The Jewish Standard of Teaneck wrote a major profile of the iEngage Project on Oct. 19, 2012, as it embarked on an unprecedented cooperative effort with 24 northern New Jersey rabbis to teach the iEngage curriculum at 11 different locales. Click here for more information about these programs and to register to attend.
Do you feel more moved by the Israeli national anthem, or by Yehuda Halevy’s 12th century poem declaring his “heart is in the East,” or perhaps by a 1982 Hebrew pop song declaring “I have no other land”?
Rabbi Joel Pitkowsky asked these questions of the 16 men and women sitting around a table in Teaneck’s Congregation Beth Sholom on Tuesday night to start a conversation about Israel and its meaning for American Jews.
The scene repeated itself with variations in two other synagogues and the Wayne Y that evening, with the launching in northern New Jersey of iEngage, a program designed by the Jerusalem-based Shalom Hartman Institute to make Israel the topic of conversations about values rather than battles about politics.
By the end of the month, 11 iEngage programs will be taking place in the area, most meeting on a weekly basis, and several bringing together rabbis and congregants from many synagogues. A total of 24 local rabbis are taking part.
