We have a plethora of new programs starting right after Labor Day. Here's the list: details and registration here (//newlehrhaus.org/learn-with-us).

As we conclude our 1st fiscal year, we salute YOU, our students and supporters, for your enthusiasm and dedication! Thanks to you: We have reached 4,100 program registrations; There have been 4,840 views of our recorded programs; 1,357 of you have subscribed to our emails; 165 of you have made donations to support New Lehrhaus. And we salute our teachers! (How many can you identify?)

I recently attended Natan Meir's lecture, Kiev: Jewish Metropolis, offered by New Lehrhaus.  Most of my maternal grandmother's family emigrated from outside Kiev, Ukraine between 1902 and 1905.  As a child, I asked my great grandmother many questions, but she answered very few.  I often learned more about the pogroms, anti-Semitism and other traumas from what she didn't say than from what she did.  So, I could hardly wait to attend the lecture, hoping for more information.  I was really delighted that Prof. Meir filled in many gaps for me and offered explanations for seemingly contradictory information I had.

A "she-hecheyanu moment:" Jim Mavrikios joins New Lehrhaus as our Program Manager. We are thrilled to welcome our first staff member (yes, up until now everything had been managed by volunteers)!

In the 1990s, when I was directing the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, a most unusual PhD student walked into my office: a former yeshiva bocher (Orthodox seminary student) who could recite both complex Talmud passages and entire Seinfeld episodes from memory – in one and the same breath!  Ron Reissberg completed his doctorate and went on to teach both rabbinic and high school students in several institutions. But his true calling, I suspected, but as his PhD supervisor couldn't say, was as stand-up comic, if only there were a comedy club where rabbinic pilpul (nuanced hermeneutics) was the order of the day (or night).

Nu, what do you think about Intermarriage? Image by Marvin Steindler (marvinsteindler.com) On January 19th Professor Bruce Phillips (Hebrew Union College, Los Angeles, and USC: https://crcc.usc.edu/people/bruce-phillips/) will present: How Interfaith Marriage is Changing the American Jewish Community – But Not Necessarily in the Ways We Think/Fear. This is a topic that every Jew,  should find intriguing and important, not just those who have married non-Jews.

David Waksberg, recently shared these thoughts with me. These days, the reminder that goodness can prevail against seemingly impossible odds helps to keep despair at bay.

Board member David Waksberg reflects on his participation in New Lehrhaus

I asked three of our New Lehrhaus leaders, Rachel & David Biale and Steve Zipperstein to reflect on their longtime friendship. Rachel Biale says this:

Whether you were born Jewish and never learned Hebrew (perhaps despite hours warming the chair at Hebrew School...) or you chose Judaism as an adult, tackling a new language IN A NEW ALPHABET is daunting. Yet mastery of even the alef-bet and some words of Hebrew is tremendously empowering and, the way our teachers teach, great fun! Over the years Lehrhaus had offered numerous Hebrew and Yiddish classes. Many of the teachers are lifers, and will be teaching for New Lehrhaus until someone pries the chalk from their hand!