Congregation B’nai Amoona offers a variety of adult education courses throughout the week on an ongoing basis. Classes include:

• Sunday Talmud Class — from 10:15 to 11:30 a.m. in the Hieken Conference Room, led by Rabbis Barry Friedman and Josef Davidson.

The Talmud is a collection of law and lore developed by rabbis over the span of more than half a millennium. This ongoing class has already covered a number of meaningful texts in English translation and has studied the theme “How to Be a Mensch.”  Over the summer the class will continue to study texts in translation from which members of the class will be able to take something away with them that will connect them with each other and with the world in we live.

• News, Jews and Views — Wednesdays from June 13 to Aug. 8, from 10 to 11:30 a.m. in the B’nai Amoona Library, led by Rabbi Josef A. Davidson.

The class will read current events that span a wide variety of interests from Israel and the Middle East, to science, to medicine, to the arts, to opinion with a view as to what Judaism has to say about them. Each week a different set of articles are presented and a lively, informative and interesting discussion ensues. The conversation is tied together with the topic’s impact on the Jewish community, relevance to Jewish law and trends in politics, science or ethics.

• Midtown Midrash: Thursdays, noon to 1:30 p.m. at the Clayton PNC Building, third floor meeting room, led by Rabbis Josef Davidson and Ari Kaiman. 

This ongoing study group swam in the sea of the Talmud, searched for meaning in the Midrash and now is studying the early rabbis as they are portrayed in the Talmud and in the Midrash as well as what they are attributed to have taught. These rabbis were up to the daunting challenge of recreating the Jewish people from a landed nation to a nation without borders.  They accomplished this by defining the people’s relationship with God through actions and deeds.  The new borders were those drawn as Halachah (literally, the way to go), Jewish law. 

• Weekly Torah Study — Shabbat mornings, 10:15-11 a.m. in the B’nai Amoona Library, led by Rabbis Ari Kaiman and Josef Davidson. During the study session each week, the class delves deeper into the meaning, the implications and the lessons derived from the text in a format that draws also on each person’s experiences and reading of the text.

• Shabbat Afternoon Study — Between Minchah and Ma`ariv during Seudah Shlishit, led by Rabbis Ari Kaiman and Josef Davidson. Feeding the body and the soul are the goals of this Shabbat experience as the group complies with the mitzvah of eating a third Shabbat meal and of studying Torah in the broadest sense of the term.  Topics vary from week to week but always provide food for thought.

B’nai Amoona is located at 324 South Mason Road. For more information about classes listed, call 314-576-9990.