Adult Education
There are many ways to learn at BWC – We offer Yiddish classes, adult education courses (listed below), as well as learning opportunities from our social justice committees.
Adult Education Courses
Our adult education courses are geared toward exploring the meaning of Jewish history, ritual, and thought from a secular perspective. Together, we grapple with questions of historical experience, values, and identity that challenge our thinking. Our courses usually run between 3-6 sessions and the cost of high-quality teachers is covered by class tuition, a sliding scale.
A foundation of Jewish and progressive literacy keeps our community strong. Come learn with us! (see the courses listed below)
| $80-120 | $100-140 |
Faces of Oppression; Faces of Liberation: Untangling the Intersections of Antisemitism, White Supremacy, and Transphobia
Spring 2024
4 Sessions | April 29, May 6, 13, 20
Mondays 7:00-8:30 pm ET | Hybrid at BWC and Zoom
In this four-part course, teachers Andy Izenson and Heron Greenesmith will expose the faces of oppression impacting our communities: particularly antisemitism, transphobia, and white supremacy. Participants will begin with using their existing understanding and analysis of systems of oppression to enter into an analysis of transphobia. The group will deepen its understanding of gender, power, and violence through lenses both somatic and deeply practical. Ranging from kabbalistic understandings of the gendered body to the landscape of anti-trans feminist activism, this class will bring together a variety of frameworks to paint a comprehensive picture of how our oppressions are interrelated and how our liberation must be as well.
All sessions will be recorded and made available to registrants.
Course Sessions:
- Session #1: Transphobia as an Interconnected System
- Session #2: Radical Diasporism, Body Do’ikayt, and Imaginal Revolution
- Session #3: White Feminism, TERFS, and Political Revolution
- Session #4: Building a Liberated Vision Together
Course Guiding Questions:
- How do oppressive systems reinforce themselves? How can we disrupt oppression on our way to liberation? How can Jewish wisdom and tradition empower me to be disruptive?
- How are concepts like safety and comfort weaponized within oppressive systems?
- What are the narratives being used to connect antisemitism, white supremacy, and transphobia to each other? What are the ways those narratives become part of our culture?
- As a person with my given identities and body (e.g. Jewish/ cisgender/ white/ disabled/ low-income), what is my personal stake in combating transphobia and white supremacy?How do my identity, experience, and embodiment fit into these narratives?
Course Instructors
Heron Greenesmith
Andy Izenson
Circle Book Group
The Circle Book Group meets monthly (except during July & August) at BWC on Sunday mornings to discuss fiction and nonfiction books by Jewish authors and/or with Jewish themes. This is an open group that welcomes all readers interested in expanding their understanding of the wide variety of Jewish experiences throughout history and across the world. Previously discussed books are listed below. Book selections are chosen by participates at least one month in advance of meetings. Ideally there are 8 or more Minuteman Library Network copies available.
To be added to Book Group email list and for more information, contact bookgroup@circleboston.org.
NEXT MEETING:
Date: Sunday, May 5, 10:15 am
Location: Hybrid
Book: Jews Don't Countby David Bleddiel
Jews Don’t Count is a book for people on the right side of history. People fighting the good fight against homophobia, disablism, transphobia and, particularly, racism. People, possibly, like you. It is the comedian and writer David Baddiel’s contention that one type of racism has been left out of this fight. In his unique combination of reasoning, polemic, personal experience and jokes, Baddiel argues that those who think of themselves as on the right side of history have often ignored the history of anti-Semitism. He outlines why and how, in a time of intensely heightened awareness of minorities, Jews don’t count as a real minority.
Circle Book Group Calendar
Past Circle Book Group reading selections have included:
Playing With Myself by Randy Rainbow
An Improvised Life: A Memoir by Alan Arkin
The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos by Judy Batalion
East West Street by Philippe Sands
Smahtguy: The Life and Times of Barney Frank by Eric Orner
The Convert by Stefan Hertmans
I Was Better Last Night by Harvey Fierstein
The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
Becoming Eve: My journey from ultra-orthodox rabbi to transgender woman by Abby Stein
More than I Love My Life by David Grossman
People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn
Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland
Can We Talk About Israel? by Daniel Sokatch
Journey to the End of the Millennium by A.B. Yehoshua
Concealed by Esther Amini
Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
Ghetto Brother: Warrior to Peacemaker by Julian Volaj & Claudia Ahlering
Second Person Singular by Sayed Kashua
The Last Kings of Shanghai by Jonathan Kaufman
Apeirogon by Colum McCann
1947: Where Now Begins by Elisabeth Asbrink
The Hilltop by Assaf Gavron
Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman
The Tunnel by A.B. Yehoshua
Insomniac City: New York, Oliver Sacks, and Me by Bill Hayes
Tell Me A Riddle by Tillie Olsen
Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes by Adam Hochschild
Dinner at the Center of the Earth by Nathan Englander
Learning From the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil by Susan Neiman
Ecclesiastes
Adolofo Kaminsky: A Forger's Life by Sarah Kaminsky
The Jew Store by Stella Suberman
The Yid by Paul Goldberg
The Art of Leaving by Ayelet Tsabari
The Best Place on Earth: Stories by Ayelet Tsabari
My Promised Land by Ari Shavit
The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish
Kaddish.com by Nathan Englander
Dear Zealots: Letters from a Divided Land by Amos Oz, translated by Jessica Cohen
The Book of Daniel, a novel by E. L. Doctorow
The Death of an American Jewish Community, by Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon
The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman
Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom--and Revenge by Edward Kritzler
Green by Sam Graham-Felesn
The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis
Moonglow by Michael Chabon
(((Semitism))) Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump, by Jonathan Weisman
Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck
The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund De Wall
Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods by Michael Wex
The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman
You Say to Brick: The Life of Louis Kahn by Wendy Lesser
Here I Am, by Jonathan Safran Foer
How About Never—Is Never Good for You?: My Life in Cartoons by Bob Mankoff
Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper by Laurel Leff
Those Who Save Us, by Jenna Blum
Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number by Jacobo Timerman
The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure
Great House by Nicole Krauss
The Golem of Brooklyn by Adam Mansbach
The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem: A Novel by Sarit Yishai-Levi
Kantika by Elizabeth Graver
Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword, Hereville: How Mirka Caught a Meteorite, and Hereville: How Mirka Got her Sword by Barry Deutsch.
