Tamar Beer

During the last few weeks of summer, many students go on vacation or to relax at home, but in 2018, Tamar Beer ’21S had a different plan. A Judaic studies major at Stern College for Women, Beer is the founder and director of a two-week collegiate women’s summer Beit Midrash program called Bnot Sinai. After seeing how many women like herself were home during the few weeks leading up to school, Beer realized that “with such a blossoming and vibrant Jewish community in the Five Towns and West Hempstead, it would be awesome if women who seek out high-level learning could get together.” This year, the program will run from August 12 until August 23 at the Young Israel of North Woodmere. The seeds of the program were already planted at the end of her shana bet [additional year] at Midreshet Lindenbaum in Jerusalem, Israel. While preparing to leave this high-level learning environment, she had the dream to create a seminary-like experience in the United States. She made a WhatsApp group of people who shared this dream, which soon numbered 40 women. Beer then reached out to teachers and partnered with the Orthodox Union’s Women’s Initiative and Yavneh, the campus organization, to create Bnot Sinai. Bnot Sinai’s curriculum spans all area of Torah studies. The morning is devoted to Gemara seder [learning in pairs] and shiur [lecture], while the afternoon consists of a guest shiur, followed by Tanach [Bible] and Halacha [Jewish law] sedarim and shiurim [lectures]. Faculty include Rabbi Shlomo Zuckier, Rabbi Dr. Ezra Frazer and Rebbetzin Lisa Septimus. Bnot Sinai’s learning opportunities provide women with an environment that fosters high-level learning and deep connections with incredible educators. Though the program is targeted toward women in college (women attend from Stern College, Barnard and Queens College), women of all ages come from as far as Lakewood, New Jersey, to learn at Bnot Sinai. All who attend are “unified through wanting to learn in an all-women’s Beit Midrash.” As the program flourishes, Beer wants to ensure that it will continue after its second summer: “We started this program, and we are invested. This is what we built for ourselves. It is not just my Beit Midrash. It is everyone’s Beit Midrash. It may be my initiative, but it is everyone else that keeps it going.”