Part of the "Soil to Soul: Agriculture and Jewish Culture" series

In conversation with Yael Raviv of Jewish Food Society

A partnership program of Urban Adamah and New Lehrhaus, and with Jewish Food Society

Click the session titles below to reach the individual registration pages.

This program will consider a number of texts composed by Jews dwelling under imperial rule in antiquity (the Persian, Greek, and Roman empires) in order to understand how the substantial humor in those texts reflects the experience and attitudes of a subordinate people. The texts to be discussed are the biblical books of Esther and Jonah, the stories of Judith and Susanna, and the Testament of Abraham. (PDF files of the latter three will be sent to participants).

In partnership with Beth Jacob Congregation, Oakland

We invite you to join these community Yom Ha-Shoah Programs held by partner organizations: JFCS Holocaust Center and "Under One Tent," a program of the Contra Costa JCC.

Part of the "Soil to Soul: Agriculture and Jewish Culture" series

In partnership with JCCSF

A partnership program of Urban Adamah and New Lehrhaus, and with Jewish Food Society

Click the session titles below to reach the individual registration pages.

Join our partners, Taube Philanthropies and POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw in marking the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising with three special Bay Area Lectures (in-person only).

Join our partners, Taube Philanthropies and POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw in marking the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising with three special Bay Area Lectures (in-person only).

Explore why Israeli voters turned towards Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition partners at the November election, leading to his becoming the longest-serving prime minister of Israel and parliamentary losses for left-wing and Arab parties. Rosenbaum will delve into the major demographic changes that have taken place in Israel over the past decades as well as the judicial reform legislation that has led to protests throughout the country.

It’s not what you think, it’s not what the Hagaddah tells us, it’s not what you remember from Sunday School or "The Ten Commandments." Profs. Ron Hendel and Robert Alter will provide an analysis of the Biblical text, both historical and literary, which will turn your Passover Seder upside down.

In our fall semester, our class explored the tragic last days of the Kingdom of Judah in 586 BCE and its aftermath in texts from II Kings and Lamentations. To close the academic year, we’ll celebrate the restoration of the Jewish people promised in Isaiah 40-41. This text most likely dates to the 540’s BCE when the hated Babylonian Empire was about to fall to the Persians and Cyrus the Great. Exiled Judeans embraced the hope that soon, God would redeem them and return them home. In doing so, the writer jubilantly expresses the power of God in brilliant verses that confirm that the Jewish faith of the future would acknowledge only one God.