Vital Signs: Adult Education, Chabad-Style

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.

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Vital Signs: Hebrew, Nature's Way

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.

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Vital Signs: Putting the School into Hebrew School

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.

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Vital Signs: Torah and Service

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.

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Vital Signs: Torah and Service

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.

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