Rachel Biale is the author of Women and Jewish Law (Schocken, 1984), which got its start as a course at Lehrhaus in 1977. She has taught classes and lectured on women, gender and family relations in Jewish tradition in the Bay Area, and in other cities in the US and abroad. She founded and has served as the director of Lehrhaus Judaica’s “Bible by the Bay.” Rachel was born and raised in Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin in Israel. She received her BA and MA in Jewish History from UCLA and her MSW from Yeshiva University. She is the former Bay Area Regional Director of the Progressive Jewish Alliance.