Virtual Cultural Arts & Jewish Heritage Classes

Overview

FROM OUR LIVING ROOM TO YOURS

Now you can use your lunchtime to learn something new and stay connected to your community. All classes begin at noon.

2026 Classes:

FILM DISCUSSION GROUP with FILMMAKER MATTHEW L. WEISS

Join us in exploring how great movies use the power of cinema to rewire our consciousness and defy our expectations.

Fall – 10 Tuesdays beginning September 1
12-2pm 
$100 member / $120 non-member

Matthew L. Weiss has done everything in the world of film from craft service to editing, acting, producing, and directing. As an editor, his films have played in festivals such as Sundance, South By Southwest and Tribeca, and he is the regular “Film Guy” movie correspondent on Sam Seder’s The Majority Report podcast.

Previously Offered:

ART HISTORY WITH HARRY WEIL – ART IN OUR TIME

Wednesdays

How do artists respond to what’s happening in the world around them? Can something beautiful also be political? This class explores how modern contemporary art (made after 1860 – today) processes, critiques  and questions what is making news in the headlines, including hot button topics: military conflict, feminism, LGBTQ rights, mass shootings, acts of terrorism, and much more! Our focus won’t be on choosing who is right, or who is wrong, but rather exploring art’s role in helping us to make up our own minds. We will be looking at painting, sculpture, photography, and performance.

Harry Weil is the Director of Public Programs at the Green-Wood Cemetery where he curates tours, concerts, performances, and art installations. His projects have been features in The New York Times and New Yorker, among other publications. Harry has a PhD in art history from Stony Brook University. 

EXPLORING THE BOOK OF PSALMS

Thursdays

Can the Book of Psalms, written thousands of years ago, be meaningful to the modern reader? Both Edward Feld and Martin S Cohen seek to prove that these poems can speak to us today. For one, we share with the book moments of joy, despair and of hope. For the other, the intent is to enable the readers to “use these poems to deepen their spirituality and religious sensitivity.” Through our exploration of these poems, and with the help of these authors, I hope that we may find intellectual stimulation and spiritual inspiration as Jews and Christians have done for centuries.

Rabbi Irwin Goldenberg is a retired Reform Rabbi who has served congregations in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Puerto Rico and has taught at Gettysburg College and York College of Pennsylvania.

For more information, please contact Sivan Ben-Aderet at sbenaderet@commonpoint.org or 718-423-6111.

Book Discussion Group

Come find out why this book group has such a devoted following! Thoughtful, lively, provocative discussions focus on the best new and classic literature and non-fiction. Moderated discussions dig into the books to get the most from them, yet we also have a lot of fun. New participants are always welcome.

Thursday, December 3, 10:30 am  – Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Every summer, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey and their eight children vacation on Scotland’s idyllic Isle of Skye, surrounded by artist friends. They expect these summers will go on forever, but with the arrival of World War I, they are forced to reckon with change, loss, and time’s unstoppable march, before making, years later, the long-awaited return to Skye and to its towering lighthouse.  To the Lighthouse is considered one of the greatest literary works of the 20th century.  Eudora Welty wrote that the novel is “Radiant . . . I think that beyond being about the very nature of reality, it is itself a vision of reality.”  

Thursday, February 4, 10:30 am – Yasunari Kawabata, Snow Country

With the brushstroke suggestiveness and subtle insight that won him the Nobel Prize for Literature, Yasunari Kawabata tells a love story set amid the desolate beauty of western Japan, the snowiest region on earth. It is there, at an isolated mountain hot spring, that the wealthy sophisticate Shimamura meets the geisha Komako, who gives herself to him without regrets. Shimamura is a dilettante of the feelings; Komako has staked her life on them. Their affair can have only one outcome.  Kawabata’s suggestive novels are almost like haiku.  It is what is not said that matters most.

For more information, contact Sivan at sbenaderet@commonpoint.org or Peggy at pkurtz9@gmail.com

Please register through our online system here: