 |
|||||||||||
                     |
|
THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF ME'AH They are physicians, attorneys, college professors, CEOs, retired professionals, homemakers, small business owners, accountants, therapists. They attended Jewish day school, quit Hebrew school after becoming b'nai mitzvah, hated every minute of Jewish education, never attended Hebrew school. Visit any Me'ah class and you'll meet a roomful of people who want one thing: to fill in the often formidable gaps in their Jewish education and, ultimately, to redefine their connection to Judaism.
Me'ah's popularity is all the more remarkable for the way it has attracted Sunday school refugees to return to Jewish learning. "It's a miracle," says President David M. Gordis, "that people remain Jews despite mediocre Jewish education. And it's a miracle that people have decided to give Judaism another look." Dr. David Starr, the dean of Me'ah since its inception, says the program has attained an important position in Hebrew College's educational portfolio precisely because so many people are willing to give Judaism another chance, and because the program "teaches people, not just texts. It makes a connection between the material and adult learners." Gordis adds that Me'ah's success can be attributed to the way it exemplifies "dialogical learning." The point of this different and new model of learning "is not to have a brilliant lecturer spouting insights, but to bring the participants into a conversation with core texts." Me'ah students sign on to participate in this conversation through a two-year, comprehensive overview of Judaism from biblical times through the modern era. Me'ah means "one hundred" in Hebrew and the name conveys the 100 hours of classroom time students log studying Jewish texts. In the first year students study bible and rabbinics. The second year begins with the medieval period and ends with current events. The result is not simply a survey of Jewish civilization, it is living Midrash—revolutionary for the midrashic or interpretive opportunities it creates along the way for adult learners. "My undergraduates at Brandeis take the Bible with them into life. My adult learners at Me'ah bring their lives to the Bible," says Marc Brettler.
Barry Shrage, president of Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston (CJP), saw that the only way to reclaim Jewish identity was to work toward universal Jewish literacy. To affect such large-scale change, he needed the expertise and backing of a major Jewish educational institution. Hebrew College was the obvious choice. Together Gordis and Shrage forged a partnership that Shrage says, "transformed a vague idea [about Jewish education] into a fully formed program." During Me'ah's gestation period, the men looked at existing models of adult Jewish education. They were impressed with aspects of the Wexner Heritage Foundation's Seminar Program as a prototype. Yet they wanted to bring the Wexner Heritage Program's emphasis on text study to a wider population. The result was the creation of what Gordis describes as "a significant, sustained curriculum consisting of 100 hours a year where there was a sense of progression and structure." It became clear that such a program was unprecedented in the community and, according to Gordis, its success was due to the fact "that it was not an adaptation of the Wexner Heritage Program, but something wholly original." Barry Shrage notes that one of the prime motivations to create Me'ah was to bridge "the radical disconnect between the lives kids were leading in Sunday school and the culture they had in the home. We had to strengthen the culture in the home, and we did that by bringing family education to every synagogue." Creating Me'ah—with Hebrew College designing the curriculum, hiring faculty and providing administrative support, and CJP providing funding and making community connections—was the next step in this evolution, and synagogues were the obvious places from which to offer the program. At Temple Beth Elohim, a Reform congregation in Wellesley, Mass., Me'ah's presence transformed the synagogue into a bustling learning center. Word of Me'ah as an extraordinary learning opportunity contributed to an overall culture of learning and observance. Rabbi Michelle Robinson, who oversees the Me'ah program at Temple Emanuel in Newton, Mass., similarly praises Me'ah's impact on the Temple community. "We have always been a community of learners, but Me'ah took it to a whole other level. In five years, over 125 people have gone through the program. When people explore Judaism more intellectually, they come to synagogue more and want to assume roles in lay leadership." Rabbi Robinson also contends, "One walks away from Me'ah feeling like an authentic Jew because you live the experience of your people." Dr. Marc Brettler, professor of Bible and chair of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, is a founding member of the Me'ah faculty and a longtime teacher of the program's Bible studies. He agrees with Robinson that after spending some time in Me'ah, students "want to go to synagogue more often. The Torah reading makes more sense. After a class on Passover, the seder is often a very different experience. It also changes their children's attitude toward their own Hebrew school experience."
