Courses of Study
On this page, you will find descriptions of CLAL's currently available program offerings. For each course offering, we have provided a short explanatory paragraph.
The list that follows is intended to be suggestive of the range of our offerings and is not meant to be exhaustive. If you are interested in any of these course topics or in related themes, we are ready to work with you to develop a program which meets your community's goals and objectives.
We look forward to hearing from you and to providing your community with an excellent program and experience.
For more information about CLAL programs and courses, contact Dale Brown.
Click on any of the course titles below to learn more about the program
Becoming a Partner in Transforming the Jewish World
Building a Relationship to Torah
The Covenantal Community: The Biblical View of Human Responsibility
Covenantal Responses to Modernity
Deuteronomy: The Quest for a More Perfect World
Ethical Leadership in a Time of Change
Jewish Spirituality and Healing
Jews and Arabs in Israel: The Quest for Coexistence
Leadership for a New Age
Leadership for the Post-Modern Era: The Dilemma of Contemporary Life
Male and Female: What does it Mean to Be a Jewish Human Being?
The Passages of Jewish Life
Pluralism: Ideal or Concession?
A Sacred Journey: The Jewish Quest for A Perfect World
Sacred Time: The Choreography of the Jewish People
To Tell a Story, To Create a People: Explorations of Genesis
This Land is My Land
Tikkun Olam: How to Change the World
Turning Points in Jewish History
For more detailed information about particular program offerings, click on the
"for more information" hyperlink that follows the program description.
Becoming a Partner in Transforming the Jewish World
Throughout the astonishing growth and development of the American Jewish community since World War II, the style, structure and dynamics of community leadership have changed in significant ways. In the early post-war period, the institutional leadership sought financial commitments to run the nascent institutions building up a communal infrastructure and the phenomenon of volunteerism. In the late 1960's and the 1970's, emphasis shifted to Israel and Soviet Jewry, and this shift required a more highly political leadership. As we near the end of the century and look ahead, we are increasingly aware of the cultural, spiritual, and ideological non-rootedness of our Jewish community, and we have begun to respond to these problems by proclaiming the need for Jewish continuity and renewal. This shift, like the others, requires a new sort of leadership. The leaders of the next generation must have a deep understanding of what it has meant to be a Jew over the many centuries of the Covenant. They must appreciate what Jewish living, thinking, and dreaming have involved on a personal, as well as a communal, level. They must be personally and actively engaged in Jewish learning, not only for the purpose of acquiring information, but in order to become a part of our ancient ongoing dream of perfecting the world.
This study program is a serious and intensive first step in the creation of a leadership committed to continuity and equipped to insure it. It requires more time, more energy and more thought than typical "adult education" programs. Its goals are not only educating the program participants, but also transforming them into a community. Its dream is nothing short of the redemption of the world, a vision of perfection that can only be accomplished one small step at a time.
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Building a Relationship to Torah
Gaining an understanding of the content of the Torah text along with the form of the Torah is the emphasis in this curriculum. The goal is to understand the Torah as our sacred history and the account of our unique relationship with God and the world. Through a wide-ranging approach utilizing traditional, modern, critical, literary and other methods of analysis, participants will gain the confidence that the treasures of the Torah are indeed accessible and can add immense richness to Jewish life.
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The Covenantal Community: The Biblical View of Human Responsibility
The Bible addresses the following question: What is the purpose of human life in the world? Judaism is a response to the imperatives of the Biblical vision. As the heirs of that vision, we struggle with the covenantal responsibility placed on us by our tradition and history. These sessions will immerse us in the formative events of the Jewish people and in the ways different generations understood these events and their potential meanings. And we will see in the struggles of our ancestors our own task to become the architects of the Jewish community of the future.
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Covenantal Responses to Modernity
The modern era inspired a remarkable flourishing of Jewish responses of which we today are the intellectual and real-life heirs. This curriculum focuses on great Jewish intellectual movements and on individuals who attempted to resolve the tensions of living within a secular Christian world while still remaining connected to the past.
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Deuteronomy: The Quest for a More Perfect World
The Book of Deuteronomy is the most "complete" book in the Torah, beginning with the early history of the people of Israel and coming to conclusion with the death of Moses. In between, the book reviews many of the Torah's earlier laws, hence its name "deutero-nomos" (Hebrew: "mishneh Torah") meaning "the repetition of the law." But Deuteronomy is far more than mere repetition. It offers a grand vision of an ideal Jewish society, while redefining and re-establishing the ancient covenant for all generations to come.
