Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning Coming to Boulder

The Florence Melton School of Jewish Learning is the largest pluralistic adult Jewish education network in the world. Founded in 1980 at the initiative of Florence Zacks Melton, a community activist and longtime supporter of Jewish education, the Melton School initially opened with three pilot sites in North America.

Driven by her vision, there are now 47 Melton Schools in 47 cities throughout the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, attended weekly by some 5,500 students. Melton is a world pioneer in the field of adult Jewish education, offering a first-class curriculum created by scholars and educators at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

And now, The Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning is available at Congregation Har HaShem, giving us the privilege of bringing the Melton School to members of our community. Har HaShem will be offering several Melton courses. To learn more about all of them, please join us for a FREE Taste of Melton on Wednesday, September 21st from 6:30-8:00 pm. Kindly register here.

Engage with other adults in learning the “whys” of Judaism in the Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning. A Taste of Melton is a sample of the high quality Jewish learning experience you will have with our Melton courses. If you are considering a Melton class, then this “taste” is for you!

This year at Har HaShem we will be offering the core courses of Jewish Life Cycle and Philosophy. We will also be offering a new fun class this Spring on Jewish humor. During the taste you will sample Melton learning with Rabbi Gelfarb, our Melton core class instructor and learn more about the program with Boulder’s Melton Director, Katherine Schwartz.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjpaoEFl48Q

 

Additionally we are very excited to welcome Special Guest Rabbi Morey Schwartz, Director of Education for the Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning, on September 30 at noon for a brown-bag Melton-style lunch session on The Book of Life. In this special pre-holiday lesson, Rabbi Schwartz will invite participants to revisit  and rethink commonly held beliefs about the the Jewish notion of a Book of Life, encountering a combination of traditional and modern  texts on a journey that promises to clarify and inspire us in our prayers and celebration of the New Year. Click here to RSVP.

Melton Courses at Har HaShem

Melton Rhythms and Purposes of Jewish Living Core Course

Wednesday evenings, beginning October 26

Rhythms: What’s the point of living Jewishly? What idea, beliefs, and practices are involved? This course examines a wide variety of Jewish sources to discover the deeper meanings underlying Jewish holidays, lifecycle observances, and Jewish practice.

Purposes: Why do Jews believe as they do? What are the big questions of life and how do Jewish thinkers answer these questions? This course explores sources both ancient and modern in pursuit of answers to many of the major issues of Jewish thought and theology.

Jewish Humor – from Sinai to Seinfeld

10 Wednesday evenings beginning January 25

A treasure of irresistible jokes from the Israelite relationship with God to the growing divide between cultural and religious Judaism in the early 21st century. Treating Jewish jokes as text, the course invites students to analyze and interpret the evolving concerns, styles, rhythms, preoccupations, and values of the Jewish people that lie buried deep in words that make us laugh as Jews, and that bond us as a people. This 10 session course will take place on Wednesday evenings in the Spring of 2017.

Click here to register for Melton Classes at Har HaShem.