The history of San Francisco Jewry tends to be told in terms dominated by the experience of Jews from German-speaking lands who settled in California in the mid-nineteenth century with great success. Less attention is given to the lives of Jews from Eastern Europe who arrived in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This presentation will focus on these immigrants through the prism of Yid... Read more

Discover the foods of the Biblical world and how they were produced. We’ll learn about farming in Biblical Israel and neighboring lands, and how the basic foods were processed from the crops. Then we’ll look into everything from cooking methods to the seasonings and other ingredients that made Biblical cuisine s... Read more

This three-semester sequence gives you the essential knowledge and skills to read, understand, and appreciate prayerbook texts and the Hebrew Bible. It starts at the beginning, teaching the alphabet and sight-reading skills, then moves on to build both vocabulary and grammar knowledge using the text Prayerbook Hebrew the Easy Way. And alon... Read more

Who were the prophets and prophetesses, how did they come to be so, and how were their visions expressed and received? Our class will explore these and other questions, not only for prophets of the Bible, but also for the prophetic profession in the rest of the ancient Near East. Then we'll explore specific Biblical texts that inform our understanding of the prophet and his role in society. A special focus will be the endemic problem of the 'false prophet' in Biblical Literature. In the pro... Read more