Jack Wertheimer

Over the past three months I've published six essays in Jewish Ideas Daily on specific examples of people and programs that seem to me to offer welcome news—"Vital Signs"—for the future of American Jewish life. My list was hardly exhaustive; it could have been easily expanded to twice or perhaps even three times its size.  Looking back now at my examples—a summer camp, a supplementary high school, a Hebrew-language initiative for young children,  an adult-education program, a fellowship program for young community leaders, and a prayer group—I'm struck by the ubiquity of a leitmotif that, directly or indirectly, runs throughout all six. 

At first glance, the religious services of the prayer group known as the DC Minyan appear to be of the standard Orthodox type.  Men and women sit in separate sections, and the order of prayer adheres strictly to the traditional Hebrew liturgy. Upon closer inspection, though, several discordant elements emerge: despite the separation of sexes, there is no physical barrier (mehitsah) between them, and responsibility for leading every aspect of the service is shared equally by women and men. 

Fifth in a series on people and places fostering commitment to Judaism and the Jewish people.

"I've heard the term ‘Jewish peoplehood' very often but never understood what it meant," says Zhanna Beyl, an immigrant from Moscow now living in New York, where she works with Jewish teens from the former Soviet Union. "But I got a feeling for it when a small group of us from Latin America, Poland, India, and the States spontaneously sang the same Jewish musical tunes and talked." The setting of their encounter was the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship program, a unique experiment in global Jewish conversation.

Jack Wertheimer

Fourth in a series on people and places fostering commitment to Judaism and the Jewish people.

As enrollments in educational programs for younger Jews have mostly declined or remained static, adult study has become a growth industry. Many courses are developed locally by individual rabbis and teachers; but the field is also being transformed by curricula designed for multiple settings. Among the best known are the two-year Wexner Heritage seminars, the Meah program sponsored by the Boston Hebrew College, and the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School developed by the Hebrew University.  Among the least acknowledged is the biggest: the Jewish Learning Institute (JLI) of Chabad. Last year, in the U.S. alone, JLI enrolled over 42,000 individuals at over 250 settings, or several times more than all the other national programs combined.

Jack Wertheimer

Third in a series on people and places fostering commitment to Judaism and the Jewish people.

It's not easy for a teacher to communicate in an entirely foreign language, especially to pre-schoolers. But that is what happens in an extraordinary experiment in Hebrew-language immersion launched seven years ago at the Jacob Pressman Academy, a Conservative day school in Los Angeles. Children entering the school between the ages of two and five have the option of spending half their day in classrooms where only Hebrew is spoken.

Jack Wertheimer

The second in a series on people and places fostering commitment to Judaism and the Jewish people.

One class is analyzing a talmudic debate after having read it in the original Aramaic; in a neighboring room, students are conversing entirely in Hebrew; in a third, an "Ethicist" column from the New York Times is being examined in light of rabbinic sources; in still another, young men and women are working their way through a biblical text.

Jack Wertheimer

As if from a fantastical time machine, some 300 youngsters disembark in the woods of western Pennsylvania to find themselves at the building site of King Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. In a quick briefing they are introduced to the biblical passages describing the construction project, invited to imagine the challenges confronting the ancient builders—how to move and hoist heavy loads of quarried stone, how to shape metal into giant candelabra—and then immediately drafted into the mammoth task. Only when their labors are complete, two and a half hours later, do they begin the mundane assignment of meeting their counselors and locating their bunks.

Jack Wertheimer

As if from a fantastical time machine, some 300 youngsters disembark in the woods of western Pennsylvania to find themselves at the building site of King Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. In a quick briefing they are introduced to the biblical passages describing the construction project, invited to imagine the challenges confronting the ancient builders—how to move and hoist heavy loads of quarried stone, how to shape metal into giant candelabra—and then immediately drafted into the mammoth task. Only when their labors are complete, two and a half hours later, do they begin the mundane assignment of meeting their counselors and locating their bunks.