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Article about Grannies in the JWeekly. Just published and we are very happy with it. https://www.jweekly.com/2019/09/13/raging-grannies-use-political-theater-to-fight-injustice/.

This post originally appeared on Kevah.org.

You can’t walk 10 feet these days without bumping into the Talmud. This summer, San Francisco–based G-dcast held a weeklong animation workshop for college students responding to Talmud stories. At the same time, East Bay residents Dan Fendel and Sheldon Schaffer completed a rigorous, 71⁄2-year Talmud-page-a-day study marathon — the first in East Bay history. And this fall, Lehrhaus Judaica and Kevah have partnered to offer 12 cohorts of Talmud study throughout the Bay Area, double the number they offered last year.

Rabbi David Stolper (center) and staff of the Central Hebrew School of the Jewish Educational Society circa 1926

This level of Talmud study would have surprised and delighted Rabbi David Stolper, who in 1926 became principal of the Central Hebrew School of the Jewish Educational Society. The legendary Lithuanian-born educator helped change the region’s culture of traditional Jewish learning from a chaotic and underfunded venture into a more organized and inspiring voyage.

Born in yeshiva-soaked Vilna, but with a secular Vienna education, Rabbi Stolper arrived in San Francisco with both traditional credentials and a modern sensibility. His pioneering “street cred” was likely burnished by his creation of a Jewish school in Siberia after the Russian Revolution, before crossing the Pacific with his wife. For 20 years, at his headquarters at Buchanan and Grove streets in the Fillmore District, Rabbi Stolper inspired hundreds of students (including Rabbi Emeritus H. David Teitelbaum from Congregation Beth Jacob in Redwood City) to study, lead services and pave the way for the next generation of Jewish leaders.

This column is written by Daniel Schifrin, writer-in-residence at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, where stories of local Jewish life are explored in “California Dreaming: Jewish Life in the Bay Area from the Gold Rush to the Present.”

The mostest difficult challenge I’ve ever undertaken was studying Talmud. I say “studying” like it was a college course on Derrida or Russian, both of which I found significantly easier. At least they have punctuation.

I took a Talmud class 20 years ago in Jerusalem. We met three times a week and, in a year, we got through 10 pages. It’s that hard.

So why are so many Jews suddenly taking it up? Here in the Bay Area, there are now dozens of classes, with hundreds of students. Some have been going on for years; others are just launching this fall. This is hard, hard stuff that takes a lot of commitment — 71⁄2 years of daily study to get through the Daf Yomi, a page-a-day cycle followed by Jews around the world.

What’s going on?

First, new translations have made Talmud more accessible to English speakers. In 2005, ArtScroll came out with its 73-volume Schottenstein Talmud, in English and the original Aramaic/Hebrew, and this past May, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz published the first volume of his much-anticipated new English translation of the Talmud. While slogging through the original text is absolutely required for real understanding, having the English in front of you makes it a lot easier.

The immediate impetus, however, might have been widespread Siyum HaShas celebrations Aug. 2, organized to mark the completion of the latest Daf Yomi cycle. More than 90,000 people, mostly Orthodox men, jammed into the stadium formerly known as the Meadowlands in New Jersey for the biggest and most publicized party; smaller ones took place worldwide.

A Talmud party! Woo-hoo! Yet it seems to have touched off a phenomenon. Last month, the JTA Jewish news service wrote about newbies who, in the wake of the New Jersey gathering, joined the new Daf Yomi cycle that began the next day.

“It did spark a lot of interest,” says Rabbi Joey Felsen, who heads up the Jewish Study Network, which launched a Daf Yomi group 71⁄2 years ago in Palo Alto. Six men finished that cycle, and more have joined the new group, which meets every day at 5:30 a.m. (before morning prayers, natch).

For those who can’t quite stomach the hour, Felsen launched a second Daf Yomi group in the evening, made up entirely of new students. Other Talmud groups meet in San Francisco.

And it’s not just the Orthodox. Reform Temple Isaiah in Walnut Creek has held a Thursday Talmud class for more than a decade; this month, it’s launching a second weekly class, on Sundays.

“It’s not dry,” says Rabbi Shalom Bochner of Berkeley’s Conservative Congregation Netivot Shalom, where he started a weekly Talmud class soon after he arrived 31⁄2 years ago. “The fun is the constant question and answer, the back and forth. It’s like a strange board game that has its own logic.”

Bochner’s group is on page 38a of the 64-page tractate “Berachot.” That’s about half a page a week.  “We’re on the 75-year cycle,” he says. But he has no doubt his regulars will stick with it.

“There are so few topics that excite people to this level,” he says.

The mother of all Bay Area Talmud classes might be the one started by Rabbi Peretz Wolf-Prusan 22 years ago in San Francisco, a project of Reform Congregation Emanu-El. It’s drawn an average of 20 people a week ever since.

When Wolf-Prusan parted ways with Emanu-El two years ago and joined Lehrhaus Judaica, his Talmud class followed him. In the fall of 2011, Lehrhaus joined with Kevah, the Berkeley-based catalyst for adult Jewish text learning, and Steinsaltz’s New York–based Aleph Society, to create the Bay Area Community Talmud Circle, a consortium of grassroots-generated study groups.

Last year they ran six groups. This month, the second year is launching with 11 cohorts in Berkeley, Marin and San Francisco and on the Peninsula.

Apparently, the Bay Area was the only place in the country to take up the Aleph Society’s challenge of creating community-wide Talmud study groups.

“They were pretty surprised there is so much interest in Talmud in the Bay Area,” Wolf-Prusan says. “We’re not known for our frumkeit.” (That’s “religiosity,” for the Yiddishly-challenged.)

Full disclosure? Last winter I joined a Kevah Talmud group. Who knows where it will lead.

Come on in, the water’s fine.

  Taken from the JWeekly, a column by Sue Fishkoff

When we limit the experience of Jewish queerness to just one verse, which discusses just one small fraction of the queer Jewish experience, we delegitimize the entire experience of being a queer Jew.

Mikey Pauker easily could have missed his flight back to Oakland. The 30-year-old Bay Area–based musician was in the Phoenix airport, speaking to J. by phone so passionately about his newest project, “Sages,” that he suddenly realized his plane might be boarding.

No surprise, as the SFJFF is the oldest and largest Jewish film festival in the world. The 33rd annual festival opens with "The Zigzag Kid" on July 25 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. With eight venues across the region - three of them new - and 74 films from 17 countries, the three-week festival is significantly larger than last year's.