Rachel and her husband Jackson are excited to reopen Base Boston in August 2023.

Rachel Jackson, owner of Binah Design, is a scribe, artist, graphic designer, and bookbinder. Rachel’s first art commission was the design of a bar mitzvah invitation, when she was 11 (before her own bat mitzvah).

Since then, Rachel pursued her love of making things by hand, intertwined with Jewish tradition in a number of ways. She spent two years at the Migdal Oz seminary in Israel, deeply immersed in Talmud, and in her second year, silk screening at the Jerusalem Print Workshop. She studied Visual Art and Humanities where she wrote her BA thesis on modern philosophical understandings of the physical form of the book at the University of Chicago. She completed a certificate in bookbinding at the North Bennet Street School in Boston where she studied traditional methods of gold tooling and leatherwork, tool making, and metalworking, among a wide variety of skills and disciplines.

Rachel studied sofrut (sacred Hebrew calligraphy) from renowned teacher Jen Taylor Friedman, and has been working and teaching as a soferet since 2015. She has written two English language megillot that abide by all the rules of sofrut, which are the only two known kosher English megillot in existence. Her teaching has focused on providing accessible opportunities for traditionally marginalized communities to access the texts and profession of sofrut including the first class accessible to deaf and hard of hearing participants.

While coming from different backgrounds and practices, Rachel and her intrepid partner Jackson built their home around the integration of Jewish interpretation and the creative arts. In doing so, they have built several communities and projects seeking to bring intimate connections to Judaism across all backgrounds and denominations: intentional Judaica called Hiddur Mitzvah  to create innovative, tangible aspects of ritual and as well as the Moishe House Cambridge Arts Pod, a community built around engaging with Judaism through creativity. They are eager to continue to welcome folks into their home and into Jewish tradition with  Base Boston. You can reach Rachel at rachel.jackson@moishehouse.org.