Literature - Page 4 of 5 - New Lehrhaus - California's Hub for Adult Jewish Education

- Pacific Time

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

Virtual Program

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

Miriam Udel

- Pacific Time Series

Borges for Beginners

Virtual Program

The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges never wrote a novel, yet his short stories, essays, poems, and lectures inspired generations, from Gabriel García Márquez to Paul Auster, W.G. Sebald, and Benjamín Labatut. He remains a central figure in literary history, and his works continue to spark new ideas and interpretations.

In this class, we will explore his essential works, beginning with the classic stories "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" and "The Aleph... Read more

Instructor

Julia Kornberg

- 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

Instructor

Moriel Rothman-Zecher

- Pacific Time Series

Vanity of Vanities: Meaninglessness from Ecclesiastes to Today

Virtual Program

Instructor

Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé

- Pacific Time

Philip Roth: Stung by Life

Virtual Program

Join New Lehrhaus director Dr. Robby Adler Peckerar for an online discussion of Steven J. Zipperstein's groundbreaking literary biography of Philip Roth one of America's most celebrated writers. Drawing on extensive archival materials and over one hundred interviews—including conversations with Roth himself—Zipperstein explores the unprecedented range of Roth's work, from Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy's Complaint to the Pulitzer Prize–winning American Pastoral, placing his wri... Read more

Instructor

Steve Zipperstein

- Pacific Time Series

Reading Yiddish Texts: The Yiddish Stage • Classic One-Act Plays

Virtual Program

Step into the vibrant world of early twentieth-century Yiddish theater while advancing your language skills through the dramatic works of Peretz Hirschbein, Chaver Paver, and Sholem Aleichem. This six-session online course uses classic one-act plays as a rich linguistic resource, where dialogue reveals the rhythms of spoken Yiddish and dramatic texts illuminate idiomatic expression, cultural context, and the textures of Eastern European Jewish life.