In this course, we will study Deuteronomy in depth. We will read the book in detail, and supplement our reading with study materials from many later periods and genres of Jewish writing, all of which respond to the compelling ideas and issues raised in Deuteronomy. Having considered some of those responses, we will focus on our own contemporary esponses as we allow the words of antiquity to address our lives.
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Ethical Leadership in a Time of Change
There was a time, we imagine, when ethical decisions were easier to make--issues were simpler, the human capacity to change things was limited and society clearly dictated what was right and what was wrong. But today, many of us feel besieged on a daily basis with difficult and even painful ethical dilemmas. As heirs to traditions learned in our homes and schools, as Americans and as Jews, we are asked to find answers for the dilemmas that sometimes paralyze us. Whereas at one time a small cadre of people made such decisions, the open and democratic nature of our society makes us all players in setting policy guidelines for businesses, organizations and even governments.
As Jews who are heir to a tradition of ethical concern, we are not without resources. We can learn from the stories our people have recorded for millennia, the words of the Torah along with its commentaries and applications, and our own personal experiences. The Jewish tradition has significant things to say about how Jews should behave. This curriculum addresses the centrality of ethical behavior for the Jewish community and for society in general.
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Jewish Spirituality and Healing
How does Jewish tradition help us to understand how we can find comfort and personal meaning in the face of the pain, isolation, and vulnerability of serious illness? By examining sacred texts and traditional practices as well as contemporary sources, we will discover both Jewish responses to illness and Jewish resources for healing.
These days, there is an intense popular and scientific interest in the relationship between healing and religion. Thus it is no surprise that many Jews are eager to explore healing in a Jewish context. At CLAL, we know that in turning to Judaism, in its classical and contemporary expressions, we will find an abundant treasury of resources that will guide us as we explore the connections between health and prayer, faith and spirituality.
Unfortunately, many of us are familiar with only a small sampling of Jewish resources for healing. Perhaps we know about the Mi Sheberakh prayer offered for sick people; we know about rabbis visiting the sick in hospitals; we know about paying a shiva call to mourners. But too often, when we are in the midst of a health crisis or are overwhelmed by illness, we, as Jews, don't know where to turn for healing.
Curiously enough, we may be more familiar with Christian resources for healing: the laying on of hands, healing ministries, healing waters, and healing vigils. This is ironic since many of the healing techniques that we think of as being quintessentially Christian derive from Jewish sources!
In this course, we will discover that Jewish texts and traditions offer the wisdom that can provide solace and guidance, hope and community for those inevitable times in life when we face illness and loss. This curriculum will offer a whole range of Jewish wisdom—ancient and modern, textual and practical, spiritual and material—that will meaningfully address healing.
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Jews and Arabs in Israel: The Quest for Coexistence
In the isolation and political powerlessness that often characterized much of Jewish history, being ethical was a personal matter and there were few options from which to choose. Now, after two thousand years of homelessness and dependence on the governance of others, we have a Jewish state which must determine complex policies that affect not only Jews around the world, but Arab Muslims and Christians who are also her citizens. Difficult choices face Jewish leadership as it balances the need for a homeland for Jews everywhere with the responsibilities it has to all its citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike. This course focuses on how to imagine Jews and a Judaism that values democracy, freedom and co-existence. The number of units is flexible and open for discussion.
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Leadership for a New Age
As individuals, Jews have "made it" in our society. We have the means and the clout to effect change and to insure that our desires, as well as our needs, are met. Most of our children will not face the struggles of their grandparents nor have they even the memory of what it meant to go to sleep hungry. Yet, with all our successes, we are often unsure of the purpose for our continued struggle to acquire more. If we are to help structure a community of meaning for our children, we must respond to the insight that, for many, having everything we ever wanted is not enough. Who are we? Where are we going? How are we going to get there? These are the themes of this communal leadership curriculum that confronts a changing Jewish world.
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Leadership for the Post-Modern Era: The Dilemma of Contemporary Life
Gaining an understanding of the content of the Torah text along with the form of the Torah is the emphasis in this curriculum. The goal is to understand the Torah as our sacred history and the account of our unique relationship with God and the world. Through a wide-ranging approach utilizing traditional, modern, critical, literary and other methods of analysis, the classes are equipped with the confidence that the treasures of the Torah are indeed accessible and can add immense richness to Jewish life.
Click here for more information
Male and Female: What does it Mean to Be a Jewish Human Being?
Drawing on classical and contemporary Jewish texts, this curriculum focuses on what it means to be a Jewish human being in an age of challenged values. In so doing, the course will explore ways in which the cultural construction of gender (i.e., our understanding of what it means to be male and female) has influenced and helped shape changing concepts of the self, the Jewish family, and models of communal leadership.
