torah that is a complete “spiritual body”—a Torah Shlema. The joining of both narratives opens the sacred texts for LGBTQ+ and gender-fluid readings, and is a confirmation of the value of all perspectives on the Torah.

Yael Kanarek is the creator, director, and translator of Beit Toratah, which she founded in 2016. As an artist in multiple media, she focuses on the relationship between language and form, using text in large scale sculpture, jewelry, and internet art. Kanarek holds an MFA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and teaches Net Art in the MFA program at Pratt Institute.

Tamar Biala teaches in various batei midrash, rabbinical schools, and adult education programs in the US and Israel. She co-edited the first volume of the Hebrew-language edition of Dirshuni: Women’s Midrash with Nehama Weingarten Mintz, and in 2018 edited the second volume. In 2022 she published an English version of this work as Dirshuni: Contemporary Women’s Midrash (Brandeis University Press). Currently, with Yael Kanarek, she is working on the Beit Toratah project as coeditor, blogger, translator, and educator.

Co-presented by Afikomen Judaica.