Rabbi Benay Lappe, founder of Chicago’s SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva, is one of three Jewish educators who will receive The Covenant Award for 2016.

Lappe joins Daniel Henkin, director of music at The Ramaz Upper School in New York and at Camp Ramah Nyack and Ilana Ruskay-Kidd, founder and head of school at The Shefa School, New York as recipients of the award, which is among the highest honors in the field of Jewish education.

“For over 25 years, excellent, innovative Jewish educators have been recognized by The Covenant Foundation,” said Eli N. Evans, chairman of the board of directors of The Covenant Foundation. “These three recipients now join 75 others who, together, form a contingent of inspired, courageous, motivated and forward-thinking Jewish leaders.”

Lappe has created an exciting paradigm in Jewish education — learning that is traditional yet radical, and extremely rigorous yet accessible. She has painted a new picture of what adult education can look like and SVARA has become a compelling model of a new kind of Jewish learning.

When Lappe founded SVARA in 2003, its focus was on providing serious Talmud study to Jews on the margins whose outsider experience stemmed from their sexual orientation or gender identity. Today, SVARA’s approach to Jewish learning — one that foregrounds the native radicalness of the Talmud, and where everyone learns Talmud in the original Hebrew/Aramaic, even those who’ve just learned their alef-bet — speaks to a wide variety of Jews who feel that mainstream institutions and more typical approaches to adult learning are not working for them.

“There were so many others like me — Jews on the margins who’d been told that Judaism was a take-it-or-leave-it proposition,” she said. “But in the Talmud, I discovered a Judaism that offered a third alternative. What I saw the Rabbis doing was very powerful to me. I realized that the Talmud, which has been taught to only 1 percent of the Jewish population, needed to be taught to the other 99 percent and I figured out a way to do that. I was a teacher who had finally figured out what she needed to teach, whom she needed to teach, and why.”

Under her leadership, SVARA’s students now represent the full spectrum of Jewish life and diversity and enrollment has grown dramatically. In its first year, eight students enrolled at SVARA. Last year, 600 students studied in SVARA’s beit midrash . SVARA now boasts week-long summer Talmud retreats, a full-time yeshiva, and a teacher training program.

“Her Torah empowers those who would otherwise see themselves as fully outside of the Jewish community or on its periphery, giving them the inspiration, confidence and tools to become ‘players’ in a reimagined Jewish world — a world in which they have central roles,” said Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann, founder of Mishkan Chicago, who nominated Rabbi Lappe for the Covenant Award.

“Benay’s teaching is rigorous Talmud study that is accessible to all … She turns people who barely know the alef-bet into serious students of gemara and shows them how the Jewish tradition not only allows, but demands, radical creativity.”

Lappe is also senior fellow and director of education at the Institute for the Next Jewish Future in Chicago, where she oversees the faculty and staff Beit Midrash and participates in its Judaism Unbound podcasts. Rabbi Lappe travels widely and brings SVARA-style Talmud study to seminaries, synagogues, schools, and other Jewish institutions across the United States and Israel.

“This is the greatest honor a Jewish teacher can receive. I will walk through the world just a little bit taller — for the rest of my life — because of it,” Lappe said upon learning that she would receive the 2016 Covenant Award. “My hope is that, because of the Covenant Foundation’s recognition of me and of SVARA, this kind of rigorous Jewish learning will flourish, and those who never thought they had a place at the table, will see that they do.”

Lappe and the other recipients will each receive $36,000 and each of their institutions will receive $5,000.

The Foundation and the Jewish community will honor the 2016 award recipients at a dinner in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 13 during the General Assembly of The Jewish Federations of North America.

For guidelines on nominating an educator for a 2017 Covenant Award, and to read biographies of past recipients, visit www.covenantfn.org/awards .

The Covenant Foundation is a program of the Crown Family Philanthropies.