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.

Have you ever wanted to actually read Hebrew, rather than follow along phonetically or wait for the English translation? Prayerbook/Biblical Hebrew 1 is the first course in a three-part sequence that teaches you to read and understand prayerbook and biblical texts in the original.

This course starts at the very beginning, teaching the Hebrew alphabet and sight-reading skills, then builds vocabulary and grammar using the widely used text Prayerbook Hebrew the Easy Way. Along the way, you'll also explore related topics, from key prayerbook melodies to the origins of the Hebrew language to daily life in the biblical world.

Required text: Anderson, Motzkin, et al., Prayerbook Hebrew the Easy Way.

Who this is for:

• Beginners with no Hebrew at all
• Anyone who wants to read the prayers in synagogue rather than follow the transliteration
• Students of the Bible who want to read it in the original

What you'll leave with:

• The ability to read the Hebrew alphabet and vowels and sound out prayerbook and biblical texts
• A starting vocabulary and the basics of Hebrew grammar
• Readiness for Hebrew 2

Nine Sundays: October 11, 18, and 25; November 1, 8, 15, and 22; December 6 and 13, 3:30–5pm Pacific Time (no class November 29)

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.

Where is a stateless culture at home? Yiddish is the language of one of the largest and longest-lasting diasporic cultures in the world, often defined by its lack of a homeland. But what if Yiddish speakers, artists, and writers did feel at home in diaspora, whether in a town their family had lived in for generations or a new city they'd just arrived in, an at-homeness with no claim to sovereignty or state? This course explores four spaces of Yiddish life and writing:

• Dos Shtetl (The Town) · Market days and mud, but also railways, factory work, political argument, and people planning their departure. Generally rooftop-fiddler-free
• Di Shtot (The City) · Where millions went, wandering busy streets where technology, politics, economics, and art combined into new and disorienting possibilities
• Der Hoyf (The Courtyard) · The urban courtyard that defined local life across central and eastern Europe, and reappeared as far away as Buenos Aires
• Di Svive (The Natural World) · The forests of Belarus, the steppes of Siberia, the mountains of Quebec and New York,where writers turned their attention from people to landscape

Through close reading, discussion, and weekly writing prompts, the course asks what these spaces can teach about diasporic belonging and the meaning of home without a state.

Who this is for:

• Readers curious about Yiddish literature, Jewish diaspora history, or modern Jewish culture
• Anyone interested in place, migration, and belonging in literature

What you'll leave with:

• A map of Yiddish literature's key imaginative geographies: the shtetl, the city, the courtyard, the natural world
• Firsthand familiarity with major modern Yiddish writers in translation
• Your own short pieces of writing from the course's weekly prompts

Readings include Avrom Karpinowitz, Moyshe Kulbak, Mendel Mann, Anna Margolin, Mimi Pinzon, Fradl Shtok, Avrom Sutzkever, Miriam Ulinover, and more, all in English translation.

No prior knowledge of Yiddish required.

Four Thursdays: October 15, 22, 29 and November 5 at 12–1:15pm Pacific Time

Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.

This two-part illustrated class introduces ancient Egyptian history, religion, and daily life, with special attention to the periods and objects in the de Young Museum’s Treasures of the Pharaohs. We’ll begin with an overview of Egypt’s thirty dynasties, then turn to religious belief and everyday life, ending with the Lost City of Amenhotep III, a special feature of the exhibition. The class works whether or not you’ve seen the show.

Who this is for:

• Anyone planning a visit to the exhibition or who has already been
• Anyone curious about ancient Egypt; no background in Egyptology needed

What you'll leave with:

• Where the exhibition’s objects fit in Egypt’s long history
• What the Lost City of Amenhotep III reveals about life in ancient Egypt

Two Thursdays: October 15 & 22, 6–7:30pm Pacific Time

Questions? Our FAQ covers registration, recordings of missed sessions, refunds, and financial assistance.