From Sinai to the Lehrhauses – first Franz Rosenzweig’s Lehrhaus, in Frankfurt, and now the Lehrhaus in Somerville – Jews have insisted on the importance and centrality of Jewish learning, or Torah study, as an essential activity of Jewishness. But what is Jewish learning, after all? Is it a religious practice, an extracurricular activity, a gateway to something else? It is probably all of these, and something else: a means by which Jews have tried to recenter Jewish life around one version or another – with massive political and economic implications. In this class we will consider some classical sources and read some of Rosenzweig himself as we try to figure out what we are doing studying Torah in a tavern, and what it might mean for the Jewish future.

Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer is the President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. Yehuda is a leading thinker and author on the meaning of Israel to American Jews, on Jewish history and Jewish memory, and on questions of leadership and change in American Jewish life.

Open to all learning levels.