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

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

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

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 Ashkenazi Jewish music, Convergence.

This class presents an interactive opportunity to engage with the distinct similarities and differences of Ashkenazi Jewish and Black American historical experience and examine how thos... Read more

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

This course explores the urgent, ancient question of meaning, purpose, and futility through the lens of "vanity"—both as biblical emptiness (fleeting as breath) and modern self-obsession.

Starting with the Book of Ecclesiastes, we will study scripture, novels, essays, and films that ask: what makes life meaningful amidst crisis, death, and the absurd? This inquiry feels especially urgent in our age of social media, AI, and climate emergency.

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

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.

• Prepositions
• W... Read more

Who were the prophets, how did they come to be prophets/esses, 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 process,... Read more

Haberes buenos (good news): you’re invited to join New Lehrhaus’s brand-new Ladino course! This six-session course offers an introduction to Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish language whose evolution traces the very history of the Sephardic people. With roots in 15th-century languages of the Iberian Peninsula, Ladino has spent the past five centuries evolving separately from Spanish and in close contact with languages of the Mediterranean, especially Turkish, Arabic, Greek, and other Balkan ... Read more