12 Monthly Livestream Sessions
All monthly sessions are on Sundays at 2pm ET.
Paid subscribers are invited to join live.
Free subscribers receive the recording within a week.
Please note: Some of the sessions’ content may change, and guest teachers will be announced throughout the year.
All monthly sessions are on Sundays at 2pm ET.
Paid subscribers are invited to join live.
Free subscribers receive the recording within a week.
Please note: Some of the sessions’ content may change, and guest teachers will be announced throughout the year.
SCHEDULE
We begin this year-long journey on MLK Jr. weekend, deciphering biblical and contemporary prophetic voices who speak truth to power when societies fracture. Drawing on the feud between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, we explore how prophets challenged rulers, exposed civil tensions, offered hope and redirected history. How can these powerful legacies shape our own age of political turmoil and moral crisis?
This session is taught by Rabbi Amichai, with guest teacher Rev. Derrick McQueen Ph.D.
Was it an inflated ego and a bad tax policy that split the United Kingdom?
And was there even one to begin with?
We begin at the beginning of the storied split by focusing on King Solomon’s heir Rehoboam, the royal tax collector who became King Jeroboam, and “tax‑free tribe” rebellion that tore the kingdom in two. A closer look at archeological findings, the biblical texts of 1 Kings, alongside critical scholarship from Alex Israel’s Kings Torn in Two and Barbara Tuchman’s “March of Folly” help us frame this journey’s start, and consider how economic injustice, centralization of power, and ignored elders’ counsel fracture a people.
What do these narratives teach about how we got here and today’s feuds over power and communal burden‑sharing?
Did the Exodus really happen? How does history get adapted to meet political means? Two different traditions narrate the Hebrew people’s origin story – what does this division between the two kingdoms’ versions have to do with the Passover story as we know it and the evolution of this sacred festival? As we head into Seder, we focus on the power of stories to shape reality, and the “last Passovers” of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Alongside biblical texts we’ll be reading Jacob Wright’s Why the Bible Began to ask how narratives of liberation can both unite and divide, in ancient monarchies and in today’s Israel‑Diaspora debates. Get ready to ask more than four questions.
The twelve tribes of Israel —fact of fiction, solid history or made-up myth? It’s a fascinating mystery that deeply matters to who and what the people of Israel are really all about – today, worldwide.
Our fourth monthly session of Judaism: Born Divided traces tribal truths, well guarded secrets and surprising stories about siblings that never existed, family ties that forged not one but two kingdoms, brutal battles that tore them apart, and the power of political stories that solidify claims to power despite disputes and different narratives. Tracing the twelve tribes reveals how Judean editors rewrote history—and how recovering suppressed northern models might expand our imagination for pluralistic Jewish peoplehood today.
Join for a close reading of biblical texts in conversation with archeology and critical history, including Finkelstein’s The Forgotten Kingdom, Avrum Burg’s “Israel Should Triumph Over Judah,” and Shira Golani’s ‘The Two Blessings of the Twelve Tribes’.
One golden calf – or two? From the first civil war at Mount Sinai to the one that ripped the kingdom apart – we explore how images, altars, alternative histories and theologies became faultlines and flashpoints between north and south, still active today. On the eve of the holiday of Shavuot, we’ll closely read between the lines of Exodus 32, 1 Kings 12, with Ilana Pardes’ Countertraditions, Leonard Shlains’s Alphabet Vs. the Goddess, and Israel Finkelstein’s archaeology of northern cult sites, to ask what really happened at Sinai, what counts as idolatry—and how accusations of heresy still police today’s Jewish boundaries.
From Jeremiah’s scroll burned by King Jehoiakim to the later editing of Kings and Deuteronomy by King Josiah’s court, this session examines the origins of the biblical canon as we know it, and what happens when rulers literally and metaphorically ban books and set inconvenient truths on fire. Reading Jeremiah, Kings and Chronicles with modern scholarship on canon formation, we consider how controlling text and memory has long been a weapon in intra‑Jewish conflict—and what it means now in battles over curricula, libraries, and “dangerous ideas.” Can the lesser-learned history of the biblical formation help us construct a more evolving, fluid, nuanced narrative that embraces both/and realities instead of binary and constriction-based scriptures?
In 722 BCE Assyria destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel; The southern kingdom of Judah survived—until 586 BCE. What do these two tales of ruin and exile tell us of our origins and lesser-known evolution? What really happened to the lost ten tribes? As we mark the nine days of grief on the Jewish calendar that commemorate Jerusalem’s destruction we also recall Samaria’s fall and the schisms that still stay with us today. We’ll read Lamentations, Kings and Chronibles, along with evidence from the archaeology of Samaria, Dubnow’s account of Israel’s “irretrievable ruin,” and other contemporary scholars to trace what was lost when the north fell, what was absorbed into Judah, and how both national traumas drove Judahite scribes to craft a Bible that defies despair, define resistance, and overwrites history.
The most maligned queen and most misunderstood prophet were not friendly. But did they share similar goals? Jezebel and Elijah face off as embodiments of northern pluralism vs. Judahite zeal. Reading Kings alongside Athalya Brenner’s feminist research, Wilda Gafney’s Womanist Midrash, and Daniel Matt’s Becoming Elijah, we unpack how gender, foreignness, and religious difference get weaponized—and how Jezebel’s “bad press” reveals whose story has been telling Judaism’s story.
Good or bad Samaritans? How Ezra’s Intermarriage Decree defined the Birth of the Bible
On the first day of the Jewish year mid 5th Century BCE, the Judean community of Jerusalem gathered to celebrate the invention of the Torah, led by Ezra the Scribe. But not all were invited. How does the Post-Exile period define new boundaries that continue the old North/South divide and create a new narrative that sets firm boundaries based on ethnic and religious identities? Is the Samaritan/Judean schism a continuity of the Israel/Judah wars, and what does this conflict look like now?
Two animals guard a prophet’s corpse in one of the bible’s strangest stories – a parable about war, peace, prophetic power and divided loyalties. With help from Kenneth Way on animals as prophetic agents and Ross Mursion on totemism, we explore how lion and donkey became symbols for Judah and Israel—and how mythic monster still guard the thresholds into mystery, and shape how Jews imagine our identities – and “the other tribe” today.
The lesser known lessons of Hanukkah are about internal strife, resistance and religious reforms. As we prepare for the mid-winter holiday and wrap this course we examine the lingering impact of the Judah‑vs‑Israel schism as it resurfaced in Judea‑vs‑Judaism tensions of the 2nd century BCE – and beyond. Reading 1–2 Maccabees with Daniel Schwartz’s “Judea versus Judaism” and historians’ call to rediscover the north’s surprising survival story, we’ll see how zeal for temple and state can morph from resistance to fanaticism—and what it means to celebrate Hanukkah without repeating past patterns, rededicated to repair of ruptures and new ways of lighting up the world.
In our closing session, we wrap together prophets, royals, battles, scrolls, and long lost kingdoms into one question: given this origin story of division, what kind of Jewish lfie do we now dare to build? How can this knowledge help inspire new insights and roadmaps for co-existence and peace? With a final nod to all the experts who’ve joined us, we’ll sketch possible “multi‑tribal federations” for the 21st century—models of peoplehood that honor deep differences without erasing them, and seek co‑existence rather than false unity, and diversity instead of discord.