MEET

Yitz Muroff

Learning Torah invites us to have real conversations. It elevates us from the everyday to the profound. I love studying Torah because it connects me to my tradition and it changes my life. It affects the way I think about things, the choices I make, and the emotions I feel.

Thankfully, we have many kinds of Torah for different seasons, different years, and different moods. I love learning Chumash and uncovering the deep meanings in the details of the language of familiar stories. I learn Talmud in a way that requires both zooming out and zooming in. I always want to understand what the whole section is talking about on a big scale, while making sure not to gloss over the actual words–and jokes–that make up the text. Hassidut offers insightful lessons based on our texts, and also serves as a spiritual grounding for my other Torah learning .

My learning is also deeply queer. This manifests not only through engagement with content that explicitly deals with gender and sexuality, but also through an approach that takes little for granted and aims to unpack tacit knowledge. I am not scared to read against the grain, to see each text and each teacher on their own terms, and to try to really feel the core elements of everything I learn. I aspire to expose texts that masquerade as dense and technical as sites of deep meaning that offer spiritual teachings and life advice.

I have learned Torah in many settings–in Jewish Day Schools, at Yeshivat Maale Gilboa, Hadar, Drisha, Pardes, and Yashrut. I have also taught Torah in various capacities–as a Bar Mitzvah tutor when I was in high school, as a student leader in Cornell Hillel, as an RA on the gap year program Kivunim, and in my current role as Educational Programs Coordinator at Pardes.

I am originally from Harrisburg, PA, where my dad has been the rabbi of a Conservative Synagogue for almost 30 years. I attended our local community Jewish day school, Silver Academy, and Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School in Pikesville, MD, Yeshivat Maale Gilboa, and Cornell University, where I studied English Literature. I also took various courses related to my interests–music theory, gender studies, translation, and Arabic.

I currently live in Jerusalem and hope to begin Rabbinical School next year. Outside of Torah study, I work with kids with special needs. I also sing, play piano and guitar, and produce music, especially with my roommates and my sister.