Listen, Dear, Esteemed, Pious Women
Rabbanit Leah Sarna
Rabbanit Leah Sarna is the Associate Director of Education and Director of High School Programs at Drisha. She previously served as Director of Religious Engagement at Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation in Chicago, a leading urban Orthodox congregation.
She was ordained at Yeshivat Maharat in 2018, holds a BA from Yale University in Philosophy & Psychology, and also trained at the SKA Beit Midrash for Women at Migdal Oz, Drisha and the Center for Modern Torah Leadership. Rabbanit Sarna’s published works have appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Lehrhaus and MyJewishLearning.
She has lectured in Orthodox synagogues and Jewish communal settings around the world and loves spreading her warm, energetic love for Torah and Mitzvot with Jews in all stages of life.
“Who has ever heard of or seen such a novelty; has it ever happened in countless years, that a woman has written something of her own accord? And she has read numerous verses and midrashim,” wrote the printer, Gersom, the son of Rabbi Bezalel Katz, in Prague in 1609 about Rabbanit Rebecca bat Meir and her book, the Meneket Rivkah. Join Rabbanit Leah Sarna for an exploration of what might be the first printed sefer authored by a Jewish woman. The book is originally in Yiddish, but this class will be working out of the 2008 English translation by Dr. Frauke von Rohden entitled Meneket Rivkah: A Manual of Wisdom and Piety for Jewish Women.