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The Passages of Jewish Life
A people's sense of the value of the individual, and the relationship of the individual to his/her community, are perhaps best expressed in the life-cycle rituals of that people. Indeed, the very stages of development which a people recognizes (it is by no means clear that there is a stage called "adolescence"!) tells us a great deal about its values and visions of society. In this course, we will examine the Jewish life-cycle, its stages and rituals, to learn what we can about how Judaism has understood humanity through the ages.
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Pluralism: Ideal or Concession?
During the last several years the Jewish community, both in Israel and throughout the world, has become more and more sensitive to the conflicts brought about by the existence of a wide range of Jewish ideologies and lifestyles. Reform, Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Zionist and Humanist Jews, perhaps because of their growth in numbers and vigor, have come to see one another as enemies to be mistrusted, condemned, and delegitimized. This study series will examine the dynamics of this problem, in contemporary and historical context. Is the problem new, or has it always been a feature of Jewish life? How can different groups coexist? Is pluralism an ideal or an unavoidable evil? Our study will focus on these controversial questions. The number of units is flexible and open for discussion.
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A Sacred Journey: The Jewish Quest for A Perfect World
Judaism has a dream of the way the world can be, pathways to achieve that world, and roles for each human being to play. Based on David Elcott's published book of the same name as the curriculum, this course will have us examine Judaism as a story to be told with a focus on how to "tell it to our children" at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Locating critical themes, texts, and historical events that are signposts of the Jewish journey, we will study at the table of Genesis and Exodus, Rashi and Maimonides, Buber and Heschel and explore how the story is reshaped. Entering modernity, the course addresses the challenge to a Judaism and Jewish people seemingly overwhelmed by power, affluence, freedom and pluralism, and examines how the initial Jewish responses failed to solve the problems of Jewish identity and community building. Finally, possible strategies for retelling the Jewish story will be explored. The number of units is flexible and open for discussion.
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Sacred Time: The Choreography of the Jewish People
The essence of a people is communicated through a variety of media, including formal instruction, storytelling, personal rituals and community observances. National holidays, in particular, are the means through which a people transmits its sense of self. The rituals that define behavior on such holidays symbolize a people's values; the stories that are told give the symbols substance. Based on the acclaimed book by Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, The Jewish Way, this course will examine the Jewish holidays as an expression of our values and as a philosophy manifest in practice. Through our analysis, we will reach a deeper understanding of the religious soul of our people and of its unique philosophies of God and peoplehood.
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To Tell a Story, To Create a People: Explorations of Genesis
One of the most powerful ways to create and sustain a people's identity is through the ongoing, creative and compelling telling of its story. Each time the story is retold it is given new life, new depth. When a people stops telling its story, it withers and dies.
For the Jewish people, the telling and constant retelling of the stories that fill our collective memory has been an important part of our survival. In each generation, the retelling has reflected who we have become, and how our dreams, our fears and our perceptions have evolved. The result of this tradition of retelling is a rich collection of stories that mirror our growth as a people.
In this series of study sessions, we will examine some of our most challenging and revealing stories. Each session will start by examining a passage from the book of Genesis. We will then enhance our understanding of the story—and of ourselves—by reading it through the eyes of the classical Jewish retellings in rabbinic midrash. Having thus grounded ourselves in our past, we will, finally, retell the story from our own perspective, creating contemporary midrash. In each of these three steps—the exploration of the biblical telling, the study of the rabbinic retelling, and our own contemporary retelling—we will find ample opportunities to explore some of the most basic issues of human life, family, and the ethical dilemmas of our Covenant. By this process, we will give new life and new depth to the ancient words, and to our community's life.
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This Land is My Land
In the last decade, as Israel has grown past its "infancy," the issues confronting it as a Jewish state have become increasingly complex. How "Jewish" can/should the state be? How should it respond to Jews of various ideological positions? To non-Jews? What should define its relationship to the Diaspora Jewish community? These are the fundamental dilemmas that will frame the discussions of this series of study sessions.
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Tikkun Olam: How to Change the World
In this age of Jewish power, both in Israel and here in North America, we no longer can blame others for the condition of our lives or of the world. We are blessed with a capacity to "repair the world" if only we have the will and the vision. These sessions propose a method for undertaking such "Tikun." We will examine those areas where the world of tradition has been seriously challenged and then, through creative reading (midrash) of traditional value-teachings, we will explore possibilities for constructing stable visions of a more perfect future.
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Turning Points in Jewish History
This course traces the path of Jewish history, from its earliest beginnings through our own day, as a means of examining how the Covenant was/is expressed in each age in different ways. One learns that as our people grow and mature, the nature of our relationship with God is bound to go through changes that can be dramatic, or even traumatic.
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