When Savina Teubal wore a kittel on her 60th birthday – acknowledging its future function as a shroud – for the Simchat Chochma (“Joy of Wisdom) eldering ceremony[link to ceremony], she pioneered another lifecycle occasion for Jewish women and ushered in another two decades of creative Jewish feminist scholarship and ritual. Savina's books include Sarah The Priestess: The First Matriarch of Genesis (1984) and Hagar the Egyptian: The Lost Tradition of the Matriarchs (1990). She founded Sarah's Tent in California, a group devoted to sheltering creative Jewish spirituality.

Born in Syria and raised in Argentina, Savina's close-knit community did not favor traditional learning for girls. Savina rebelled by becoming a pioneering Bible scholar and activist. She wrote for the Jewish Women's Archive: “In the early 1970s, when I was driving down Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, I saw a bumper sticker on the car in front of me that read ‘Question Authority.’ Those two words did for me what the burning bush did for Moses: they changed my perception of reality. I began to ask myself: What authority asserted that I could not be bat mitzvah, could not attend college nor have a career simply because I was female? For years I had fought and struggled for other women’s rights, not my own; 'Question Authority' changed the course of my life.” http://www.jwa.org/feminism/_html/JWA070.htm

Savina was a dedicated contributor to Kolot, a dear friend, and a loyal supporter of Kolot's work both in her life and in her last will. We miss her and honor her memory.

Savina Teubal Memorial Fund