Program
- Education Series
- Streaming
The Halakhic Process: Jewish Worldbuilding Beyond Empire with Rabbi Avigayil Halpern
In this four-session course, we explore halakhah, often reductively glossed as "Jewish law," as a powerful resource for the Jewish left. We will examine how the halakhic process works, how its modes of thinking push against and beyond empire, and why this system, developed parallel to the modern state, may be uniquely suited to building the world we want to live in.
The Halakhic Process: Jewish Worldbuilding Beyond Empire with Rabbi Avigayil Halpern
7-8:30 EDT on Thursdays via Zoom. Classes will be recorded for asynchronous learning.
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4/16/26: What is Halakhah? “Law” as a Colonial Framework
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4/23/26: Resource Redistribution: Tzedakah as a Halakhic Case Study
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4/30/26: Can Rules Help Us Get Free? Normativity and Anti-Normativity
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5/7/26: Governance Without A State: Building Community Beyond Empire
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Introduction to Judaism Beyond Nationalism with Student Rabbi Noa Leba
Introduction to Judaism Beyond Nationalism is a broad-stroke survey of Jewish life, culture, belief and non-belief, and the major ideas that have shaped Jews and Judaism across time. The course offers participants a grounding in the practices, philosophies, and expressions of Jewish life from the ancient world to the present.
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Parshanut: An Intro to Jewish Commentary
Parshanut: An Intro to Jewish Commentary
Wednesdays at 6:00-7:30 PM EST October 21st - November 25th
This six session class will introduce students to the world of Jewish Torah commentary, known as parshanut. We'll study the weekly Torah portion with some of the most foundational commentators, exploring the approaches of these medieval and early modern rabbis to interpreting Tanakh.
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The Past, Present, and Future of Queer Torah: Between Sunlight and Shade With Rabbi Avigayil Halpern
This class takes its name from the Rabbinic sage Rabbi Yochanan, who is often read as queer – his beauty is described as that of a silver goblet filled with pomegranate seeds and crowned with roses, set between sun and shade. It is in the beauty of that middle space that queer Torah emerges. In this series, we will examine texts and narratives from ancient to modern to ask: Is there such a thing as a canon of queer Torah? What qualifies Torah as “queer?” And what are the stakes of these questions for us as we approach an uncertain future?
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