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

We know the story of Purim as a classic narrative of good and evil with a triumphant ending: "Now let's eat!" — but the narrative is worthy of a closer reading. The biblical book is a bawdy, sometimes slap-stick, sometimes serious work of fiction which conceals and reveals its purpose and meanings while giving us insights into the fantasies and reality of the Jewish world of its creators. We will read and discus... 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

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.

Between 1900 and 1950, nearly a thousand Yiddish children's books appeared across four continents: chickens learning Yiddish, children with magical powers, a democracy-loving mutt. These weren't just entertaining stories. They were blueprints for modern Jewish life, carrying competing visions from socialism to Zionism, cultural revival to secular nationalism.

This four-session course will explore how Yiddish writers used children's literature to help young rea... Read more

Doikayt, or "hereness" in Yiddish, has become a common catchphrase among Jewish critics of Zionism, who cite its importance for the Jewish Labor Bund. But what are the origins of the term? And how did it fit into the Bund's ideology? This lecture presents some research into these questions and proposes an alternative origin for doikayt that forces us to rethink its more recent uses.

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 Emma Goldman, the anarchist firebrand who declared: "The most violent element in society is ignorance." Born in 1869 to a Jewish family in Kovno, Russian Empire (present-day Lithuania), Goldman became the most notorious anarchist in America. A fearless advocate of free speech, birth control, ... Read more