MINI COURSES 2026/2027

We offer month-long mini courses throughout the academic year. All mini courses are open to students ages 12-18, require around 3-4 hours each week, and cost $45. There are 25 spots in each mini course; enroll early to avoid disappointment.

Like our longer courses, Mini Courses combine literature study with creative writing workshops. Students log-on to the course forum on Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays, participate in collaborative exercises and fun informal discussions, and complete weekly writing assignments based on the reading. All students select one piece of work from the course to publish in our literary magazine, Dor Almagor, in June 2027.

Our 2026/27 mini courses focus on mayselekh - short stories - by great storytellers of the 20th century:

October: The Magic Barrel by Bernard Malamud. Winner of the 1959 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction, this collection of thirteen stories is a fascinating examination of Jewish Americans struggling to find a way forward (morally, existentially, personally) in Malamud's postwar New York City - a world of rain-slicked streets, aging tenement buildings and struggling small businesses. Writing workshop focus: urban settings, folkloric voice, fables. ENROLL NOW!

November: Selections from Gimpel the Fool, and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer. This was Singer's first book translated into English (by Saul Bellow), and his first short story collection for adults. It is a brilliant introduction to his supernatural shtetl-world, where fools are saints, demons walk among the living, and every tale oscillates between sly humor and cosmic dread: a true masterclass in Yiddish storytelling and Jewish magical realism. Writing workshop focus: magical realism, the wise fool, and the shtetl. ENROLL NOW!

AVAILABLE FOR SALE OCTOBER 15th:

January: Selections from A Book That Was Lost: 35 Stories by S. Y. Agnon. The only author writing in Hebrew to receive the Nobel Prize, Agnon is a unique and fascinating writer whose work brings together the lost Yiddishkeit, the old Yishuv, and the complex emotional landscape of Israel's first decades. Writing workshop focus: narrators with 'threshold' or in-between perspective, allusion, and using dreams as literary devices.

AVAILABLE FOR SALE NOVEMBER 15th:

February: Selections from Have I Got a Story for You: More Than a Century of Fiction from The Forward, edited by Ezra Glinter. The legendary Yiddish newspaper The Forward published fiction for over a century, giving voice to Nobel laureates and forgotten masters alike - including a remarkable number of women writers whose work has been largely lost over time. This collection brings together satires, fables, wartime chronicles, and avant-garde experiments that capture the full sweep of Jewish life in the 20th century: immigration, modernization, war, and the enduring power of storytelling itself. Writing workshop focus: satirical observation, dialogue, and voice.

Spring 2027 mini courses will be announced in December 2026 and available for purchase in January 2027.

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