The German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig led the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus (Free Jewish House of Learning), which Tablet magazine describes as “a revamped beit midrash tailored to assimilated Jews” that “met in community buildings and rented halls” and “lacked modern precedent,” in Frankfurt in 1920.
The “Jewish adult-study center,” where “students were encouraged to examine classical Hebrew sources, searching for what is vital and relevant” and which “became a model for similar institutions elsewhere in Germany,” as Britannica puts it, also inspired a restaurant and study center that opened in Somerville, in the Boston area, in 2023.
Inspired by the 1920 study center, co-founders Rabbi Charlie Schwartz and Joshua Foer created Lehrhaus in Somerville, Mass., “as a new kind of Jewish space that integrates Jewish learning, community and food in unique and engaging ways,” per the restaurant’s website. “Our Lehrhaus aims to revive and modernize Rosenzweig’s institution for today’s world, creating a vibrant, and delicious, hub for Jewish life that is open to all.”
Schwartz told JNS that after a successful debut in the Boston area—near the Harvard University campus—which drew more than 50,000 people since March 2023, the co-founders are eying a second location in Washington, D.C., with the goal “to open as soon as humanly possible.”
“We’re still finalizing our location,” Schwartz told JNS.
Lehrhaus is not a typical restaurant, even by the standards of eateries adjacent to the Ivy League private school in Cambridge.
It merges Jewish text study with a full-service, kosher restaurant and bar. Its website directs readers to “view the full Talmudic version of our drink menu, food menu, our dessert menu and our spirit list,” which indeed are laid out like pages of the Talmud, with commentaries running along the margins, flanking the central text.
A “Tu B’Av salad” references the rabbinic holiday, which some see as a modern Israeli Valentine’s Day, and a “chocolate budino,” which comes with “tahini caramel, tahini brownie, sesame and cocoa nib tuile,” is noted, in the marginalia, to be Italian for “pudding.”
The desert “has Iberian roots as a dessert, brought to Italy by Sephardic Jews in the 16th century,” per the Lehrhaus menu. “Chocolate versions trace back to Sephardic merchants, who controlled cacao trade routes between Central America, Amsterdam and Italy in the early 1600s.”
“We weren’t launching just another restaurant,” Schwartz told JNS. “We wanted to imagine a wonderful Jewish space, where people could encounter the best of the Jewish world, from food to drinks and history.”
“We thought people wanted to meet and gather in person, and we thought there aren’t great Jewish public places to experience the best things about being Jewish,” he said. “There are JCCs and synagogues, which are great, but other than those, there isn’t much.”
Lehrhaus leases its Somerville location and employs approximately 30 staff, including both full-time and part-time employees. The establishment makes just over half of its operating income in revenue from food and beverage sales, private events and ticketed classes, according to Schwartz. As it expands, it hopes to increase that portion to about 70%.
When it named Lehrhaus one of the best new restaurants in the country in 2023, Esquire reported that “it is both delicious and a revelation.” Schwartz told JNS that the ranking was the first time a kosher venue made the Esquire list in more than 40 years.
Lehrhaus draws a mixed crowd, according to Schwartz. “About a third kosher-keepers, a third Jewish people looking for a Jewish experience and a third non-Jews, who are coming in with Jewish friends, colleagues or partners,” he told JNS, “and also because the place is getting a lot of buzz.”
‘Very wide view’
Naomi Levy, who launched the pop-up Maccabee Bar in New York and Boston in 2018, leads the food and drink programs at Lehrhaus.
“When it comes to the tavern side of things, we really wanted something that gave a very wide view of what Jewish food and drinks are and can be,” Levy told JNS. “Jewish food is so much more than Israeli or deli cuisine.”
“In the Jewish Diaspora, there is a huge world of flavors and traditions to be explored, and we really wanted that to be the highlight,” she said.
The cocktail menu features drinks inspired by Syrian Mexican Jewish migration and ingredients like amba vinegar—a nod to Iraqi Jewish tradition. “Fish and chips actually has a Jewish history,” Levy told JNS. “Being able to tell the story of something so ubiquitous to taverns by working here is special.”
That thread extends to every part of the Lehrhaus experience.
