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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.