Our Mission
New Lehrhaus brings students and teachers together in dynamic dialogue to explore Jewish sources, traditions, and arts, sustaining and enriching the vibrant spirit of Jewish civilization.
Franz Rosenzweig, founder of the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus, Frankfurt, 1920
As California’s non-denominational lifelong Jewish learning institution, we are dedicated to academic excellence, open inquiry, contemporary relevance, and cultural and religious pluralism. Our courses take up subjects you will not find anywhere else, taught at a level that respects your intelligence, in an environment designed for curious non-specialists.
We embrace what Franz Rosenzweig, the original founder of the Lehrhaus (House of Study), called “new learning.” He advanced an approach that begins wherever you are, with whatever knowledge and curiosity you bring, and moves from the periphery toward deeper understanding. In our community, historians learn alongside physicists, artists alongside engineers, newcomers alongside seasoned scholars, all contributing their unique perspectives to our shared exploration of Jewish thought and culture.
Our catalog reaches into corners of Jewish history, thought, text, and the arts that no other institution treats: the obscure, the overlooked, and the genuinely surprising, alongside fresh approaches to the classics. Every course is built for serious learners without assuming prior study. Depth is the point; a degree is not the prerequisite.
Our participants tell us they follow teachers the way others follow authors, and for good reason: our faculty includes the scholars who wrote the books, working artists, clergy, and veteran educators drawn from the Bay Area’s universities and cultural institutions. What unites them is intellectual rigor and a genuine love of teaching people who choose to learn.
We are a product of the San Francisco Bay Area’s spirit of innovation, curiosity, and fearless inquiry, and it shows in how we learn: not only lectures and text study, but art-making, nature walks, music, and study tours. Ancient sources meet an exploratory, hands-on sensibility, inside the classroom and out.
The pleasure of studying difficult material with other serious people is its own reward. Drawing on the Jewish tradition of hevruta (paired study), our classrooms are built for conversation, argument, and discovery. The friendships that form here grow out of the learning itself, which is exactly how we think it should work.
Each term brings new courses across Jewish history, thought, text, and the arts, taught by people who love to teach. Newcomers and longtime learners are equally at home.
Browse Our Catalog