Lifelong Learning

Weekly Torah Study - Saturday at 8:45am - in person and on zoom
I and II Kings

Sisterhood Book Group
Monday, January 23 at 7:30pm: Typecast by Andrea Stein - in-person and zoom

Brotherhood Torah on Tap - Wednesdays at 7:30pm: November 30 & March 1

Lunch and Learn - Tuesdays:
12:00 - 12:30pm - Bring your own lunch
12:30 - 1:30pm - Learning begins

Living Jewishly, Singing Globally: Lifecycles and Holidays of Moroccan and Persian Jewish Communities
with Cantor Marina Shemesh (CLICK HERE TO REGISTER) 
(Join us for lunch at the Temple.  Zoom option available.  Look for the link in Kol Sinai)
Lunch & Learn Tuesdays, Nov. 29, Dec. 6, Dec. 13

Cantor Shemesh is offering a three-session class on the exploration and celebration of the very rich music and culture of the Moroccan and Persian Jewish communities. We will hear the differences and similarities in music with the goal to render all Jewish experience, culture, and music as part of one tapestry: It all belongs to one people and is part of the heritage of all of us. This program was developed by the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience at the UCLA.

Tu B'Shevat Seder (CLICK HERE TO REGISTER)
Sunday, February 5 at 6:00pm

God and the Prayerbook
with Rabbi Erin Glazer (CLICK HERE TO REGISTER) 
(Join us for lunch at the Temple. Zoom option available. Look for the link in Kol Sinai)
Lunch & Learn Tuesdays, Jan. 31, Feb. 7, Feb. 14

How do we reconcile our ideas of God with the language of the prayers in the siddur? Which prayers “fit” with our own sense of who God is and how God acts in the world? And what do we do with the prayers that don’t speak to us? Join us for an exploration of the prayers we say most often at Temple Sinai - and some that may be new to you - as we bring our own ideas about God into conversation with the words of the prayerbook.'

Song of Songs: Biblical Eros, the Passover Seder, and Kabbalat Shabbat
with Rabbi Shira Gluck (CLICK HERE TO REGISTER) 
(Join us for lunch at the Temple.  Zoom option available. Look for the link in Kol Sinai)
Lunch & Learn Tuesdays, March 14, 21, 28 

Join Rabbi Shira Gluck for a three part series exploring Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs).  In the first session, we will explore the biblical book itself, with a focus on its poetic forms and imagery.  In session two, we'll discuss the rabbinic perspective: the book's place in the biblical canon and its use in ritual and liturgy, with a focus on the Pesach Hagaddah.  The third session will examine Shir HaShirim's role in the Kabbalistic imagination with an emphasis on Shabbat liturgy. 

Jewish-Christian Relations: A History
with Rabbi Joseph Skloot, Ph.D. (CLICK HERE TO REGISTER) 
(Join us for lunch at the Temple.  Zoom option available. Look for the link in Kol Sinai)
Sundays, 9:30 - 11am
March 12, 19, 26

This course will explore the transformations Jewish communities and Judaism underwent after the emergence of Christianity as a world-historical force. We will consider the ways Jews both sought to acculturate (adopt the ideas and practices of the majority) and differentiate themselves. Special emphasis will be placed on the origins of Christianity and rabbinic Judaism; economic interrelationships; anti-Judaism and Anti-Semitism; and, Zionism and modern Jewish politics. No previous knowledge is required.

Rabbi Joseph A. Skloot, Ph.D. is the Rabbi Aaron D. Panken Assistant Professor of Modern Jewish Intellectual History at HUC-JIR/New York. He is an historian of Jewish culture and religious thought, and the author of First Impressions: Sefer Hasidim and Early Modern Hebrew Printing (Brandeis University Press, 2023).

Cooper-Bernstein Scholar In Residence - May 19 & 20, 2023

Guest Scholar Dr. Joshua Holo, Dean of the Los Angeles Campus of Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion and Professor of Jewish History