Vital Signs: Betting on Jewish Literacy

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. 

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Vital Signs: A Minyan Grows in Washington, D.C.

Jack Wertheimer

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. 

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Vital Signs: Uniting the Jewish People

Jack Wertheimer

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.

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