The Aleppo Codex by Matti Friedman
The Spinoza Problem by Irvin D. Yalom
The Nazis Next Door: How America Became A Safe Haven for Hitler's Men by Eric Lichtblau.
Enemies: A Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer
Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik
Tevye's Daughters by Sholem Aleichem
Frank by Barney Frank
An Officer and A Spy by Robert Harris
On the Move by Oliver Sacks
Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue: A Novel of Pastry, Guilt, and Music by Mark Kurlansky
The Family: three journeys into the heart of the twentieth century
The Jew in the lotus : a poet’s rediscovery of Jewish identity in Buddhist India by Rodger Kamenetz
Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
Scenes From Village Life by Amos Oz
The Bookie’s Son by Andrew Goldstein
Bech, a Book by John Updike
Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me by Harvey Pekar and JT Waldman; epilogue written by Joyce Brabner; lettering by Charles Pritchett
Amerika : The Missing Person : a new translation, based on the restored text by Franz Kafka; translated and with a preface by Mark Hofmann, 2002
Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood
The Difficult Saint by Sharan Newman
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Eric Larson
The Cross and the Pear Tree: A Sephardic Journey by Victor Perera
The Sacrifice of Isaac by Noah Gordon
The Adventures of Mottel: The Cantor’s Son by Sholem Aleichem
My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq by Ariel Sabar
The End of the Jews: A Novel by Adam Mansbach
The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews by Neal Karlen
Beyond the Pale: A novel by Elana Dykewomon (also known as Nachman/Dykewomon)
The Merchant of Venice: modern version side-by-side with full original text, edited and rendered into modern English by Alan Durband
Escape to Shanghai: a Jewish Community in China by James R. Ross
The Assistant by Bernard Malamud
Scoundrel Time by Lillian Hellman
Heading South, Looking North by Ariel Dorfman
The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers by Harry Bernstein
He, She and It by Marge Piercy
Loyalties: A Son’s Memoir by Carl Bernstein
Seize the Day by Saul Bellow
Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Auslander
The Harlot by the Side of the Road by Jonathan Kirsch
Rashi’s Daughters, Book I: Joheved by Maggie Anton
The life of Glückel of Hameln, 1646-1724, written by herself / Translated from the original Yiddish
A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz
Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer
Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of The Cairo Geniza by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole
Peony by Pearl Buck
World's Fair by E.L. Doctorow
Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast
Florence Gordon by Brian Morton
The Girl from Human Street by Roger Cohen
Farthing (Small Change) by Jo Walton
The Lion Seeker by Kenneth Bonert
At Home in Exile: Why Diaspora is Good for the Jews by Alan Wolfe
Little Failure: A Memoir by Gary Shteyngart
I Married a Communist by Philip Roth
A Bisl
We also offer a series member-to-member learning series we call A Bisl.
What is A Bisl? - In Yiddish, it means “a little bit.” For Boston Workers Circle members, it means a chance to learn and share a little bit about a topic that excites you.
In this time of isolated virtual reality, we're hearing from members that folks want places to connect. So, in collaboration with the Adult Education Committee, BWC is opening up this virtual member to member learning exchange series, A Bisl.
Past topics for A Bisl include:
Bringing Music to Our Shabes Rituals: Exploring Melodies for Our Yiddish Blessings, led by Adah Hetko and Meira Soloff
Haiku Now, led by Jeanne Martin
Like Leafless Branches Coming Back to Life: A Sukkes Willow Workshop, led by Ayelet Yonah Adelman and Liz Krushnic
Making Meaning at Home during COVID 19, led by Rosa Blumenfeld
Zing Mit Mir, Sing with Me, led by Pauli Katz
Letters That You Will Not Get: Women’s Voice from the Great War, led by Susan Werbe
Parenting Through Covid: Support for Families with Young Children, led by Sandy Sachs
Drawing 101!, led by Megan Smith
Self-Organized Learning: A Community Experience, led by Daniel Nahum
Basic Spanish Conversation, led by Susan Langus
Resisting Anti-Muslim Racism in a Pandemic, a Discussion with Fatema Ahmad, ED of Muslim Justice League
Klezmer Spiel: Learn a Tune!, led by Uri Schreter
Simon Dzigan: a Yiddish Comedian in WWII Soviet Union, led by Miriam Isaacs
Pronouns 101 and Practice, led by Sam Slate
Reparations 101, led by Nakhie Faynshteyn and Lynne Layton
Queer Futures Workshop, led by Jacey Eve
Feeling inspired? Click here to lead your own session.
Questions about A Bisl? Email zohar@circleboston.org.