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They won't be going out for the football team or cheerleading squad, but hundreds of "seniors" are flocking to classrooms throughout the Bay Area this year. These seniors are 60 and older — and they're back in school to study Jewish life and religion.

Jewish community centers and synagogues stretching from Palo Alto to Walnut Creek are serving up a rich smorgasbord of classes, lectures and seminars aimed for an older population. Class titles range from standards like "Beginning Hebrew" to newer-age offerings like "Traditional Cooking of our Elders — Knishes, Knaidelach and Beyond" and "Bible Stories your Bubbeh Never Told You."

Program directors say the courses have a loyal — and growing — following.

"Not everyone's a bridge person or a knitting person," says Merrylen Sacks, director of senior services at the Albert L. Schultz Community Center in Palo Alto. "This fills a different kind of need."

"I've been a lifelong student," says Dr. Phil Klein, a 74-year-old Rossmoor resident. He didn't have much time to take personal-interest classes when he worked as a pathologist. But now that he's retired, Klein regularly signs up for courses at the neighboring Contra Costa Jewish Community Center and elsewhere. He also gives lectures on medical topics.

Though he's taken classes on a wide variety of subjects, he's drawn to courses that expand his Jewish knowledge. "I didn't have a very great Jewish education as a child," he says. "I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma."

Roughly 750 Bay Area seniors take classes each year under a Learning for Life program sponsored by Lehrhaus Judaica and local Jewish community centers and synagogues, says Jehon Grist, Lehrhaus co-director. Of the 125 to 150 classes offered by the agency, Grist estimates that a fourth are targeted to the elderly.

"We're dealing with an audience that really has time to enjoy the joy of learning, and we want them to savor every minute of it," he says.

Often, the programs are offered during daytime hours at locations that are convenient to seniors and with reduced fees. "We are graying," Grist says. "As we get older, we're not necessarily interested in traveling" at night and struggling with parking to attend a class.

That kind of convenience is important to Paul Botzman, an 84-year-old Rossmoor resident. No longer able to drive at night, Botzman has become a regular participant in daytime programs offered at the CCJCC, right outside Rossmoor's gate in Walnut Creek.

He's taken classes on the Bible, exotic Jewish communities, Jerusalem and comparative religion.

Botzman says it's part of his Jewish heritage to want to expand intellectually. Once, when registering for classes at Diablo Valley College — where he was three to four times older than most other students — a campus employee asked him, "Why are you taking these classes?"

"I told her, `Because I'm Jewish,'" Botzman recalls with a chuckle.

At the Berkeley Richmond Jewish Community Center, a Yiddish conversation class draws a regular and devoted following of seniors and others.

"It's a rich language and it's dying and they don't want it to die," says Nancy Castle, director of older adult services at the center. "They're passionate on the subject."

Though fitness classes remain the most popular offerings, academic courses are growing in appeal, she says.

"Our classes are not Mickey Mouse classes," says Castle. "If they want to socialize, they'll come for the lunches."

For many, retirement years are an ideal time to grow intellectually, says Sacks in Palo Alto. With more leisure time, older students can experience the joy of learning without enduring the stress of taking tests or getting grades.

"We have people who are still active at 90 taking classes," Sacks says. Some come with a strong educational background while others lack high school diplomas.

"The numbers are growing," says Shoshana Eliahu, director of senior programs and services at the CCJCC.

She notes that when a Tuesday morning lecture series started in 1984, the talks drew just five to 10 people. Today, the lectures attract 60 to 70 people, most of them elderly. A recent four-week class on "Bible Stories Your Bubbeh Never Told You" had 100 students; "Shakespeare and the Jews" has 60.

"They still search and seek knowledge," Eliahu says.