New Lehrhaus

New Lehrhaus California's Jewish educational nonprofit. Intellectual, creative, and open to all.

Classes, films, concerts, and cultural programs exploring arts, history, literature, music, and ideas throughout the state. New Lehrhaus brings students and teachers together in dynamic dialogue to explore sources, traditions, and arts, sustaining and enriching the vibrant spirit of Jewish civilization. As California‘s non-denominational lifelong Jewish learning institution, we are dedicated to academic excellence, open inquiry, contemporary relevance, and cultural and religious pluralism.

In Eastern European Jewish communities, healers went by names like "whisperers," "murmurers," and "knowers." They carrie...
06/05/2026

In Eastern European Jewish communities, healers went by names like "whisperers," "murmurers," and "knowers."

They carried intimate knowledge of plants, remedies, and rituals--and they shared that knowledge broadly across religious and ethnic lines, trading cures with Polish, Ukrainian, Roma, Tatar, and Romani neighbors in ways that complicate everything we think we know about Jewish life in that world.

Most of that knowledge was carried by women.

Most of it was never written down.

And most of it has been lost--until now.

On June 24th, join Deatra Cohen and Adam Siegel, authors of Ashkenazi Herbalism, for an hour that's equal parts history, folklore, and practical recovery of a tradition worth keeping.

We'll explore the role of "humble" plants in herbal healing and touch upon the fascinating importance of magico-religious medicine for community health.

We'll also learn how we can recover traditional remedies and foodways today.

And YES, you will leave with a traditional healing recipe to try at home!

🌿 Healing Plants and the Jewish Table: Carrots, Wax, and Food as Medicine
📅 Wednesday, June 24 | 7–8:30pm Pacific | Zoom
👉 Link to register in comments

06/04/2026

This Sunday, come spend an afternoon at one of Berkeley's most beautiful wineries––and leave knowing something you didn't before.

We're hosting an intimate in-person conversation with historian John Efron at Covenant Wines, who's spent years researching one of the most unexpected histories in Jewish history.

Who controlled the butcher shop in medieval Europe? Why did 19th-century governments try to ban kosher slaughter? How did Jewish communities maintain their dietary traditions, and what did it mean to rebuild the Jewish table in the post-war world?
Efron brings this history to life in conversation with Deena Aranoff, in a setting that's as good as the content: glasses in hand, surrounded by sunlight, in the heart of west Berkeley.

Sunday, June 7 | 4:00-5:30 PM
Covenant Wines, Berkeley
Drinks included

Register at the link in the comments.

How did the butcher shop become a battleground for Jewish identity in Europe? This coming Sunday, join us at beautiful C...
06/01/2026

How did the butcher shop become a battleground for Jewish identity in Europe?

This coming Sunday, join us at beautiful Covenant Winery in Berkeley, where historian John Efron will discuss his latest research into the profound and often surprising relationship between meat and the Jewish experience.

From the social power of the medieval butcher to the meat-centered culinary traditions of German Jewry, Efron explores how dietary laws shaped both Jewish life and external perceptions.

In conversation with Deena Aranoff, he'll trace the history of kosher slaughter (shechita)—from 19th-century political bans to the defiance of maintaining kashrut under the N***s and its symbolic restoration in post-war Germany.

WHEN: Sunday, June 7 @ 4pm-5:30pm
WHERE: Covenant Winery, Berkeley

Register at the link in our bio!

What would one write if writing itself was an act of defiance?In the Warsaw, Łódź, and Vilna ghettos, Jewish authors com...
05/29/2026

What would one write if writing itself was an act of defiance?

In the Warsaw, Łódź, and Vilna ghettos, Jewish authors composed poetry, satire, and testimony in real time.

We think of the Holocaust through photographs and statistics. These writers wanted us to think about it differently: through literature written while the world was ending.

They hid manuscripts in milk cans. They buried archives underground. They created clandestine archives.

This work is what would become known as a ‘literature of atrocity' - urgent, real-time creative responses, serving as both historical documents and literary acts of defiance in the face of the completely unthinkable.

Professor Sven-Erik Rose (UC Davis) has spent his career inside these recovered manuscripts and archives. His new book, out from Brandeis University Press & the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, is the culmination of that work. Now he brings it to you.

➡️ 3 sessions: Wednesdays, June 3, 10, 17 on Zoom
🕐 7pm-8:30pm Pacific

Registration: Open to anyone willing to bear witness.

🔗 Register via link in bio.

05/29/2026

Not every class begins with a message from the Victoria & Albert Museum.

This one does!

Dr. Aviva Dautch - Oxford scholar, BBC broadcaster, award-winning poet - is speaking to us from London, where she's preparing for her 3-part live series: Shakespeare & the Jews.

And in the spirit of Shakespeare himself: "So shines a good deed in a weary world."

