Benay Lappe (Hebrew: בִּנֵיי לַפֶּה/בנאי לאפה) is a rabbi and a teacher of Talmud in the United States. In 2016, Lappe was awarded the Covenant Award for innovation in Jewish education by the Covenant Foundation.
Biography Lappe was born on April 13, 1960, and grew up in Evanston, Illinois. She earned a BA in Italian literature and a MA in education from the University of Illinois, an MA in Hebrew letters from the University of Judaism, and an MA in rabbinic literature, as well as a semicha (rabbinic ordination) from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.Blackmer, C. E. (2001). Commonsensical Sanity. The Lesbian Review of Books, 8(1), 16.Brettschneider, M. (2019). Jewish lesbians: New work in the field. Journal of lesbian studies, 23(1), 2-20.
Lappe is a professor at the University of Illinois, Temple University, American Jewish University, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and the Graduate Theological Union's Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley. She is professor of Talmud at the Hebrew Seminary in Skokie, Illinois, and serves as the President and Rosh Yeshiva of SVARA (Hebrew:סְבָרָא), a yeshiva she founded in Chicago in 2003.Cooke, R. M. (2018). Torah Lishma: A Comparative Study of Educational Vision at Coed Yeshivot (Doctoral dissertation, Brandeis University). SVARA emphasizes radical empathy and innovation within Talmudic study and aims to empower learners to actively engage with and contribute to Jewish tradition.
Lappe was recognized on The Forward 50 2020 "list of American Jews who did remarkable things in this remarkable year".
References
Further reading
Lappe, Benay (2001). "Saying No in the Name of a Higher Yes".Lesbian Rabbis: The First Generation, pp. 197–216 (Rebecca Alpert et al. eds.). Lappe, Benay (January/February 2003). "Educating Rabbis to be traditional radicals...once again".Shma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility, 33, no. 597/598. Lappe, Benay (December 28, 1990). "Does A Child Who Has Been Sexually Abused By A Parent Have The Obligation To Say Kaddish For That Parent?".Shma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility, 21, no. 404.