The way she curses and uses emojis, you may not immediately recognize what Miriam Anzovin does as Jewish scholarship. But with the primary tools of books and a laptop, Miriam has reimagined Torah scholarship for today, and it’s pretty awesome.
The power of Miriam is something she preaches when she talks about reactions, whether they be her own Daf Yomi reactions to the daily page of Talmud she learns, or reaction of others to new lore. It’s in the personal reactions that Miriam sees the learning and exploration, and her goal is simple: to use tools that help her express how she sees the text. She doesn’t curse or use impressive Instagram filters to distract from tradition, but to add, augment, and make it even more relevant.
In 2023, after many years of appreciating Miriam’s revenant takes on Jewish text, I saw an illustration she did of Yalta, an iconic badass of the Talmud who wields an axe. Realizing the visual art skill Miriam possessed, something clicked for me—her storytelling is an art form, and I wanted to see what else she might do as she brings ancient texts and Jewish lore to life.
Now, Miriam is one of four 2024-2025 CJP x JArts/Vilna Shul Community Creative Fellows, and it has been such a joy to watch her develop her unique approach to Jewish learning and storytelling, making the text speak to a whole new generation.
Working with Miriam, it has been a treat to hear her nerd out on Torah stories and find connections and questions in all things. To let you into her process, I asked Miriam to share a few thoughts with us all.
What first empowered you to say, “I have commentary worth sharing?”
Laughter. I had been learning Talmud for a year in the Daf Yomi practice, which was also the first year of the pandemic. Over Zoom, I was talking with two rabbis, both women, about a particularly misogynistic but also spectacularly hilarious passage in the text. I gave the daf, which does not, in fact, stand for “Dope As F$%#” but rather means “page,” in my own words to the rabbis. I gleefully and enthusiastically acted out a highly implausible and physically impossible scenario being discussed in the text, involving a woman, a snake who has a problem understanding the concept of consent, some tongs, and a barbecue. And I looked up at the Zoom screen and both of the rabbis were crying tears of laughter. That’s when I knew I had something here. The elation I felt at their joy was intoxicating. It took me another year to finally get the courage to start recording my videos, but that was the moment I knew I could bring a very different perspective, and a very different voice, to learning Talmud.
Passover is upon us, and one of your fellowship lore explorations is about Passover. Tell us what we might expect.
Some of my favorite stories and characters are from our own tradition, from the collective, shared, narrative world-building of the Jewish people. I love to talk about them with the same hype and enthusiasm I would for any other fandom I’m a part of, the way I talk about “The Lord of the Rings” or “Game of Thrones.” Which is why I make the Jewish Lore Reactions videos.
As a millennial feminist learning Jewish stories from ancient texts, sometimes it can be, let’s say, challenging. But the Exodus story does have some incredible female characters, some of whom are well-known: Miriam, my namesake, the prophet, the rebellious, undaunted leader. Shifra and Puah, the famous midwives who rejected Pharoah’s “your body, my choice” approach to the reproductive rights of Israelite women. Yocheved, Moses’ mother. Batya, the Egyptian princess who adopts him, and later on, his wife, Tzippora.
But there is someone else often overlooked within the Passover narrative, who doesn’t get the PR she should have, who isn’t talked about as much as she should be, which is a crying shame and also pretty ironic because she is the one, the only, Serach Bat Asher, the undying personification of memory, music, and storytelling in Judaism.
My goal is to bring her narrative from comparative obscurity out into the light, and amplify her vital role in the Exodus narrative as much as possible. My hope is that people will then feel inspired to make her a part of their Passover celebration, a part of their understanding of women in our most important stories as a people. No disrespect to Elijah the Prophet—glad he pops in during the seder—but he isn’t the only undying mythic character around. I’m here to be a Serach Bat Asher hype-woman.
Serach is so central to your work that you illustrated her on a sticker. Show and tell!
Here, I depict Serach with her lyre, a gift from her uncles, the sons of Jacob. It was the gift that was the catalyst for her immortality, as Jacob blessed her with eternal life for singing to him a beautiful song that his beloved favorite child, Joseph, wasn’t actually dead but alive and HBIC in Egypt. In this illustration, I show her at 400 years old, when the Israelites are about to leave on their 40-year camping trip in the wilderness. Man, that lyre was built to last; they don’t make ‘em like they used to! She stands among the papyrus rushes on the banks of the Nile river, music notes floating away on the wind. I imagine this is the moment right before Moses asks her if she knows where the sarcophagus of Joseph might be hidden so he can take it with them—no skeleton left behind—a story found in Tractate Sotah. Luckily for Moses, Serach knows exactly where in the Nile that sarcophagus has been sunk, because she’s had an AirTag on that thing for centuries.
Find Miriam Anzovin on Instagram, TikTok, X, BlueSky, Mastodon, Threads and YouTube.
Miriam Anzovin is part of the 2024-2025 CJP and JArts Community Creative Fellowship, a program dedicated to elevating local creators who transform Jewish life through storytelling, music and art. Now in its fifth year, the fellowship highlights diverse voices and traditions, expanding the contemporary Jewish canon with work that resonates deeply with Greater Boston’s communities. Learn more about this year’s cohort.
This post has been contributed by a third party. The opinions, facts and any media content are presented solely by the author, and JewishBoston assumes no responsibility for them. Want to add your voice to the conversation? Publish your own post here. MORE
