In partnership with Sha'ar Zahav

Explore culture, history and, of course, great food on an exciting and educational trip to Morocco, March 3-13, 2023. Rabbi Yoel Kahn will lead us on a journey to fabled cities like Casablanca, Fez and Marrakech, as well as the desert and the mountains. Jews have lived in Morocco for over two thousand years and we will engage with both the historical and contemporary Jewish sites and community.

In partnership with the Contra Costa JCC

In partnership with KlezCalifornia

Learn this rich and colorful language in a relaxed, irreverent and heimishe atmosphere.

In partnership with KlezCalifornia

“It is not a coincidence,” says photographer Penny Wolin “that Jews are attracted to the alchemy of photography and photography has found its storytellers in Jews.” Over six years, Wolin had in-person encounters with 70 leading American Jewish photographers, including Robert Frank, Annie Leibovitz, and Arnold Newman. With a visual and verbal discussion, we will explore the motivations of Jews in photography.

Mathematicians, theologians, and even children ponder the inspiring and surprising nature of the infinite. Dr. Lesser will explore—in a lively, interactive way—how math concepts can help illuminate some big ideas in Judaism, including the value of life, the value of commandments, and the coexistence of God's transcendence and immanence. While parts of this realm can get technical, have no fear: our session will maintain a liberal arts, general adult audiences sensibility to keep it accessible to a broad diversity of backgrounds in mathematics and in Judaism.

Program Video: https://youtu.be/FEzwnh37xBY

In partnership with The East Bay International Jewish Film Festival, Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, and A Wider Bridge

The Land-as-Woman is one of the most deeply rooted metaphorical systems in Jewish as well as Western and Middle-Eastern cultures, used to support the discourses of colonialism and nationalism throughout history. It has its origins in the Hebrew Bible. In modern Hebrew poetry modernist women poets critique a tradition that views women always as metaphors, never as literal subjects, developing a new erotics of the address to the land that calls into question patriarchal models of conquest and subjugation.

The abortion debate has just reached fever pitch following the leak of the Supreme Court majority opinion suggesting the demise of Roe vs. Wade. If it is overturned, what other personal freedoms are already/will be in danger: transgender health services, gay marriage, contraception?

Explore the cultural, social, and economic forces that led to a remarkable phenomenon:  although the Jewish population in America has rarely exceeded 2%, over 80% of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley songwriters have been Jewish. How are Jewish religion and tradition and the qualities inherent in the Yiddish language reflected in the songs written by those lyricists, including Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, Ira Gershwin, Yip Harburg, Dorothy Fields, Sheldon Harnick, and Alan Jay Lerner.