Rachel Biale

Rachel Biale (born 1952) is an Israeli-American author based in Berkeley, California. She is best known for Women and Jewish Law, a study of women's issues in halakhic sources, and for her memoir Growing Up Below Sea Level: A Kibbutz Childhood (2020).

For three years, Biale wrote a parenting advice column titled "Parenting for the Perplexed" for J. The Jewish News of Northern California.

Early life and education Biale was born in 1952 and raised on Kibbutz Kfar Ruppin, in the Beit She'an Valley of northern Israel, near the Jordan River. The kibbutz had been founded in 1938 by Jewish immigrants from Germany and later Czechoslovakia, including Biale's parents, Anina Vohryzek and Kurt Tramer, who had fled Prague in 1939. Her parents' route to Palestine included a voyage on the refugee boat Atlantic, capture by British forces, and years of detention on the island of Mauritius before her father volunteered for the British Army and her mother eventually reached Palestine in 1945.

Biale spent an academic year at Newton High School in a Boston suburb. After returning to Israel, she transferred to the Jordan Valley Regional High School, where she studied Jewish thought under Ehud Luz, later a professor at Haifa University. It examined halakhic sources on marriage, divorce, the agunah, sexuality, niddah, contraception, abortion, and rape.

Aerograms Across the Ocean (2021) In 2021, Biale co-authored Aerograms Across the Ocean: A Love Story in Letters, 1970–1972 with her husband, historian David Biale, published by Wildcat Books.

Books Women and Jewish Law (Schocken Books, 1984) We Are Moving: A Let's Make a Book about It Book (1996) My Pet Died: A Let's Make a Book about It Book (2004) Growing Up Below Sea Level: A Kibbutz Childhood (Mandel Vilar Press, 2020) What Now? 2-Minute Tips for Solving Common Parenting Challenges (Koehler Books, 2020) Aerograms Across the Ocean: A Love Story in Letters, 1970–1972 (with David Biale; Wildcat Books, 2021) Lost and Found (Wildcat Books, 2022) And Now Love Can Begin: My Parents' Imagined Memoir (Wildcat Books, 2025)