Since our beginnings, the ache of exile and longing to come home have run through Jewish life and writings: our poetry is rich with them. We will read Biblical, Golden Age Spain, Modernist and contemporary texts, and write our own pieces in response. For writers of any experience level—come prepared to generate some material!

Drop-In Book Club: People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn (VIRTUAL)

In partnership with the Jewish Community Library

East Bay Jewish Film Festival presents (in partnership with New Lehrhaus) presents:

David Grossman: Documentary Film and Discussion

Hebrew Writers: Film Biographies and Text Reading (Virtual on Zoom)

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 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 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.

Jody Hirsh: Bible, Midrash, Art: The Richness of Bible Narratives (Virtual on Zoom)

Jody Hirsh: Bible, Midrash, Art: The Richness of Bible Narratives (Virtual on Zoom)

We will explore, via lecture and discussion, stories written by major Jewish American authors of the post-World War II period.  What does their fiction reveal to us about major motifs of Jewish identity and Jewish values and why is their work of ongoing importance? Authors will include Bernard Malamud, Grace Paley, and Isaac Bashevis Singer.