Dropping off his kindergarten-aged son for classes at Congregation Rodef Sholom a year ago, David Becker was struck by a pang of longing — Hey, that looks like fun.
“My own Jewish education, and I think many people’s, stopped when I graduated high school,” said Becker, a psychology professor at UCSF. “Just at the time I went to college and really started to open myself up intellectually and develop an adult understanding of the world, my Jewish education was kind of frozen in time at a kid’s level.”
Besides, Becker figured he had to come back in just two hours to pick up his son, Jeremy, so he might as well stick around.
So, after working with Rodef Sholom staff in San Rafael and Jehon Grist, executive director of Berkeley’s Lehrhaus Judaica (“He knows everybody”), Becker devised a Sunday morning course for adults. Called “Exploring the World of Judaism,” the new, once-a-week adult Jewish education series will get started Sunday, Sept. 30, and will coincide with religious-school hours. The free series will be held at the Marin Jewish Community Center, adjacent to the Reform congregation.
While there’s no shortage of Jewish adult programs elsewhere, Becker emphasizes that his is not your basic Introduction to Judaism or Hebrew 101. It will be taught by a team of guest instructors as diverse as the denizens of a cross-town bus, with lecture subjects ranging from Jewish images in cinema, to Kaballah, Mideast history and even Zen Buddhism.
Take the Buddhism class, for instance. “My thinking about that is it gives us a respect for other religions and gives us a chance to see how they’ve dealt with some of the same issues Judaism has dealt with,” said Becker, a professor at UCSF since 1994. “It can only enrich our understanding of these issues.”
Instructors will include Rabbi Shlomo Zarchi, spiritual leader at San Francisco’s Orthodox Congregation Chevra Thilim; Janis Plotkin, executive director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival; Laurie Zoloth, bioethicist and director of San Francisco State’s Jewish studies program; William “Ze’ev” Brinner, U.C. Berkeley professor emeritus in Near Eastern studies; and Rodef Sholom Rabbi Michael Barenbaum, who will teach a class ambitiously titled “From Abraham to You: All of Jewish History in Two Hours.”
With nine lectures scheduled from Sept. 30 to Dec. 9, Becker still has no shortage of ideas. He will wait and see how people “vote with their feet” before deciding which subjects to tackle next. In addition, he intends to use the results of a survey he’s prepared asking Rodef Sholom congregants what they’d like to know more about. He doesn’t intend to gauge the success of his program by attendance alone.
“I wouldn’t put it in terms of numbers,” said Becker, who lives in Kentfield. “If people are really excited and enthusiastic and feel like they’re getting a lot out of it, then I’ll feel like it’s a successful program.”
And however participants do sound off — with their feet, or otherwise — Becker said he won’t have a hard time filling out the next set of classes and another after that. Armed with names from Grist’s formidable black book, he shouldn’t have much difficulty staffing them either.
“There are a lot of topics, it’s not that hard” to think of them, he said. “I’m a curious person and there are a lot of things I want to learn about.”