These preparatory lectures for a New Lehrhaus/Tiyul Jewish Journeys September trip are open to anyone interested in the history of the region, not just trip participants.

Fred Rosenbaum will describe the millennia-long importance of the Rhine River to the economy, culture, and geopolitics of Western Europe with a focus on Frankfurt and the fraught Jewish experience in the region. The lecture will encompass medieval persecution and ghettoization, the ast... Read more

This multimedia program takes audiences on a journey via music, visuals, and storytelling, tracing klezmer's evolution and development from Old World shtetls to New World nightclubs and concert stages. The program includes insights into the sound and shape of klezmer and introduces many of the great heroes who helped transform Eastern European Yiddish wedding music into the vital form of world music it is today.

New Lehrhaus is co-presenting this heartfelt film which brings long-overdue recognition to Henrietta Szold, a Jewish American humanitarian whose legacy includes advocating for binational cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians. In Labors of Love, the filmmaker honors Szold's legacy and brings her story to life as a touching historical portrait as well as a roadmap for confronting the continued challenges of our... Read more

Freedom fighter, double agent, femme fatale—Tamar said she was all three. Decades after her death, a page she wrote in a diary from a Nazi-run women's camp reveals a hidden identity, leading her daughter on a global reckoning with secrets she took to her grave. 

The film uniquely addresses Holocaust sexual trauma and agency, and gives women survivors the platform to tell thei... Read more

This program is based on Daniel Matt's book The Essential Kabbalah, an anthology of teachings from various stages of the Jewish mystical tradition, including Sefer Yetsirah, the Bahir, Spanish Kabbalah (including the Zohar), Lurianic Kabbalah, and Hasidism.

Please register directly with Daniel Matt using the link below. The cost is on a sliding scale from $150-$300, depending on what you can afford.

For methods of payment,... Read more

KlezCalifornia is rebooting their klezmer and Yiddish culture festival! KlezCalYidFest kicks off Friday Sept 12 with a weekend of concerts, workshops and dancing with local and international artists from the klezmer and contemporary Yiddish culture scene. New Lehrhaus is sponsoring two lectures:

... Read more

Jews in the ancient world were everywhere a subordinate people, a footnote or afterthought in the grand sweep of history featured by the empires of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome. How did Jews conceive of their own place in this larger world? And how were they perceived by the greater powers? Did Jews see themselves as a distinctive people apart or as somehow participants in a broader society and culture? This class consists of four lectures tha... Read more

PROTOCOLS: An Erasure transforms the world’s most influential antisemitic document, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, into an erasure poem exploring essential questions of power, history, and language.

By redacting words from the original document, Molnar created a book-length poem that breathes space and light into a text dense with hatred. She patiently uncovers the questi... Read more