Adult Education

Beit Haverim offers courses throughout the year to inform and inspire. Please be sure to check our newsletters and bulletins to learn what topics are being addressed and when those classes are scheduled. Classes, unless otherwise specified, are held at Beit Haverim. 

Fall 2024 Jewish History Reading Group led by Rabbi Alan Berg                                                                                                                               First Session Tuesday, September 3, 2024                                                                                                                                                                   

Rabbi Berg will be leading a Jewish History Reading Group that will meet on select Tuesdays  during Fall 2024. The reading materials, links to YouTube videos, and book titles available through the Beit Haverim library can be found here:

The Origins of Totalitarianism - Part One: Antisemitism, by Hannah Arendt - watch YouTube video here

The Safed Circle (1492 - 1575) by Sam Aronow  - watch YouTube video here

Return of the Conversos (1497 - 1677) by Sam Aronow - watch YouTube video here

Sharon Rose, a long-time congregant, brought back her Happiness Talk on Zoom. She presented this talk about the importance of happiness a few years back. We all felt the joy and inspiration!

Kleinstein Scholar Dr. Robert Alter:  Illuminating the Bible with Literary Brilliance
Tuesday, March 5, 2024  at 7:00pm

If you missed the live discussion, please click here for a recording of the lecture.

For additional information on Dr. Alter, click here.

For the month of January 2023, Rabbi has a theme for Shabbat services d'vrei Torah: Two or Three Things I'm Learning about Antisemitism.

Part One - d'var Torah, download here.
Part Two - d'var Torah, download here. 
Part Three - d'var Torah, download here. 

Kleinstein Scholar Professor Harold Foster:  The Jewish Story in To Kill a Mockingbird
Tuesday, November 15, 2022  at 12:00pm

Documents for scholar series, download here.
For additional supplements, download here.

For the month of January 2022, Rabbi has a theme for Shabbat services d’vrei Torah: Jewish Religion, Culture and Politics - Concerns and Intersections.

January 7 - Philip Roth’s I Married a Communist
January 14 - Phillip Roth’s The Plot Against America
January 21 - Debbie Friedman’s Creation and Legacy

Conflicts Depicting Race and Ethnicity in Fiction, 1962 and 2021: Roth, Ellison, & Di Donato, click here to watch video.

Lecture Series with Rabbi Berg, American Jews. Part One. Strange Fruit.
December 14, 2021

If you were unable to attend on 12/14, please click here to watch the video. 

Chapter One. Strange Fruit.

Billie Holiday Singing Strange Fruit

The Rosenbergs: The Definitive Debate

Forum on the Rosenberg Case

Chicago Blues Museum Presents Billie Holiday - G-d Bless The Child (film)

Strange Fruit by Abel Meeropol

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral Scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth.
Scent of magnolia, sweet and fresh.
And the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter fruit.

Lectures by Michael Walzer, Princeton Institute For Advanced Studies

The State of Israel - What It Means to be Sovereign

The Paradox of National Liberation: India, Israel, and Algeria

The Paradox Illustrated: Zionism Against Judaism

The Paradox Denied: Marxist Perspectives

The Future of National Liberation

Dr. Thomas Weber

April 21, 2021
The acclaimed author of Hitler’s First War and Becoming Hitler will speak on In The Same Field of Vision: Hitler, The Munich Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 and January 6, 2021.

Click here for video of lecture. 

Jewish History Film Series

January 21 - February 9, 2021
Click here for schedule, details, and supporting content.

Kleinstein Scholar Sessions (Closed)

A Sojourn in the World of Kabbalah and Zohar
Click here for schedule and documents

Rabbi Berg’s Adult Studies 
Satan In America (Closed)
Four interconnected history lessons based on Nobel Prize for Literature winner 
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel Satan in Goray:
Satan in Goray

The Council of Four Lands and The House of Earl

The New Judea

Satan in America

Book Discussion Group

Our monthly Book Discussion Group reads books primarily with a strong Jewish connection. You need not be a member to attend the group.