10 hours Ago By Sharon Chisvin
Since moving to Winnipeg in 1994, 63-year old Emèt Eviatar has spent countless hours volunteering at her local synagogue, leading prayer services, reading Torah on the Sabbath, and sitting as a board member. Now, after years of immersing herself in Jewish and synagogue life, she is following her lifetime dream. She is studying to become a rabbi.
Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * Since moving to Winnipeg in 1994, 63-year old Emèt Eviatar has spent countless hours volunteering at her local synagogue, leading prayer services, reading Torah on the Sabbath, and sitting as a board member. Now, after years of immersing herself in Jewish and synagogue life, she is following her lifetime dream. She is studying to become a rabbi.
Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? Since moving to Winnipeg in 1994, 63-year old Emèt Eviatar has spent countless hours volunteering at her local synagogue, leading prayer services, reading Torah on the Sabbath, and sitting as a board member. Now, after years of immersing herself in Jewish and synagogue life, she is following her lifetime dream. She is studying to become a rabbi.
Eviatar began her rabbinical studies in 2023 and hopes to be ordained in the spring of 2028. She is taking the five-year rabbinical course from the Academy for Jewish Religion (AJR). “The Academy for Jewish Religion,” Eviatar elaborates, “is a rigorous, pluralistic program that is accredited as a graduate school in the state of New York, and requires writing a master’s thesis, if you don’t already have one, in Jewish studies.
They teach Talmud, Bible, Hebrew, Codes, and many practical rabbinical, pastoral and chaplaincy skills.” As most of the AJR’s classes moved online during the pandemic, and have remained online since, Eviatar can pursue her studies from the comfort of her home. She is, however, required to attend two in-person retreats each year and also complete a rabbinic internship.
Eviatar also is currently enrolled in a virtual pedagogy learning group at the Chicago-headquartered queer yeshiva called SVARA, which was founded with the understanding that Jewish law and tradition is not static, but flexible, and can be revised and upgraded to create a more just society. It is a space in which queer and other marginalized Jews can study Talmud and make the tradition their own. “The word Talmud,” Eviatar explains, “refers to a set of rabbinic writings that were created after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, as part of the development of a new Judaism that no longer included animal sacrifice and the Temple service.
It is the basis of almost all of Judaism as we know it today.” At SVARA, Eviatar is studying how to teach Talmud using the institution’s specific educational method. That methodology involves having students study the texts’ original Hebrew and Aramaic — the language of their ancestors — in pairs or in groups and then translate and make meaning out of what they have read through the lens of their own wisdom and learned experiences.
In March, Eviatar will be putting her SVARA educational studies into practice when she begins teaching an online course entitled . The unusual spelling of God is not a typo, Eviatar is quick to point out. “It’s a call out to the Goddess as well as the masculine image most of us have.
” The free, four-session course will involve learning and dissecting a short piece of Talmud. It begins on Wednesday, March 5 and is open to anyone interested in joining a radically inclusive community of Godd*-wrestlers. Eviatar anticipates that the class will be of particular interest to people of the Jewish faith who don’t feel at home in synagogue but are still looking for ways to connect to the tradition.
“I am calling out explicitly to those who are marginalized and feel alienated from the mainstream Jewish community — queer and trans folk, Jews of colour, disabled folks and those who just learn differently,” Eviatar says. “But you don’t have to be Jewish or queer to take part in this course, just open and curious about what Judaism can offer to someone who doesn’t fit the mold.” The only prerequisite for the online course is knowledge of the aleph-bet, the Hebrew alphabet.
More information at hadasseviatar.com. Eviatar hopes that her course will help participants to fall in love with Talmudic tradition and come to realize that the tradition belongs to them as much as it belongs to the institutions where they have never felt comfortable or welcomed.
It is her intention, she adds, to bring the joy of learning Talmud to people who think they can’t possibly do it, and to establish a space in which to discuss how to create a Judaism that makes sense today. That Judaism, she emphasizes, is one in which everyone belongs. It is a Judaism that has informed her life so far, and it is a Judaism that she is determined to uphold and expand on as she follows the path to becoming a formally ordained rabbi and Jewish spiritual leader.
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