About Me

Hi! I’m Cliel and I use she/her pronouns. I am a first-year PhD student at the University of Toronto in the Department for the Study of Religion! My main area of interest is in queer interpretation and translation of the Hebrew Bible, with a focus on bodily functions and fluids. I work as a research assistant as well as an 8th-grade teacher at a local non-denominational Jewish afterschool program.

Last year, I completed my Masters in Hebrew Bible degree program at Yale Divinity School. I am also a University of Maryland, Baltimore County alum. As an undergraduate there, I majored in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. It was at UMBC where I first realized my interest in the Tanakh and began exploring it through a feminist and queer lens with the help of the Rabbi at my school’s Hillel, and several wonderfully affirming and helpful professors. Before coming to YDS, I studied Torah, Talmud, and Jewish practice at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies for two years.

Over time I developed a more specific interest in queer theory and innovative and radical Torah interpretation. I am intrigued by character agencies and choices, bodily fluids and embodiments, relationships and entanglements in the Tanakh. I have written on these topics, and will continue to do so - through whatever academic program I attend and my creative personal projects.

I was raised in a culturally Jewish home, in a Secular Humanist shul. I was a camper and leader in a Socialist Jewish Youth Movement. These days I consider myself a committed Jew. I am finding my own way into Judaism and foundational Jewish texts, holding strong and with bravery, bringing my queerness and my feminism.