Society & Identity

In the opening chapters of Genesis, God places humanity in the garden “to till and tend it.” The rabbis later drew the principle of bal tashchit (“do not destroy”) from a verse forbidding armies to cut down fruit trees. Long before environmentalism became a movement, Jewish texts were debating stewardship, pollution, the treatment of animals, public responsibility, and what we owe to future generations. Over three sessions we’ll read passages from the Bible, the Talmud, and later sources and ask how they bear on the ecological crises of our own time. We’ll look at how the Talmud balances private property with the public good, what the shmittah (sabbatical) year says about economic sustainability, and whether a hundred-year-old man planting a fig tree might be one of Judaism’s wisest environmental philosophers. Sessions combine close reading with open discussion. Who this is for: Anyone curious what Jewish texts say about our responsibility to the natural world Environmentalists and activists who want to know the sources behind these ideas Learners of any background who enjoy reading primary texts and arguing about them What you'll leave with: Familiarity with bal tashchit , tza’ar ba’alei hayyim (concern for animals), shmittah , and the idea of stewardship, along with the texts behind each Ways to bring these texts into current debates about climate, pollution, species loss, and our obligations to future generations Three Tuesdays: October 13, 20 & 27, 7–8:30pm Pacific Time Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

Conversations about antisemitism often go badly. Some build understanding; others leave people feeling isolated. Why do arguments that persuade within the Jewish community so often fail outside it, and can familiar approaches make understanding harder? How can people talk about Jewish identity, Israel, Zionism, and antisemitism without every conversation turning into a fight? This two-session online workshop works through real situations from schools, workplaces, civic organizations, and everyday relationships. Participants will look at where people agree and where they genuinely disagree, and practice responses that invite curiosity without minimizing legitimate Jewish concerns. The workshop is open to Jewish and non-Jewish participants alike. Underneath it is one question: can relationships across political, religious, and communal divides make Jews safer, and how do we reach people who see the world differently? Who this is for: Anyone who has struggled to answer a hard question about antisemitism, Israel, or Zionism People addressing antisemitism in schools, workplaces, or community organizations Non-Jewish friends and colleagues who want to know how to help What you'll leave with: Ways to answer hard questions that keep the conversation open A clearer sense of where people agree and disagree about when criticism of Israel or Zionism becomes antisemitism Practice with responses that don’t ask Jews to minimize their own experience Two Wednesdays: October 21 & 28, 6–7:30pm Pacific Time Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

J. Robert Oppenheimer led the scientific work at Los Alamos, helped bring about the atomic age, and later became one of the best-known victims of the Red Scare. In Robert Oppenheimer: The Sphinx Without a Secret, his new biography in Yale University Press’s Jewish Lives series, David Rieff looks past the public story to Oppenheimer’s inner life: his childhood, his personal relationships, and his deeply ambivalent relation to being Jewish. Rieff joins Steve Wasserman, publisher of Heyday Books and former editor-at-large for Yale University Press, to talk about the man behind the legend and why Oppenheimer still fascinates more than eighty years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Image: Ben Shahn, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1954. © 2026 Estate of Ben Shahn / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Who this is for Anyone who wants more of Oppenheimer’s story than the recent film told Readers curious how his Jewish background shaped him What you'll leave with A fuller picture of Oppenheimer’s inner life, from childhood on The chance to put your own questions to the author Sunday, October 25, 1:30–3pm Pacific Time Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

Erich Gruen (UC Berkeley), has spent decades studying Jews in the Greco-Roman world, and much of his work questions popular assumptions about Jewish isolation, religious purity, and political resistance in antiquity. In four sessions he takes up some of the most debated episodes in ancient Jewish history. Each session takes on a question that has divided scholars and puzzled general readers alike: Were Jews in antiquity accused of ritual murder, the charge later known as blood libel? Did they reject Greek mythology as incompatible with their traditions, or engage with it in surprising ways? And what is the history behind Hanukkah? Who this is for Anyone curious about Jews in the ancient world Students of classical antiquity who want to go past the standard accounts Anyone who has wondered where Hanukkah comes from What you'll leave with Answers to four contested questions about ancient Jewish history, and the evidence behind them A way of telling historical evidence apart from later myth-making Four Sundays: November 1, 8, 15, and 22, 2–3:30pm Pacific Time Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

