Five years ago, my husband and I embarked on a journey westward, far from our beloved East Coast Jewish community and batei midrash. After searching for the right pulpit for my husband, we landed in the San Francisco Bay Area, home of the Gold Rush and arguably one of the largest, yet most highly unaffiliated, Jewish communities in the United States. Figures vary, but the current Jewish population of the greater Bay Area has been estimated at between 300,000 and half a million Jews. The East Bay alone—which consists of Berkeley, Oakland, and less-known suburbs that are still commuting distance to San Francisco—is the home to between 100,000 and 125,000 Jews. The Bay Area supports quite a lively scene of Jewish culture: the Contemporary Jewish Museum is well supported by some of the city’s leading philanthropists, and the Jewish film festival and Jewish music festival attract more than 15,000 attendees each year.
Religiously, however, the picture is more sobering. Five percent, or at most 6 percent, of all East Bay Jews are members of the region’s twenty-four synagogues, and fewer than 1 percent affiliate with Orthodox synagogues. So perhaps not surprisingly, although we found a community in Berkeley committed to Jewish tradition, with a Jewish infrastructure that made halakhic Jewish living possible, with kosher markets, schools and a mikveh, missing from our Jewish life were the multiple and high-caliber opportunities for rigorous text-based learning that had been so meaningful to us in Israel and in New York. After all, the Bay Area is known more for its pioneers, hippies, academics, and radicals than it is for its yeshivot and talmidei hakhamim. Five years later, though, we find ourselves in a community that is fostering—perhaps precisely because of its pioneering and alternative spirit—two exciting, even “feminist,” models of Jewish engagement through rigorous text study.
The first model is Merkavah, a pluralistic beit midrash program run out of my husband’s Orthodox shul, Congregation Beth Israel (www.cbiberkeley.org) that offers yeshiva-style classes in Talmud and Prophets for women. Its ethereal name (referring to the merkavah, or chariot, described by Ezekiel in his mystical vision) suggests the radical potential for change and growth made possible by including women in the tradition of Jewish text study. What’s more, Merkavah creates a platform for Jewish women’s leadership and scholarship. The program’s first instructor, Dalia Lockspeiser Davis, was a graduate of Stern College’s Graduate Program in Advanced Talmudic Studies (GPATS). By creating a “room of one’s own,” Merkavah is simultaneously providing an opportunity for women to steep themselves in a tradition that has largely been inaccessible to them and encouraging new expressions of Torah learning through a women-only space.
Merkavah’s founder and director, Nell MaghelFriedman, often compares its educational model to the popular local food movement’s “community-supported agriculture” (CSA), to which many here subscribe. By supporting local farmers, and making personal connections with them through CSA, local community members can benefit from fresh and healthy fruits and vegetables. So, too, when a local community invests in developing local Jewish scholarly talent, the results can be refreshing and rejuvenating for the community at large. One Merkavah student had never been able to dedicate time to serious Torah study, as she was preoccupied with, first her schooling, then gaining a profession, then raising a family, then working to send her children through college. Merkavah has finally given her a chance to learn for herself, truly lishmah. To date, through the program she has completed three tractates of Talmud.
The second inspiring program is Kevah, founded and directed by Sara Heitler Bamberger, and the recipient of the UpStart grant designed for innovative Jewish startups in the Bay Area. Kevah encourages Jewish engagement and community building through rigorous Jewish text study in small group settings. By encouraging individuals to make Jewish learning an integral part of their lives and community, and particularly by encouraging small learning groups to develop in a grassroots fashion and matching them with highly qualified text teachers, Kevah groups build micro-communities and empower adults to take ownership of their Jewish and spiritual lives.
Kevah fosters a homegrown, local quality Jewish community and makes serious Torah learning accessible outside the walls of traditional Jewish infrastructures such as the yeshiva or the academy. There are now twenty-five organized learning groups based in the Bay Area, and a dozen more groups have started in the Denver area. The groups that currently meet include young professionals getting together weekly for a potluck and to study Jewish ethics, and young mothers learning about Jewish parenting. Kevah, whose name is drawn from the encouragement in Pirkei Avot to make a set time for Torah study, brings meaningful Torah learning into hectic lives. As a full-time student and a new mother myself, I know how special it is to find a learning opportunity that fits my schedule. Kevah is now expanding its services nationally and is looking for foundation support to launch in Boston, New York, and Washington, DC, within the next three years. The boutique, customized approach means that people of all denominations can start to engage in rigorous study of classical texts in a way that seems to be sustainable over time.
In different ways, both Merkavah and Kevah offer refreshing feminist models of Jewish learning. Both programs were founded and are run by observant Jewish women. Merkavah, by creating women’s space, is encouraging the development of women’s leadership and women’s Torah. Kevah, by creating networks of Jewish learning groups, is making serious Torah learning accessible, breaking down barriers and hierarchies that have kept limmud Torah cloistered behind the walls of yeshivot.
Many of us who live far from the epicenters of Jewish living and learning can sometimes feel isolated and removed from the opportunities for learning offered in major Jewish centers. Even though successful learning programs do sometimes exist, like those offered by local kollels or national Jewish outreach organizations, they often fail to match our more modern and open sensibilities. Both Kevah and Merkavah offer sustainable and compelling models for rich and thorough Jewish learning, models that may very well reshape the way Jewish text study is incorporated into the fabric of Jewish living for Jews everywhere.
And so, five years after our journey out West, although we still miss our communities back East, and though we continue look to them for inspiration, with opportunities like Merkavah and Kevah burgeoning in the Bay Area, we feel we have also struck gold.