Jehon Grist, 2/4/2026 · This video introduces a richly illustrated exploration of ancient Israelite civilization, from the Age of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs through the early rabbinic era. Viewers are guided through key places, lifeways, and historical developments across the region, spanning roughly 1500 BCE to 500 CE. The six-part course examines daily life in antiquity, including food, worship, political power, warfare, and the figures who shaped Israelite history. This material provides essential context for understanding Jewish history and the broader historical background of the region.

Reda Mansour, 2/1/2026 · Critical Perspectives on Israel & Palestine invites participants into serious, pluralistic engagement with sharply different analyses and visions for the future of the region. We examine the moral and political frameworks that shape those visions. In this session, Reda Mansour—an Israeli Druze diplomat, poet, and historian who served in senior roles in Israel’s foreign service—brings a dual lens to Israel/Palestine and the wider region: how diplomacy constructs interests and legitimacy, and how minority communities, particularly Druze communities with deep cross-border ties, experience conflict, instability, and the search for safety in the wake of the seismic events of October 7, 2023, and the tragic anti-Druze attacks in Syria this past July.

Jehon Grist, 1/28/2026 · This video introduces a richly illustrated exploration of ancient Israelite civilization, from the Age of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs through the early rabbinic era. Viewers are guided through key places, lifeways, and historical developments across the region, spanning roughly 1500 BCE to 500 CE. The six-part course examines daily life in antiquity, including food, worship, political power, warfare, and the figures who shaped Israelite history. This material provides essential context for understanding Jewish history and the broader historical background of the region.

Hadar Susskind, 1/26/2026 · Critical Perspectives on Israel & Palestine invites participants into serious, pluralistic engagement with sharply different analyses and visions for the future of Israel/Palestine. We examine the moral and political frameworks that shape those visions. This session features Hadar Susskind, president and CEO of New Jewish Narrative, a national Jewish organization working to build a values-driven story about Israel/Palestine in American Jewish life. He brings a diaspora-grounded political lens to questions of peace, security, and justice today—how narratives shape policy, how coalitions are built, and what concrete choices communities can make when “business as usual” no longer feels tenable.

Prof. Robert Alter, 1/23/2026 · Parashat Bo (Please note the recording does not capture the first few minutes of the session.)

Moriel Rothman-Zecher, 1/22/2026 · 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 pain,” and “my suffering” into a part of “the suffering.”

Jehon Grist, 1/20/2026 · This video introduces a richly illustrated exploration of ancient Israelite civilization, from the Age of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs through the early rabbinic era. Viewers are guided through key places, lifeways, and historical developments across the region, spanning roughly 1500 BCE to 500 CE. The six-part course examines daily life in antiquity, including food, worship, political power, warfare, and the figures who shaped Israelite history. This material provides essential context for understanding Jewish history and the broader historical background of the region.

Moriel Rothman-Zecher, 1/14/2026—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 pain,” and “my suffering” into a part of “the suffering.”

Moriel Rothman-Zecher, 1/8/2026—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 pain,” and “my suffering” into a part of “the suffering.”

Rachel Biale, 12/19/2025

Miriam Udel, 12/21/2025—What would you do to make the world better for the children in your life? Around the turn of the twentieth century, Yiddish-speaking educators, authors, and cultural leaders answered this question by creating a remarkable body of nearly one thousand children’s books and several periodicals, flourishing alongside secular Yiddish school systems across the globe in the 1920s and 30s. Spanning continents and ideologies, these stories, poems, and plays shared a common aim: to imagine into being a more beautiful and better world—a shenere un besere velt—in a distinctively Yiddish key. Seen as an archive, this vibrant literature offers a unique window onto the political visions, cultural debates, and global movements that shaped Ashkenazi Jewry’s passage into modernity.

Erich Gruen & Ron Hendel, 12/18/2025—The familiar Hanukkah story of brave Maccabees, evil Seleucids, and miracle oil gives way here to a far messier historical reality. Drawing on the Books of the Maccabees, this program examines the complex political, religious, and cultural conflicts behind Judah Maccabee’s revolt against the Greco-Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, who sought to suppress Jewish institutions and practices. Moving beyond simple tales of heroes and villains, it explores the motives, internal divisions, and long-term consequences of this iconic episode in Jewish history. Spoiler alert: there was no miracle of a tiny flask of oil—and no dreidels.