We are pleased to share with you our Lehrhaus programme for Spring/Summer 2020
All our courses are taught by our outstanding faculty and specialist teachers whom we hope will entice you to join us.
The Lehrhaus is a non-profit adult learning programme. We aim to cover our teaching and administration costs only. Any surplus allows us to subsidise some courses where the minimum number of participants isn’t reached or to support some learners with additional discounts.
We recognise that during these extremely challenging times, some people may be finding it difficult to pay the full fees for our courses. Please contact Jarek at: Lehrhaus@lbc.ac.uk if you would like some help towards your fees.
We are also pleased to offer a 20% discount to anyone who works for the NHS and would like to study with us.
Lehrhaus in the Clouds (LIVE On-Line courses):
Liat Aharonovich: ULPAN – Modern Hebrew
Beginners/Intermediate levels
Dr Jakub Kowalewski: Levinas and us: ethics, politics, religion and art (waiting list)
The aim of this course is to introduce students to one of the most influential Jewish philosophers of the 20th century: Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas is best known for his 1961 book Totality and Infinity, which offers an original account of ethics grounded in a face-to-face relationship with another person. What is less known, however, is Levinas’s contribution to other fields, including politics, religion, and art.
Rabbi Dr Michael Hilton: Classical Greek – Beyond the Alphabet
This course is the continuation of a 6-week B1 course but new students are welcome. Students will be assessed by the teacher before entering this level.
Dr Sandra Jacobs: “inūma ilu awīlum: When Gods Were Men”– An Introduction to the Bible in Its Ancient Near Eastern Setting (2 places left)
The Hebrew Bible, a corpus of writings spanning at least 800-900 years prior to its canonization, developed alongside the socio-cultural and political literary conventions of its host cultures. This online course will provide an introduction to Hebrew Bible in its ancient Mesopotamian context.
Dr Alinda Damsma: The Origins of Jewish Mysticism – back by popular demand!! (3 places left)
This 4-week online course takes the student on an inspiring and exciting journey through the early Jewish mystical traditions: from the prophet Ezekiel’s tantalizing vision of the divine chariot to the perilous heavenly journeys of the Talmudic sages. We will meet the mystics who contemplated mystical doctrines and engaged in esoteric practices.
This four session course will examine the efforts of the archivist Emmanuel Ringelblum and the photographer Mendel Grossman to bear witness and leave legacies of life in the Warsaw and Łodz Ghettos during the Shoah.
DR CHANI SMITH: Learn to leyn in 4 lessons (waiting list)
Have you always wished you could leyn in shul? “Leyn” is the Yiddish word for chanting the Torah portion according to traditional melodies, called teamim or cantillation accents. This course is a chance to learn the art of Torah cantillation from home in 4 weeks. While 4 lessons may be a short time for the task, it is possible to achieve with practice between these weekly lessons. One pre-requisite is the ability to read pointed Hebrew and another is enthusiasm for learning to leyn. There is a limit of 10 participants on this course. So join us and come out of lockdown able to leyn.
RABBI DR RENE PFERTZEL: Reading troubling texts from Torah
Every Shabbat morning, Jews around the world read a portion of the Torah, the five first books of the Hebrew Bible. If some of the narratives and laws seem straightforward to modern readers, many of them are puzzling and even disconcerting. How do we read and respond to these troubling biblical narratives and laws? In this course, we will read some of these texts, try to understand how the medieval commentators, the mefarshim, read and understood them, and how we can relate to them today as modern readers.
If you are curious to know more, please join us for this fascinating four-week course on “Troubling Texts of the Torah”.
More courses to come soon!
Please click on this link: www.lbc.ac.uk/lehrhaus for details and information about all our courses.
If you have any questions, please contact Jarek: Lehrhaus@lbc.ac.uk
We very much look forward to having you study with us.
All best wishes,
Dr Jo-Ann Myers
Director of Jewish Education