California has passed a law requiring state agencies that collect ancestry or ethnicity data to include a separate category for Jewish ancestry or ethnicity beginning in 2029. What changes when the state counts Jews as an ethnic group? The panel brings together Ari Y. Kelman, director of the Berman Archive at Stanford; Keith Feldman, professor of ethnic studies at UC Berkeley; Aliya Saperstein, professor of sociology at Stanford; and David Bocarsly of Jewish California, who helped draft Senate Bill 1387 . Asaf Elia-Shalev, editor in chief of J. The Jewish News of Northern California , moderates. After the panel, each table continues the conversation with a facilitator. Presented with J. and cosponsored by Stanford’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies, the Berman Archive, and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Who this is for: Anyone curious how governments define and count Jewish identity Californians who want to know what SB 1387 does Anyone who would rather join a small-group conversation than listen to a lecture What you'll leave with: A clear account of what SB 1387 changes in how California collects demographic data Several views on whether, and how, Jewishness works as an ethnic category Monday, November 2, 5:30–7pm Pacific Time Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

Founded in the Russian Empire in 1897, the Jewish Labor Bund became one of the most influential Jewish political movements in Eastern Europe. The Bund was secular, socialist, and rooted in the principle of doikayt , or “hereness”: the belief that Jews should fight for dignity and equality in the countries where they lived. It played a major role in Jewish political and cultural life before the Second World War. Most of its members were murdered in the Holocaust, and the movement itself was largely erased from popular memory. What, if anything, does the Bund’s legacy offer American Jewish life today? In this four-session reading group, we’ll explore that question through Molly Crabapple’s new book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund , together with supplementary materials. We’ll consider the Bund’s history, its vision of solidarity and Jewish life in the diaspora, and why its ideas still provoke argument. Who this is for: Readers interested in modern Jewish history and politics Anyone curious about Jewish socialism and secular Jewish culture Readers who enjoy discussing a new book in a group What you'll leave with A grounding in the Bund’s history and its idea of doikayt A discussion of what, if anything, the Bund offers American Jewish life today Four Fridays: November 6, 13, 20, December 4, 12–1pm Pacific Time Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

Join New Lehrhaus at Berkeley Repertory Theatre for Liberation , Bess Wohl’s play about feminism, memory, and social change. Set partly in 1970s Ohio, the play follows a group of women who meet in a recreation-center basement to imagine new possibilities for their lives. Decades later, the daughter of one of them returns to that history and its hopes, conflicts, and unanswered questions. The Berkeley Rep production, directed by Whitney White, comes to the Bay Area after an acclaimed Broadway run. We’ll gather before the performance for a short introduction to the play and its historical context, then again afterward to talk about what we saw. Who this is for: Theatergoers interested in women’s history and the women’s liberation movement Anyone who enjoys seeing a play with a group and talking about it afterward What you'll leave with: Historical context for the women’s liberation movement before the curtain goes up A post-show conversation with fellow New Lehrhaus participants Please note: Because this special program includes a discounted ticket to a Berkeley Rep performance, New Lehrhaus members will pay only the discounted cost of the theater ticket. Nonmembers will pay the full program fee of $72. Tuesday, November 10, 6:30–10pm Pacific Time Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

Twenty years ago, historian Cheryl Lynn Greenberg published Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century, a landmark study of the complicated political relationship between Black and Jewish Americans. Challenging both the nostalgic idea of a seamless Black-Jewish alliance and the notion that the relationship simply collapsed, Greenberg traced a history in which cooperation and conflict, shared political goals and competing interests, were intertwined from the beginning. Two decades later, Greenberg returns to Troubling the Waters to ask what has changed, what has endured, and how the history looks from the vantage point of today. What can the past tell us about Black-Jewish relations now, and does the idea of a Black-Jewish alliance still help us understand the political relationship between the two communities? Who this is for Anyone interested in the history of Black-Jewish relations in America, beyond the simplified alliance-or-collapse narrative Readers of Troubling the Waters looking to hear from the author directly, twenty years on Those thinking about coalition politics and how shared and competing interests shape relationships between communities over time What you'll leave with Greenberg’s account of how cooperation and conflict between Black and Jewish Americans were intertwined from the start Her view of what has changed in twenty years, and whether the idea of an alliance still helps explain the present Two Wednesdays: November 11 & 18, 6–7:30pm Pacific Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

