Jewish Learning for Adults
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Course Offerings for Summer 2020
None currently scheduled.
Course Offerings for Summer 2020
Courses are open to members and non-members alike, unlike otherwise specified. Courses strive to be accessible to learners at multiple levels of experience, even while some specify that they are geared to learners at a particular level. Come and learn!
Reading Halachah: The Pleasures of "Oneg Shabbat"
Wednesday, July 8, 2020, 8:00-9:30 PM on Zoom
The mitzvah of "oneg Shabbat," to take pleasure in the Sabbath, is a rare mitzvah that originates in Prophets (not the Torah). It's a feeling, not a behavior, but it can be cultivated by concrete spiritual practices of that weave together indulgence and restraint. It exists in a productive and dynamic tension with "kedushat Shabbat," the holiness or set-apartness of Shabbat. We'll read halachic texts and discuss how they can shape our own practice and observance. The class is geared toward more experienced learners who can read Hebrew; but no previous fluency with halachic texts is assumed, and learners at all levels are welcome.
Led by Rabbi Tali Adler, who serves on the faculty at Yeshivat Hadar. Cosponsored by FTJC and the Hadar Institute.
Sholom Aleichem's Tevye the Dairyman
To be rescheduled when in-person classes are again possible.
Most of us know Tevye only through the movie Fiddler on the Roof, or more recently, from the Off-Broadway Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof but the real Tevye is quite a different story. It is one so compelling and brilliant that several years ago in a listing of the 100 greatest Jewish books compiled by the National Yiddish Book Center it was one of only two works to be chosen by every member of the panel of experts on Jewish Literature (in many languages). In this 4-week class we will do a close reading of the text (total of 120 pages). You will discover, among other things, that there are 7 daughters, not 5, and that Chava and Chvedke do not leave together for Kiev and that none of Tevye’s “On the one hand, on the other” are actually found in the text.
Led by FTJC member Sheva Zucker, author of the textbooks Yiddish: An Introduction to the Language, Literature & Culture, Vols. I & II, and currently academic director of the Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture, under the auspices of Bard College and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City.
Suggested donation: $18 for the series, no one turned away for lack of donation.
Pre-registration requested here.
More Learning Opportunities?
If you have ideas about something you want to learn, and you have a hunch that you could pull together a group of others who want to learn it too, e-mail Rabbi Guy Austrian and let's talk about it.
