Updated on Jan. 6
One of the most popular courses at New Lehrhaus, the Berkeley-based Jewish learning institute, uses a novel approach to understanding the Talmud: “Seinfeld.”
“Whatever excites somebody’s curiosity is key to learning,” said New Lehrhaus co-founder and director emerita Rachel Biale. “A lot of people have never looked at a page of the Talmud, but they all know ‘Seinfeld.’”
This approach stems from the inspiration for New Lehrhaus, which is modeled on the Freie Jüdische Lehrhaus founded in Frankfurt in 1920 by Franz Rosenzweig to create a place for assimilated Jews to learn more about Jewish texts and culture.
Now, New Lehrhaus has expanded its offerings through its November merger with Yiddishkayt, the largest Yiddish cultural institution in the West. Yiddishkayt (literally “Jewish-ness” or “Yiddish-ness”) began as a Yiddish festival in Los Angeles and is known for its award-winning website that has become a destination for Yiddish culture lovers.
With Robby Adler Peckerar at the helm of New Lehrhaus as executive director since September, the merger with Yiddishkayt is a natural one — he was previously the executive director of Yiddishkayt for 15 years. After losing its largest funder in 2023, Yiddishkayt hopes its merger with New Lehrhaus will ensure its long-term survival.
The merger creates a unified organization with a single catalog, with New Lehrhaus’ text study and academic courses standing alongside Yiddishkayt’s signature cultural programs.
“We’re looking forward to over 200 courses, lectures and events per year,” Adler Peckerar said. The vast majority of offerings are online, with both audiences in the same time zone.
Eight new courses begin this month.
New Lehrhaus is known for creative learning opportunities that rely on students’ familiarity with contemporary culture, whether that’s examining the lyrics of Leonard Cohen through a Jewish lens or offering courses such as “The Bible on the Couch,” in which a rabbi and a psychiatrist analyze Biblical characters.
Yiddishkayt also offers content that brings the past into the present, such as an online discussion of the horror film “I Walked with a Zombie” or the juxtaposition of poets inspired by Biblical tales in its online “Juxtapoetry” series.
“Things like that are becoming more of our trademark classes over time,” Adler Peckerar said. Even as New Lehrhaus has undergone several transitions, top-tier faculty has always been a constant, with instruction by academics and local personalities like Michael Krasny, former longtime KQED host.
Freie Jüdische Lehrhaus was the inspiration for the original Lehrhaus Judaica, founded in Berkeley in 1974 by Bay Area historian Fred Rosenbaum and others. The organization offered language classes including Biblical Hebrew, modern Hebrew and Yiddish, Adler Peckerar said, as well as courses on a large range of Jewish topics.
“It really reached its stride in the ’80s and ’90s,” he said.
After Rosenbaum’s retirement, the organization cycled through a number of directors and names until financial issues led to its closure in 2021.
But the lack of a place to study advanced courses without the strains of working toward a degree was palpable, and within a few months the organization was rebooted by David and Rachel Biale, who shaped it into New Lehrhaus before David Biale’s death in 2024.
Aaron Paley, who has a deep background as an events producer, founded Yiddishkayt in 1994 as a Yiddish festival in Los Angeles. The idea came when Paley visited Eastern Europe for the first time the same year after a lifetime of studying the language and region and imagining the shtetl.
“It’s all in color, and it blows my mind,” he said. The precise turning point for him came during the performance of a piece by choreographer Tamar Rogoff outside of a small village in Belarus.
“I had this insight that the way to deal with Yiddish culture is through contemporary art and culture, and not thinking about it as a past culture,” he said.
Yiddishkayt went through its own evolution before the recent merger with New Lehrhaus, transforming from the festival model to more of a day-to-day cultural organization.
Yet the inspiration behind its programming remains consistent since that lightbulb moment Paley had in Belarus: A key to keeping Yiddish culture alive is understanding it in a contemporary context.
“It’s still the DNA of the organization, and it drives me to this day,” he said.
Yiddishkayt has closed its L.A. office but will retain its name and website — one of the most visited destinations for Yiddish culture, according to Adler Peckerar — as it combines its offerings with New Lehrhaus.
The blended organization will have space at the new 3-acre Jewish community campus, set to open in the summer in Oakland’s Rockridge District. The campus will become the main site for the JCC East Bay and other Jewish agencies and a performance space for Jewish culture.
“The idea was to consolidate Jewish organizations into this center, this campus,” Adler Peckerar said.
The new campus will provide increased classroom and performance space, and both New Lehrhaus and Yiddishkayt have a long association with film, in particular through Yiddishkayt’s online Layka Lens series that pairs films from Central or Eastern Europe with discussions curated by experts.
“A lot of people … feel disconnected from Jewish texts, from Jewish life, from Jewish history and knowledge,” Adler Peckerar said. “They identify in some way as being Jews or of Jewish origins, but don’t necessarily have a place where they necessarily can go to deepen their sense of Jewishness.”