This four-session course introduces Sigmund Freud’s thought through his 1905 book Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious . The book is full of jokes from the world of Freud’s father: Jewish Central Europe rather than cosmopolitan Vienna, a land of matchmakers, schnorrers, and ambivalence about assimilation. We will focus on Freud's own texts in order to understand him as a Jewish thinker hoping to operate in a universalistic scientific idiom, trying to produce a science of the mind out of the material of Jewish experience. We will, of course, think about the jokes themselves, and about what they do for us. Freud said they provide "victory," but he never said over what, leaving us to answer that question for ourselves. Who this is for: Anyone curious about Freud's Jewish background and how it shaped his thought Readers interested in Jewish humor, jokes, and Central European Jewish culture Students of psychoanalysis, Freud, or the history of ideas Anyone who enjoys close reading; no background required What you'll leave with: A close reading of Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious A way of reading Freud as a Jewish thinker as well as a “universal” scientist Your own answer to Freud’s open question: what victory do jokes provide? Four Thursdays: November 12, 19, December 3 & 10, 1–2:30pm Pacific Time Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

For decades, the children's house stood at the heart of the kibbutz movement's vision of communal education: from infancy through the teen years, children lived and slept there, apart from their parents, as an expression of the movement's founding ideals. Communal sleeping for younger children began to disappear in the 1970s and was gone by the 1990s, although some kibbutzim still maintain separate communal housing for teenagers. For those who lived it, the experience, especially at night, could be exhilarating or deeply traumatizing, and its legacy still shapes how many Israelis think about family, community, and child-rearing. In three weekly sessions, we'll explore the children’s house through literature and film: short stories including work by Amos Oz, memoir excerpts, selections from Bruno Bettelheim's Children of the Dream, and the documentary Children of the Sun. Who this is for: Anyone curious about Israeli history and the social experiments of the kibbutz movement Readers interested in Israeli literature, including the work of Amos Oz. Former kibbutz volunteers who want to revisit that experience through a new lens Anyone interested in the psychology of child-rearing and alternative models of family life What you'll leave with: Discussion of stories by Amos Oz and others, memoirs, Bettelheim’s Children of the Dream , and the documentary Children of the Sun A sense of how growing up in the children’s house shaped the people who lived it Three Mondays: November 16, 23, and 30, 7–8:30pm Pacific Time Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

Why did so many Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries become revolutionaries? Ask the question in New York or Warsaw and you get one set of answers. In Baghdad, Casablanca, or Tehran, the story changes. Radical Jewish Politics: A Global Perspective, a new volume from Rutgers University Press, starts in the Middle East and North Africa, with Jewish communists in Iraq and Egypt and anticolonial fighters in Algeria and Tunisia, and zooms out to Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and the Soviet Union. What emerges is a history of Jews who wanted to remake the world and, just as much, to find a place in it. Communism, anarchism, and anticolonial nationalism all promised that place, and all of them, sooner or later, exacted a price: prison, exile, or Jewishness itself. Editors Nathaniel Deutsch and Alma Heckman of UC Santa Cruz and Tony Michels of the University of Wisconsin–Madison join us to talk about what this new global view reveals. Who this is for: Anyone interested in modern Jewish history beyond Europe and the United States Readers curious about Jewish communists, anarchists, and anticolonial activists What you'll leave with: A look at Jewish radicals in Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Argentina, and Brazil and how local conditions shaped their choices The chance to put your questions to the volume’s three editors Monday, December 7, 6–7:30pm Pacific Time Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.