Village Academy
Join our learning community and discover a world of Jewish knowledge and insight
2025-2026 Course Line-Up
Our courses cover a variety of topics, blending ancient traditions with contemporary insights.
Fall: The Kabbalah of Meaning
Drawing on a rich range of Jewish texts, from Torah and Talmud to Kabbalistic thought, The Kabbalah of Meaning offers six fresh lenses through which to view our personal journeys.
What does it mean to have a mission in life? How do we make sense of the events that unfold around us? Can daily life - routine, repetitive, and often unremarkable - become a vessel for something larger? And what is our essential identity beneath all our roles and labels?
Each lesson addresses a different facet of human experiences from our need for agency, to the meaning of time, to the value of the unchosen. Rather than offering quick fixes, this course invites real reflection, grounded in ancient wisdom and relevant to today's inner lives.
This course will satisfy the continuing education requirements of doctors, psychologists, social workers, LMFTs, and LMHC/LPCs in California.
Six Tuesdays beginning Nov 4
Winter: Incredible cases in Rabbinic Responsa
From as early as the eighth century to the present, individuals and local rabbis have submitted legal inquiries to the leading decisors of Jewish law in their respective eras. These questions span every sphere of life—from business dealings to intimate personal matters—and encompass virtually all fields of law: financial, civil, criminal, torts, family, medical, and beyond.
The extant written responses form a comprehensive corpus of Jewish legal precedent, serving as a testament to the art of legal discernment. The reasoning employed by rabbis in applying ancient legal principles to concrete situations illustrates rigorous methods of fact-finding, interpretation of precedent, and balancing of competing values in pursuit of ethical and just decisions.
This course explores a representative selection from this vast repository of case studies—spanning continents and centuries— and compares their treatment with approaches found in U.S. law.
This course will satisfy the continuing education (CLE) requirements of lawyers and legal professionals.
Six Thursdays beginning January 29
Spring: For all Humankind
How Judaism’s universal values can help us build better lives and societies
In today’s society, we are implicitly expected to develop our own moral compass, often without reference to a traditional moral code. One result has been that, as disparate individuals develop increasingly idiosyncratic moral ideas, our society struggles to call upon a cohesive set of shared ethical principles to guide our collective decision-making—sliding instead toward fragmentation and even mutual distrust.
The question is therefore increasingly urgent: Is there a moral code that all people can unite around?
Judaism has always offered a powerful set of ethical principles for all people to live by. Judaism believes that G-d treasures and rewards all people who follow these principles to lead good, just, and moral lives—whether they do or do not wish to join the covenant of Abraham.
This course explores Judaism’s universal message to the world and its relevance to each of our lives today.
This course will satisfy the continuing education (CLE) requirements of lawyers and legal professionals.
Four Tuesdays beginning May 6