We start this Sunday, May 31st — 10am Pacific | 6pm London.

🔗 Link in bio to register. You don't want to miss this!

In 1290, King Edward I expelled every single Jew from England.His Edict of Expulsion would remain in force for 366 years...
05/28/2026

In 1290, King Edward I expelled every single Jew from England.

His Edict of Expulsion would remain in force for 366 years.

Shakespeare was born into that world.

A world with no visible Jewish life, no Jewish neighborhoods, no Jewish voices in public discourse. And yet Shakespeare put a Jewish character at the center of one of his most famous plays.

So what exactly was he doing?

Was he a writer of radical empathy or simply a man fluent in his era's prejudices? Or, more uncomfortably, both?

Shylock alone, from the Merchant of Venice, has kept scholars arguing for four centuries. The same character has been called a vicious antisemitic caricature and a radical act of human empathy, sometimes by people reading the exact same scene.

And then there's the mystery that refuses to go away.

A woman named Amelia Bassano, a poet of Venetian-Jewish heritage living in Elizabethan London, may have been the real-life inspiration for Shakespeare's "Dark Lady." The unnamed woman at the heart of his most personal love poems. It's a hypothesis, a controversial one. But the evidence is serious enough that scholars have been debating it for decades.

This Sunday, Dr. Aviva Dautch -- Oxford scholar, BBC broadcaster, and award-winning poet -- is teaching a live class called Shakespeare & the Jews. It's a serious, provocative, and genuinely fascinating excavation of one of the most enduring mysteries of Shakespeare's life.

Come learn with us.

📌 3 Sundays, starting May 31
🕰️ 10am Pacific / 6pm London
🌐 Held on Zoom

🔗 Registration link in the comments -- and share with your Shakespeare-loving friends!

On Tuesday, over 60 people gathered in Berkeley to hear Peter Gordon speak with Robby Adler Peckerar about Gordon's new ...
05/28/2026

On Tuesday, over 60 people gathered in Berkeley to hear Peter Gordon speak with Robby Adler Peckerar about Gordon's new biography of Walter Benjamin, who is widely considered one of the most creative cultural critics of the 20th century.

Thank you to all who joined us and to the beautiful Hillside Club for hosting!

➡️ OUT NOW: "Walter Benjamin: The Pearl Diver" by Peter E. Gordon, published with the prizewinning Jewish Lives series at Yale University Press.

📚 Grab your copy at the link in the comments!

05/27/2026

We asked Rachel Biale to introduce her new course (starts tomorrow!). We'll let her video speak for itself. 👀

The ancient rabbis were remarkably--sometimes startlingly--candid about s*x. The Talmud addresses desire, marital intimacy, contraception, abortion, procreation, and the rights of partners in a marriage with a directness that might surprise you.

Rachel Biale leads a 3-week exploration of what these texts actually say, and what they reveal about how Rabbinic Judaism understood the human body, gender, and intimacy in late antiquity.

Whether you're a student of Jewish law, curious about the history of s*xuality, or just love a really, really good Talmudic story--this one's for you.

➡️ S*x, Lies, No Videotape: Gender & S*xuality in Rabbinic Texts
📅 Thursdays, May 28-June 11
🕰️ 7:00–8:30pm Pacific
💻 On Zoom

Register at the link in the comments--and share with someone who'd never expect to find this in the Talmud. 😄

Tonight, join Peter E. Gordon for a talk on his new biography of Walter Benjamin for the Yale's Jewish Lives series. Joi...
05/26/2026

Tonight, join Peter E. Gordon for a talk on his new biography of Walter Benjamin for the Yale's Jewish Lives series.

Join us in person at The Hillside Club in Berkeley, Calif.

➡️ Register at the link in comments.

Freud insisted his whole life that he spoke no Yiddish.Scholars now think he probably did.Historian Naomi Seidman has sp...
05/19/2026

Freud insisted his whole life that he spoke no Yiddish.

Scholars now think he probably did.

Historian Naomi Seidman has spent years tracing what happened when Freud's ideas traveled into Yiddish and Hebrew -- the actual languages of the Jewish world he came from. And the further she looked, the stranger and richer the story got.

There was the translator who discovered that the obvious Yiddish word for "the unconscious" was subtly wrong, and had to go digging through centuries of the language to find a better one.

There was the Hasidic rebbe who arrived in Vienna with a mysterious paralysis, and the disciple Freud assigned to treat him -- almost certainly because he'd grown up near a Hasidic court and knew the right language.

There were Yiddish-speaking readers who devoured Freud's most anti-religious book as if it had been written just for them.

What did it mean to translate the unconscious into a language?

What gets lost, and what, unexpectedly, gets found?

Naomi Seidman is teaching a three-part course on exactly that, starting May 20.

Read the full interview with Seidman and register for her class at the link in our comments.

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Los Angeles, CA
94707

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