A Jew raised in a predominantly Protestant section of mostly Catholic Montreal, Leonard Cohen understood "outsiderness" as well as community. From a family of Torah scholars and synagogue founders, he even used the synagogue's choir on his last album. Yet, Leonard was a maven of world religions, especially as they pointed to the majesty and wonder of human life and provided rich imagery for his songs. In this class, we will focus on Leonard's Jewish identity and themes with a nod toward his... Read more

In this multimedia talk, author Seth Rog... Read more

This session explores two radical innovations in Jewish culture and education that have their roots in the 1920s: the legacy of the Jewish People's Fraternal Order and Yiddishkayt Los Angeles, alongside Franz Rosenzweig's "New Learning" and today's New Lehrhaus.

The JPFO was one of Los Angeles's most important Jewish organizations in the early 20th century, centering anti-racist organizing and Yiddish culture. After its McCarthyist destruction in 1950, former ... Read more

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

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 the globe in the 1920s and 30s. 

These vibrant texts cut across continents and ideologies but shared in their c... Read more

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 transmitted in Yiddish were very similar to those transmitted in other Eu... Read more