UPCOMING PROGRAMS

Courses, conversations, and encounters across Jewish texts, ideas, and arts.

On Zoom, in the Bay Area, and Beyond

Series Programs

Tuition covers the full series. Register even if you can't attend every session.

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Sun 08

- Pacific Time

Critical Perspectives on Israel & Palestine: Feminism & Activism in the Knesset

Virtual Program

Critical Perspectives on Israel & Palestine consists of five stand-alone sessions, each requiring separate registration. These sessions invite participants into serious, pluralistic engagement with sharply different analyses and visions for the future of Israel/Palestine. We'll also examine the moral and political frameworks that shape those visions.

Instructor

Sun 01

- Pacific Time

Critical Perspectives on Israel/Palestine: Diplomacy, Poetry, and the Druze Experience

Virtual Program

Critical Perspectives on Israel & Palestine consists of five stand-alone sessions, each requiring separate registration.  These sessions invite participants into serious, pluralistic engagement with sharply different analyses and visions for the future of Israel/Palestine. We'll also examine the moral and political frameworks that shape those visions.

In each session, we feature a scholar, organizer, or public leader offering a distinct criti... Read more

Instructor

Mon 26

- Pacific Time

Critical Perspectives on Israel & Palestine: New Jewish Narrative

Virtual Program

Critical Perspectives on Israel & Palestine consists of five stand-alone sessions, each requiring separate registration. These sessions invite participants into serious, pluralistic engagement with sharply different analyses and visions for the future of Israel/Palestine. We'll also examine the moral and political frameworks that shape those visions.

In each session, we feature a scholar, organizer, or public leader offering a distinct critical le... Read more

Instructor

Sun 25

Starts on - Pacific Time Series

Reading Biblical Texts: Prophets and Prophecy in the Biblical World

Virtual Program
Who were the prophets and prophetesses, how did they come to be so, and how were their visions expressed and received? Our class will explore these and other questions, not only for prophets of the Bible, but also for the prophetic profession in the rest of the ancient Near East. Then we'll explore specific Biblical texts that inform our understanding of the prophet and his role in society. A special focus will be the endemic problem of the 'false prophet' in Biblical Literature. In the pro... Read more

Instructor

Sun 25

Starts on - Pacific Time Series

Prayerbook/Biblical Hebrew 2

Virtual Program
The second semester of a three-semester sequence, this course is designed for those who have completed New Lehrhaus Hebrew 1 or equivalent, have a working Hebrew vocabulary of 75–100 words and are familiar with the grammar of nouns, adjectives, possessive endings and simple participles. It’s also a great choice for students with basic sight-reading skills who need a general review.

What you'll learn:

Instructor

Tue 20

Starts on - Pacific Time Series

A Tour of Ancient Israel

Virtual Program
This richly illustrated class explores the lifeways, places, and events of ancient Israelite civilization, from the Age of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs to the early rabbinic era. We'll visit the region's most important ancient sites, covering the millennia from 1500 BCE to 500 CE. We'll discover daily life in ancient times: what people ate and drank; how, where, and what they worshipped; the battles won and lost; and the kings, queens, and prophets who shaped this history. Studying this an... Read more

Instructor

Thu 15

Starts on - Pacific Time Series

Radical Jewish Reading Circle: Rosa Luxemburg

Virtual Program
Join us for the Radical Jewish Reading Circle: three evenings of reading, thinking, and conversation about radical thinkers of Jewish origin.

This month we turn to Rosa Luxemburg, starting with her famous 1917 letter to Mathilde Wurm, in which she declared: "I have no special corner in my heart for the ghetto: I am at home in the entire world wherever there are clouds and birds and human tears." Born in 1871 to a Jewish family in Russian-controlled Poland, Lux... Read more
Tue 13

Starts on - Pacific Time Series

Convergence in Conversation: Music, Narratives, and History

Virtual Program
Join us for an engaging series of conversations led by acclaimed multidisciplinary artist and educator Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell exploring the music, narratives and histories behind his 2018 EP covering a century of African American and Ashkenazic Jewish music, Convergence.
... Read more
Wed 07

Starts on - Pacific Time Series

Reading and Writing Grief and Surrender

Virtual Program
In this three-part seminar, led by novelist and poet Moriel Rothman-Zecher, we will focus on both reading and writing poetry and fiction that deal with themes of grief and surrender. Each class will begin with a grounding check-in, and a discussion of what roles reading and writing poetry and fiction, in particular, can play in grieving, and what roles grief can play in our art-making. In other words, we will examine the two-directional street of transforming “my pain” into a part of “the p... Read more

Tue 23

- Pacific Time

Jordan Chad · Christmas in Yiddish Tradition

Virtual Program
In partnership with KlezCalifornia

Back in Europe, Yiddish-speaking Jews traditionally let loose on Christmas Eve with feasting, drinking, dancing, and gambling. Scholars have previously assumed that this Christmas Eve vacation from Torah study was some sort of antagonistic counterculture to Christians celebrating Christmas. But Jordan Chad’s recent book Christmas in Yiddish Tradition: the Untold Story* reveals that the Christmas traditions ... Read more

Instructor

Sun 21

- Pacific Time

Miriam Udel · Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature

Virtual Program
In partnership with KlezCalifornia

What would you do to make the world better for the children in your life? Around the turn of the twentieth century, a group of Yiddish-speaking educators, authors, and cultural leaders undertook a bold project: creating a corpus of nearly one thousand books and several periodicals, which flourished in conjunction with the secular Yiddish school systems that spanned th... Read more

Instructor

Thu 18

- Pacific Time

Erich Gruen & Ron Hendel · Hanukkah: Resistance or Accommodation?

Virtual Program

Brave Maccabees defeat the evil Seleucid Empire and rededicate the Temple; miracle oil burns for eight days (thus the latkes). Not really...the Books of the Maccabees tell a far messier tale.

Yes, Hanukkah celebrates a stirring victory of Jewish forces, led by Judah Maccabee, over those of the Greco-Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, who had sought to stamp out the religion, rituals, and institutions of the Jewish nation. But the historical record is more complicated. It was no... Read more

Instructor