Beit Midrash

Make yourself at home in Hebrew Culture... in English
SHORT COURSES AT ALMA , TEL AVIV

A key player in the Tel Aviv intellectual scene for over a decade, Alma is a cultural and educational center for adults.
 As a Home for Hebrew Culture, Alma is proud to open its doors to people of all backgrounds who wish to feel at home within this culture.

Learning at Alma provides an unconventional intellectual experience, known for its refreshing mix of perspectives and disciplines, combining classic Jewish texts, such as the Bible and the Talmud, with literature, poetry, philosophy and the arts – both classic and modern, both Jewish and Universal.

NEW AT ALMA: Hebrew Culture program in English
Alma invites non-Ivrit speakers to gain a unique and meaningful taste of the Alma experience. Discover our fresh approach to engaging with Jewish sources, and to exploring the ideas and dilemmas affecting Israeli and Jewish identity today. Focusing on a specific cultural theme, each course offers a colourful mosaic of Jewish and Israeli perspectives and contexts, with every session shedding a different light on the theme at the heart of the course.
True to Alma's spirit, sessions will take the style of an informal Beit Midrash, breathing new life into this classic Jewish study method. Each course offers an opportunity to interact with a varied selection of Jewish and Israeli texts, both traditional and contemporary, guided by members of the Alma faculty.

New courses now open for registration:

STORY
Trace the story of Jewish storytelling and of Story as a medium in Jewish and Israeli culture, while delving into a selection of stories from a variety of landmarks along our cultural narrative. Looking at texts as ancient as biblical myths and as contemporary as short stories from modern Israeli literature, we will identify and explore the twists in our tale and get a feel for "our story".
5 weekly sessions
Sunday 18:00-21:00
First session: 21 February 2010

MEMORY
Explore Memory and its role in traditional and contemporary expressions of Hebrew Culture. Examine remembrance and forgetting as cultural phenomena going to the root of our identity. Through intimate dialogue with Jewish and Israeli sources, we will engage classical dilemmas and current debates, as we consider how, what and why we remember and forget.

5 weekly sessions
Sunday 18:00-21:00
First session: 11 April 2010

Session 1: Led by Dr Steve Copeland: "Forgetting to Remember, Remembering to Forget" Talmudic and poetic reflections on human (and divine) memory (11 April, 18:00-21:00)

Sessions 2: Led by Omer Sergey: "Shaping the Past" Exile and Return, from the Bible to Zionism (18 April, 17:00-20:00).

Session 3: Led by Beeri Zimmerman: "Joseph, God, the Chief Butler and us" – on forgetting and being forgotten in religious Jewish thought (25 April, 18:00-21:00)

Session 4: Led by Joshua Sobol: "Memory – A Grey Zone between Fact and Fiction" – Reading Joshua Sobol's Ghetto Trilogy (2 May, 18:00-21:00)

Session 5: Led by Yulie Cohen: "Memory and Myth in My Land Zion" – A personal documentary journey through Israeli identity (9 May, 18:00-21:00).


HOME
Come home to the concept of Home and to the relationship between where we are and who we are. Study and discuss Bible, poetry, Talmud and more, as well as non-textual expressions of Home in film and art. Examining the private, the cultural and the national, we will discover the richness of Jewish and Israeli perspectives on Home as an idea, a thing and a place.

5 weekly sessions
Sunday 18:00-21:00
First session: 16 May 2010

For More information and registration call: 03-5663031

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