Base D.C. is a part-time outpost in Washington, D.C.
Base D.C. is led by Rabbi Avigayil Halpern, who builds local community by hosting Shabbat meals, learning, and chesed opportunities and holiday events, and holds one-on-one conversations with community members.
avigayil.halpern@memglobal.org
Rabbi Avigayil is a writer and educator who is passionate about the Torah that emerges in the conversation between our own lives and traditional texts. Avigayil’s work focuses on queer and feminist Torah, and she is currently at work on a book about queer niddah. You can read her writing at avigayil.substack.com.
Avigayil was ordained by the Hadar Institute in 2023, and has taught Torah and built community nationally and internationally, including at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the Drisha Institute, Hunter College Hillel, and Hillel Deutschland. She is a connoisseur of fancy little beverages and queer romance novels.
She is also trained as a Mikveh Guide, and has completed a unit of hospital chaplaincy training at New York Presbyterian/Columbia. She has been recognized as one of the New York Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” in 2021 and as a “Vatichtov: She Writes” Fellow in 2022, among other fellowships and awards.
