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.

Robby Adler Peckerar, Rachel Biale & Aaron Paley, 12/9/2025—This session examines two radical innovations in Jewish culture and education rooted in the 1920s: the legacy of the Jewish People’s Fraternal Order and Yiddishkayt Los Angeles, and Franz Rosenzweig’s “New Learning” as it informs today’s New Lehrhaus. It traces how the JPFO—an early 20th-century Los Angeles organization centered on anti-racist activism and Yiddish culture—was dismantled during McCarthyism, how its members founded progressive community centers and schools, and how Yiddishkayt has continued this heritage for the past 30 years. It also explores Rosenzweig’s 1920 proposal to invert Jewish education by starting with modern life and welcoming learners from the “periphery to the center,” favoring everyday people over religious specialists. Together, these histories reveal inclusive models of Jewish engagement that bridge tradition and radical change.

Jacob Kodner, 12/8/2025—This course introduces the essential skills for documenting Judeo-Kashani, a critically endangered Jewish language from Kashan, Iran. Participants begin learning the basics of linguistics, techniques for collaborating with native speakers, and methods to elicit vocabulary and create online dictionary entries. The session combines lectures, interactive exercises, and discussion of fieldwork with the language’s last speakers.

Jannie Dresser, 12/2/2025—Growing up Jewish in a Protestant neighborhood within Catholic Montreal, Leonard Cohen understood both outsiderness and community. Descended from Torah scholars and synagogue founders, he even used his synagogue’s choir on his final album. A lifelong seeker, he drew on many religions for their imagery and insight. Jannie Dresser focuses on his Jewish identity and his ultimate devotion: love.

Jannie Dresser, 11/25/2025—Growing up Jewish in a Protestant neighborhood within Catholic Montreal, Leonard Cohen understood both outsiderness and community. Descended from Torah scholars and synagogue founders, he even used his synagogue’s choir on his final album. A lifelong seeker, he drew on many religions for their imagery and insight. Jannie Dresser focuses on his Jewish identity and his ultimate devotion: love.

Jacob Kodner, 11/24/2025—This course introduces the essential skills for documenting Judeo-Kashani, a critically endangered Jewish language from Kashan, Iran. Participants begin learning the basics of linguistics, techniques for collaborating with native speakers, and methods to elicit vocabulary and create online dictionary entries. The session combines lectures, interactive exercises, and discussion of fieldwork with the language’s last speakers.

Jannie Dresser, 11/18/2025—Growing up Jewish in a Protestant neighborhood within Catholic Montreal, Leonard Cohen understood both outsiderness and community. Descended from Torah scholars and synagogue founders, he even used his synagogue’s choir on his final album. A lifelong seeker, he drew on many religions for their imagery and insight. Jannie Dresser focuses on his Jewish identity and his ultimate devotion: love.

Jacob Kodner, 11/17/2025—This course introduces the essential skills for documenting Judeo-Kashani, a critically endangered Jewish language from Kashan, Iran. Participants begin learning the basics of linguistics, techniques for collaborating with native speakers, and methods to elicit vocabulary and create online dictionary entries. The session combines lectures, interactive exercises, and discussion of fieldwork with the language’s last speakers.

Erich Gruen, 11/16/2025—In the ancient world, Jews lived under the shadow of great empires—Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome. How did they understand their place within these dominant cultures, and how did those powers view them? This four-part series explores Jewish identity and its intersections with the wider world, focusing on kinship and identity, Greek and Roman perceptions of Jews, encounters with Greek mythology, and the Jewish place in the religious diversity of the Roman Empire.

Prof. Robert Alter & Robby Adler Peckerar, 11/12/2025—Nearly forty-five years after the publication of The Art of Biblical Narrative, Robert Alter joins New Lehrhaus executive director Robby Adler Peckerar to reflect on the book’s enduring legacy. First published in 1981, Alter’s groundbreaking work invited readers to see the Hebrew Bible as a masterpiece of literary art, transforming modern understanding of the sacred text. Recorded as part of Limmud North America’s Global Day of Jewish Learning.