Adult Education
Congregation B'nai Tikvah has an extensive adult education program, both through our own initiated activities and through communal activities in which the congregation and its members are active participants. Regular B'nai Tikvah activities include a book group, adult b'nai mitzvah study, a wide variety of speakers and classes on various topics, and other events.

The book group meets approximately every two months. Books selected generally are of Jewish interest. Recent selections have included Ten Green Bottles: The True Story of One Family's Journey from War-torn Austria to the Ghettos of Shanghai

and  Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life by Sari Nusseibeh.  On August 26 - The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World by Matthew Stewart will be discussed, and on October 28 the new Michael Chabon novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, is scheduled for discussion.

The Adult B'nai Mitzvah program is a study sequence including classes specific to those seeking adult bar or bat mitzvah as well as classes aimed at the wider congregation. The next two-year cycle will begin Fall of 2008.



Adult B'nai Mitzvah Class
June 2007 B'nai Mitzvah Class with Rabbi Asher


Our speakers program has included a diverse array of individuals. We have the annual Asher Memorial Lecture. Past speakers have included Deborah Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust, and famed biblical scholar Robert Alter.

Various groups within the congregation also offer a number of occasional speakers, classes and activities. These have included periodic talks on cinema topics with Jewish themes, health issues, and a visit by a senior Israeli ambassador sponsored by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and others.

Congregation B'nai Tikvah is also actively involved in joint communal educational activities including the annual Contra Costa Jewish Film Festival and the annual Contra Costa Jewish Book Festival.