At Temple Beth Elohim, a Reform congregation in Wellesley, Mass., Me'ah's presence transformed the synagogue into a bustling learning center. Me'ah has changed Brettler as well. Over the years, his Me'ah experience as an instructor led him to rethink the way he teaches Bible to adults. The result was compiling and co-editing The Jewish Study Bible (Oxford University Press, 2003). As editor he looked for literary essays specifically "written by intelligent people for intelligent people." The anthology features commentary by well-regarded biblical scholars and "assumes that people are fundamentally frustrated with the Bible. I certainly encountered that in my Me'ah experiences. The Study Bible has a Jewish sensibility and makes the Bible more accessible." Brettler gives his Me'ah students a playful, in-class exercise to tease apart the editorial styles inherent in biblical prose and outlook. In one passage he may ask students to identify the Elohist or Yawhist strains in a given passage. In another he'll distinguish between deuteronomic and priestly influences. Under Brettler's tutelage the Bible is no longer a collection of simplistic Sunday school stories—stories that Brettler often finds people don't remember accurately. Such college-level instruction geared for the adult learner is a Me'ah hallmark. Dr. Shaye Cohen, the Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard University, starts with the basics when he teaches one of Me'ah's rabbinics sections. Cohen methodically illustrates the structure and makeup of classical texts such as the Mishnah or the Gemara, with which students often have only a vague familiarity. By the end of his sessions, Cohen has masterfully guided his students to the realization that the rabbis necessarily and brilliantly reimagined Judaism after the Second Temple was destroyed. For students, the impact of Jewish texts—understood for the first time—is profound. Heather Zacker, who completed the program in 1999, remembers that she "was close to tears" when she read medieval poetry about the crusades or narratives about the Spanish Inquisition. Zacker majored in religious studies at Brown University, but found that "Me'ah's text-based approach differed from my college experience in that it provided a chronology and it was more comprehensive. It was a good balance of breadth and depth." During the time she was enrolled in Me'ah, Zacker was also grappling with whether to send her two young sons to day school. By the end of two years, her Me'ah experience convinced her to share the gift of Jewish knowledge with them, and she and her husband decided to send their children to Solomon Schechter. As this landmark Jewish adult learning program approaches its tenth anniversary, Me'ah is transforming lives here in Greater Boston and in cities around the United States, with 1,800 graduates. Harriet Allschwang comes to Me'ah at Temple Emanuel in Newton with her daughter Hope Wolf. Tuesday nights have become a weekly ritual for these Chestnut Hill residents. "We carve time out for class and for each other," says Wolf, the mother of two young adults. The two have always been exceptionally close, but both women say that studying together in Me'ah has added another dimension to their relationship. Although they are a three-generation Prozdor family, Harriet felt she lagged behind her husband and children. She wanted her Jewish knowledge to be on a par with her observance and overall faith. After a year of Me'ah she is the literate Jew that Starr envisions. "I was able to talk intelligently about The Passion when I was getting my hair done the other day," she says. Wolf adds that she and her mother talk about the class throughout the week.
In short, what has succeeded so well in Greater Boston over the past decade is now creating a ripple effect that could transform the very nature of adult Jewish education—as the impetus for what Gordis calls "a learning-based youth movement for adults." Marc Brettler puts it simply: "My undergraduates at Brandeis take the Bible with them into life. My adult learners at Me'ah bring their lives to the Bible." Newton-based writer Judy Bolton-Fasman is in her second year of Me'ah and is a research associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute where she is working on a memoir about saying the kaddish as a daughter. RELATED STORY: Lessons from Me'ah |
|||||||||
As this landmark Jewish adult learning program approaches its tenth anniversary, 
The founding of Me'ah was in some ways a response to the controversial National Jewish Population Survey published in 1990. Among the survey's findings were an unprecedented, high rate of intermarriage and a disturbing trend of escalating assimilation. Starr points to the survey as a wake-up call for the Jewish community. "After the results of that survey, we needed to focus more on creating literate Jews who embraced Jewish culture and felt at home in it. As important as the Holocaust was in combating antisemitism, we wanted people also to deal with subjects like Eastern European culture. We wanted people to have a positive vision of what Jewish identity should be."
Starr notes that, these days, everybody around Boston knows someone who has taken Me'ah. Shrage attributes that in part to the program's "viral quality, to its spreading quickly through the community." And as Greater Boston's flagship Me'ah community continues to grow, other regions of the country are adopting the program. Through a major outreach effort by Hebrew College, Me'ah has spread not only to the competitive metro New York market but also to Baltimore, Md.; Milburn, Princeton and Summit, N.J.; and Providence, R.I. In addition, there is serious interest in bringing Me'ah to other major U.S. cities, and the program could very well go international—Hebrew College is developing Me'ah online, and a pilot phase is planned for the fall of 2005.