CLAL Curricula (M-Z)

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.

Unit 1: The Human Being Alone and the Human Being in Relationship
Unit 2: Gender as a Category of Experience
Unit 3: What Does it Mean to Be a Jewish Man?
Unit 4: What Does it Mean to Be a Jewish Woman?
Unit 5: The Codification of Gender Identity
Unit 6: Sexuality and Embodiment
Unit 7: The Christian Alternative
Unit 8: Concepts of Separation and Holiness: The Self and Other
Unit 9: The Celebration of Gender Identity
Unit 10: Jewish Families: What Connects Them Through Time?
Unit 11: Contemporary Jewish Families: What Makes Them Jewish?
Unit 12: Relationships: Man and Man, Woman and Woman
Unit 13: Images of God and Self-Identity
Unit 14: Male and Female Models of Leadership
Unit 15: Toward Wholeness
Unit 16: Recovering the Suppressed Voice: Classical and Modern Midrashim on Dinah
Unit 17: Lot's Wife
Unit 18: Rabbinic Wives: Beruriah and Rachel

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.

Unit 1: The Jewish Cycle of Life: An Overview/The Birth of a Jew
Unit 2: Conversion: The Birth of New Jews
Unit 3: The Covenant in the Flesh: Brit Milah
Unit 4: Brit Banot / Simhat Ha-Bat
Unit 5: Childhood
Unit 6: Bar/Bat Mitzvah
Unit 7: Adolescence
Unit 8: Covenanting Relationships: The Creation of Marriage and Other Adult Relationships in Judaism
Unit 9: Divorce
Unit 10: "Be Fruitful and Multiply"
Unit 11: Intimacy in Relationship
Unit 12: Parents and Children
Unit 13: Making a Living
Unit 14: Old Age/Caring for the Sick and Aged
Unit 15: "A Time To Die" —Death and the Jewish Funeral
Unit 16: Mourning
Unit 17: Life after Death

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.

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.

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.

Unit 1: Jewish Time
Unit 2: Shabbat: Symbol of Creation and Redemption
Unit 3: Shabbat: Self and Community
Unit 4: Rosh Hashanah
Unit 5: Death and Rebirth: Yom Kippur
Unit 6: Pesach: From Slavery to Freedom
Unit 7: Pesach: You Shall Tell Your Children
Unit 8: Shavuot: The Covenant of Law
Unit 9: A Tu B'Shevat Seder: Hands-on Mysticism
Unit 10: Journey to Liberation: Sukkot
Unit 11: Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah
Unit 12: Confronting Jewish Destiny: Purim
Unit 13: The Birth of a Jewish Holiday: Chanukah
Unit 14: A Pesach Workshop: Or Beyond Kneidlach
Unit 15: Destruction and Response: Tisha B'Av
Unit 16: Sacred Memory Past and Present: Yom Hashoah
Unit 17: Sacred Memory Past and Present: Yom Ha'Atzmaut
Unit 18: Times and Seasons Lost and Found: The Sacred Moments Of the Third Era

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.

Unit 1: The Garden of Eden
Unit 2: Cain and Abel
Unit 3: After the Flood
Unit 4: The Tower of Babel
Unit 5: But She Is My Sister....
Unit 6: Abraham and Lot
Unit 7: The Sign of the Covenant
Unit 8: Lot's Family
Unit 9: Planning for the Next Generation
Unit 10: The Growth of the Family
Unit 11: Rape and Revenge—Dinah and her Brothers
Unit 12: Judah and Tamar
Unit 13: The Blessing of Joseph's Sons

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.

Unit 1: Who Is a Jew in the 21st Century?
Unit 2: Israel: The Jewish Vision
Unit 3: Jew and Arab, Judaism and Islam: Impacting Our Dream
Unit 4: The Ethics of Power
Unit 5: Democracy, Israel and the Jewish People
Unit 6: Sibling Rivalry: Jews of Israel, Jews of America
Unit 7: On Eagle's Wings: Israel-Diaspora Relations
Unit 8: Land for Peace: A Debate of Vision and Reality
Unit 9: Sorting Out the Middle East
Unit 10: Pidyon Sh'vuyim/The Redemption of Captives and Other Obligations: Principles and Priorities

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 "Tikkun." 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.

Unit 1: The World of Tradition
Unit 2: Disruption and Change
Unit 3: Tikun: A Theory of Change
Unit 4: You Shall Teach It to Your Children: Education as the Means of Telling the Story
Unit 5: Authority, Family Structure and the Traditional Jewish Family: Ideal and Real
Unit 6: The Individual and the Community
Unit 7: Communal Authority, Past and Present: Institutions and their Leaderships
Unit 8: Next Year in Jerusalem: The Flowering of Our Redemption
Unit 9: Galut or Diaspora?: Freedom and Acceptance in American Society
Unit 10: Fill the Earth and Master It: Judaism, Faith and the Technological Revolution
Unit 11: Healing the World: The Dilemmas of Medical Ethics
Unit 12: Sin and Psychology: Healing the Soul
Unit 13: Created in God's Image: Gender and Judaism
Unit 14: Seeking the Spirit: Religious Alternatives in an Open Society
Unit 15: Infinite Potential: We Want The Messiah Now(?)
Unit 16: Theodicy: The Nature of Human Suffering
Unit 17: Retelling the Story: Leadership in Our Time

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.

Unit 1: Covenant: The Jewish Dream of a Perfect World
Unit 2: Monarchy and Prophecy
Unit 3: Covenant and Landlessness
Unit 4: Can You Ever Go Home?
Unit 5: Clashes of Covenant and Culture
Unit 6: The End of the World
Unit 7: Power in Powerlessness
Unit 8: Dhimmi or People of the Book
Unit 9: Crusades and Their Aftermath
Unit 10: Expulsion and Renewal
Unit 11: Redemption of the Spirit
Unit 12: Emancipation: Liberty, Fraternity, Equality
Unit 13: A Third Era of Jewish History