Shakespeare’s Torah
with Ray Brahmi

Shakespeare’s plays are a fount of ethical insight, psycho-spiritual wisdom, and - perhaps even - mystical revelation. Like our Torah, they are deeply revelatory about human nature. This course asks the question: Can Shakespeare’s stories, characters, themes, and language operate as a kind of holiness code - a torah - for us to live by?

Through engagement with select plays, sonnets, and classical Jewish texts and commentary, we will work to make psychological, moral, and spiritual meaning in and out of these texts, positioning Shakespeare in sacred conversation with Jewish tradition and our own deep yearnings. We will also revel in the aesthetic power of the plays, analyzing the architecture of Shakespeare’s language to discern his full purpose, and consider adjacent works of art and music.

Together, we will experience why so many feel that to read and meditate on Shakespeare is to look deep into the mind and heart of God. Animated, joyful, and community-centered, all learners are welcome as we take a Talmudic dive into this Elizabethan master who created, arguably, the greatest study of human nature ever written.