Texts & Traditions

Peretz Wolf-Prusan’s Talmud Circle is a group of students who meet once a month to read the Talmud closely and argue about what it says. Each session works through a passage together, line by line, with plenty of room for questions and disagreement. You don’t need any experience with Talmud. Many participants return year after year, and newcomers join every fall. The Circle meets monthly on Sunday mornings from 10am to noon, alternating between the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco and the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto, with a Zoom option available at every session. The year concludes with a celebratory siyum (culmination) in June. Who this is for: Learners at any level, including those who have never opened a page of Talmud Returning members continuing their study Anyone, of any background, curious about rabbinic literature, Jewish law, and the way the rabbis argued What you'll leave with: Growing ease with the structure, language, and reasoning of a Talmudic passage A year of conversation with the same group of fellow learners Nine Sundays at 10am–noon: October 4 (JCCSF) November 8 (OFJCC, Palo Alto) December 6 (JCCSF) January 3 (OFJCC, Palo Alto) February 7 (JCCSF) March 7 (OFJCC, Palo Alto) April 4 (JCCSF) May 2 (OFJCC, Palo Alto) The siyum (Culmination) with both Talmud Circles will take place at the JCC San Francisco on Sunday, June 6 at 10am–noon Pacific Time. Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

Most of us picture Judaism and Christianity as two distinct religions from the moment Christianity appeared. For several centuries the two were entangled, overlapping, and often hard to tell apart. This course follows their shared history from the Babylonian exile in 586 BCE to the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE. We begin with the rebuilding of Jewish life after the exile and the upheavals that followed: Hellenism, the Hasmonean revolt, and the arrival of Rome and Herod. We then turn to the many Second Temple “Judaisms,” the sects, movements, prophets, and revolutionaries among whom Jesus of Nazareth lived and taught, and to the Jewish revolts of 66–73 and 132–135 CE, which reshaped Jewish life and hastened the rise of both rabbinic Judaism and the early Jesus movement. The final sessions follow the two traditions as they move apart. On one side are the codification of the Mishnah and the beginnings of rabbinic Judaism; on the other, the Jesus movement through persecution, martyrdom, and fights over orthodoxy and heresy, up to Constantine and the Church as an imperial institution. Drawing on recent scholarship, including the work of Daniel Boyarin, we’ll see how long the ties between the two communities lasted and how each came to define itself, and be defined, as separate from the other. Who this is for: Anyone curious how Judaism and Christianity began and how they separated Readers interested in Second Temple Judaism, the historical Jesus, or early rabbinic Judaism Anyone who assumes the two were always separate religions and would like to see that assumption tested What you'll leave with: An outline of Jewish history from the Babylonian exile to the Mishnah A picture of Jesus of Nazareth within the Jewish world of his time An account of when Judaism and Christianity became separate religions and who drew the lines between them Four Mondays: October 5, 12, 19 and 26, 7–8:30pm Pacific Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

Two hundred fifty years ago, American revolutionaries reached for the words of the Hebrew Bible to make their case for independence. The phrase engraved on the Liberty Bell itself, "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof," comes directly from the Book of Leviticus. In this course, we'll trace how biblical texts including Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy shaped the political imagination of the Revolutionary generation, from sermons and pamphlets to the imagery Franklin and Jefferson proposed for the Great Seal of the United States. We’ll also go back roughly 2,500 years to ask what these passages meant when they were written: who wrote them, why, and what ideas of liberty, covenant, and peoplehood they carried for ancient Israel. Who this is for: Anyone interested in the Hebrew Bible’s place in American history Readers curious how ancient texts get reinterpreted across centuries No prior Bible study needed What you'll leave with: A close reading of key passages in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy in their ancient context An understanding of how Revolutionary-era sermons and pamphlets used those passages, down to the proposals for the Great Seal Nine Sundays: October 11, 18, 25, November 1, 8, 15, 22, December 6 & 13, 5:15–6:45pm Pacific Time Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

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.

Deena Aranoff's Talmud Circle is a group of learners who meet once a month to read the Talmud closely and argue about what it says. Each session works through a passage together, line by line, with plenty of room for questions and disagreement. You don’t need any experience with Talmud. Many participants return year after year, and newcomers join every fall. The Circle meets monthly on Wednesday evenings from 6:30 to 8:30pm, at the East Bay Jewish Community Campus in Oakland, with a Zoom option available at every session. The year concludes with a celebratory siyum (culmination) on Sunday, June 6. Who this is for: Learners at any level, including those who have never opened a page of Talmud Returning members continuing their study Anyone, of any background, curious about rabbinic literature, Jewish law, and the way the rabbis argued What you'll leave with: Growing ease with the structure, language, and reasoning of a Talmudic passage A year of conversation with the same group of fellow learners Eight Wednesdays: October 14 November 4 December 2 January 6 February 3 March 3 April 7 May 5 6:30–8:30pm Pacific Time The siyum (Culmination) will take place at the JCC San Francisco on Sunday, June 6 at 10am–noon Pacific Time. Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

We often refer to Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages as "the Rabbinic Period," on account of the massive literary production of the rabbis, including the two Talmuds and many midrashic works. But there is a wide-ranging and rich Jewish history known from Latin, Greek, Syriac, and Arabic sources that is entirely ignored in rabbinic literature.These non-Jewish sources offer glimpses into Jewish history, but they are few and often hostile to Jews. How can the historian separate real historical Jews from the symbolic Jews conjured out of Christian and Muslim theological prejudice? In this course, Fred Astren (San Francisco State University) takes up that question, telling stories the rabbis did not tell. Who this is for: Readers interested in Jewish history beyond the rabbinic and Talmudic sources Anyone curious how Jews appear in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Arabic historical sources Students of Late Antiquity, the early medieval world, or Jewish-Christian-Muslim relations What you'll leave with: Familiarity with how Jews are depicted in Christian and Muslim historical writing Tools for evaluating historically biased or theologically motivated sources A sharper sense of the line between historical Jews and symbolic ones Four Thursdays: October 29, November 5, 12, and 19, 6–7:30pm Pacific Time Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.