“We talk about storytelling as part of our approach to hospitality,” Schwartz told JNS. “When we serve amba vinegar, for example, it’s the perfect moment for our staff to tell customers about the Iraqi Jewish population and what this fermented mango sauce is and how it became popular.”
Of the eatery’s fish and chips, which comes with “amba vinegar, s’chug aioli and Old Bay fries,” it is “believed that Sephardic Jews fleeing the Inquisition first brought fried fish to England,” according to the menu.
“In the 18th century, the now iconic British national dish was referred to as ‘fish in the Jewish fashion.’ Today, matzah meal remains a popular batter of choice in many British fish and chip shops,” it adds. “Amba, derived from the Marathi for mango, is a tangy sauce first introduced to the Jewish world by Baghdadi Jews trading with India.”
‘Entirely novel’
Jon Levisohn, director of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University, who holds the Mandel family associate professorship in Jewish educational thought at Brandeis, told JNS that Lehrhaus stands apart from other Jewish cultural spaces due to its historical and intellectual lineage.
“Lehrhaus positions itself as an inheritor to the famous Frankfurt Lehrhaus, an early 20th-century effort to reinvent the traditional beit midrash in a more liberal German Jewish context,” Levisohn told JNS.
“Unlike American institutions inspired by models like Chautauqua,” the U.S. adult education movement in the late 19th century and early 20th century, “where culture is consumed more passively, Lehrhaus actively invites people to engage in lernen,” he said, using the “Yiddish term for sustained engagement with traditional texts that gets translated, but not quite accurately, into the English ‘learning.’”
Although there were Jewish taverns in Eastern Europe, “the mash-up of the two—tavern and house of learning—is entirely novel,” Levisohn told JNS. “To be frank, I find the success of that mash-up to be as surprising as it is delightful.”
The Jewish diversity that Lehrhaus celebrates and presents is a defining element, according to Levisohn, who notes that books, music, food and art in the venue reflect traditions from Yemen to India to Baghdad.
“This is not performative diversity,” he said. “This is deep appreciation for the wide range of Jewish cultures as they have existed around the world and over time.”
The venue offers nearly nightly classes on topics ranging from classical texts to Jewish punk history. (Fees range from $10 to $180, and Schwartz told JNS that “we never turn anyone away for financial reasons.”)
“There are so many things to love about Lehrhaus,” Sam Gechter, a frequent visitor, told JNS. “It is a deeply and unapologetically Jewish space with many layers. There’s an enormous library of Jewish books. There are pictures on the wall of important, well-known and lesser-known Jews. There is real Jewish learning happening on interesting and timely topics.”
He also noted that there is a Lactaid dispenser for the lactose intolerant, and his favorite detail is a replica of Michelangelo’s sculpture of a horned Moses, at San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, perched behind the bar.
“It’s a wink and a nod to Jews,” Gechter told JNS, “and a slap in the face to Jew-haters.”
‘Take solace’
The atmosphere at Lehrhaus shifted after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Schwartz.
“People would come in and start crying,” he told JNS. “We get less of that emotional intensity now, but still a lot of that relief.”
Lehrhaus hasn’t experienced antisemitism directly, but Schwartz noted that a kosher grocery store two miles away in Brookline recently had a brick thrown through its window.
For many, Lehrhaus has become a place to process a new and uncomfortable reality.
“It used to be that in times of antisemitism, we could take solace in being with other Jews,” Gechter told JNS. “The worst part of this latest round is the way we have been split apart, the way that being around other Jews doesn’t always feel safe anymore.”
“At Lehrhaus, Jews are in charge of the conversation about Jews—not our haters,” he said.
Sherry Leffert, another regular, takes classes about twice a month at Lehrhaus. “I love the high-level content, the friendliness of the staff, the opportunity to socialize with other Jewish and like-minded people,” she said. “I have not changed my mind about Lehrhaus since Oct. 7.”
From the beginning, Schwartz envisioned Lehrhaus as a test case—an experiment to see if such a hybrid cultural space could thrive in a city with a relatively small but strong Jewish community, like Boston.
The plans to expand to Washington suggest the model is working. “We are trying to say that Judaism is more than one thing,” he told JNS. “It’s this incredibly diverse experience of the world bound together by a sense of peoplehood.”
