Bet Midrash
Union House is excited to bring its Bet Midrash to the public on Monday nights this fall. As we add to our learning lineup over the course of this year, our glass lobby will be transformed into a house of study with different options for learning. On select Mondays, students will gather at 7pm for a l’chaim and words of Torah, followed by three different learning options for adults until 9pm on Mysticism, Philosophy, and Mishna, each in nearby rooms in the building. There will also be seforim/texts available for individuals and study pairs to go at their own pace for individualized learning.
The fall series will take place on the following Mondays from 7-9 PM:
October 19, 26
November 2, 9, 16, 30
December 7, 14
Reading Difficult Freedom: A Levinasian Learning Circle w/ Shai Zurim
Together we will read selections from the collection of essays, Difficult Freedom, by Emmanuel Levinas. We will study slowly, patiently, and attentively, allowing its philosophical beauty and Jewish wisdom to reveal themselves through the text and through one another. At a moment of collective uncertainty and vulnerability, we will ask what resources Jewish thought, memory, and tradition might offer us for finding strength, meaning, responsibility, and hope.
Reading in a circle, we will welcome questions, interruptions, disagreement, and discovery. We may bring Jewish sources, poetry, literature, and art into the conversation to illuminate, complicate, or challenge Levinas’s thinking. The aim is not to master the text, but to encounter it—and to remain open to being surprised and changed by what we find together.
Shai Zurim is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn. He studied at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and the School of Visual Arts, and has spent more than twenty years working in art and education, with the past twelve years focused on early childhood education. His artwork has been exhibited internationally, including at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and he is a recipient of the Young Pioneers Award for his work in Jewish education. He is a co-founder of De-Room, a Jewish philosophy reading group exploring Jewish thought, art, and art theory, with a particular focus on Emmanuel Levinas. His interests bring together Jewish thought, art, education, and the question of how we encounter and learn from one another.
Mysticism Class
w/ Hadar Cohen
Hadar Cohen is an Arab Jewish scholar, mystic and artist. She teaches spirituality and Jewish mysticism at Malchut, a mystical school teaching direct experience of God. She was born and raised in a Sephardic Jewish home in Jerusalem, a city she is still lovingly devoted to. Her ancestral roots span the Middle East, from 10 generations in Jerusalem and with additional lineage roots in Syria, Kurdistan, Iraq and Iran. Throughout her life she has traveled between Jerusalem and the US, bridging the Levant with the West.
Her grandfather was a spiritual Kabbalist prayer leader and her dad is a quantum physicist. She grew up with spirituality and science in beautiful harmony, which informed her life trajectory. She received her Electrical Engineering degree at Cooper Union and later studied at Alt*Div, an alternative divinity school at the intersections of faith and justice. Her work is rooted in the understanding that all existence is spiritual in nature, and therefore the relationship between material science and spirituality is inseparable.
Masechet Eduyot: Witness, Testimony, Transmission w/ Rabbi Matt Green
What does it mean to bear witness to a tradition, and what happens when our memories of that tradition diverge? These are some of the main points of interest in the Talmudic tractate Eduyot (literally: “testimonies”), which is composed entirely of mishnayot (early rabbinic teachings). A major concern of Eduyot is the transmission and authentication of received tradition, particularly amid disagreement. In this chaburah of the Union House Bet Midrash, we will explore selections from Mishna Eduyot and interrogate early rabbinic notions of witnessing and transmission.
Rabbi Matt Green (he/him) is the Founder and Program Director of Union House. He is also the Associate Rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim and the Director of CBE’s experimental communal project, Brooklyn Jews. He received rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2018, and was a Tisch Fellow while at HUC. Matt graduated with honors from the University of Michigan with a degree in History, and was recognized as one of the New York Jewish Week’s 36 Under 36 in June, 2018.