News Briefs

Congregation Or Ami, a Reform synagogue in Lafayette Hill, has always had a bit of an independent streak.

For decades, it had used a High Holiday prayerbook compiled by its now Rabbi Emeritus Seymour Prystowsky.

In 2003, after deciding that the the mazhor had grown a little dated, a lay committee and the synagogue's new rabbi, Kenneth Carr, designed a revised one in a couple of months.

Then, Carr and the lay leaders asked themselves: Why not just keep going and design our own siddur for Shabbat, weekdays and other festivals?

They opted to go ahead with the project, despite the fact that the Reform movement had a new prayerbook in the works.

But this time, the work took a lot longer than a few months. In fact, it took six years.

Just before the High Holidays, the synagogue officially dedicated its new, hardbound 500-page prayerbook, called Or T'filah.

Alan Roomberg, who sat on the prayerbook committee, said that its arrival was well worth the wait.

The layout of the book has a single Hebrew prayer on facing pages with translation, transliteration and commentary.

"It engages everyone, and gives them so many options for a particular prayer or for a particular theme," said Roomberg of the new text. "Any given week, the service could look different."

As with the Mishkan T'filah -- the latest prayerbook published by the Union for Reform Judaism -- Or T'filah also highlights the Reform movement's embrace of Hebrew and more traditional liturgy. Roomberg noted that it would be fair to say that Or Ami is on the traditional end of Reform congregations; as evidence, he noted that it's one of the few in the area that has a weekday morning minyan.

The congregation has printed about 2,000 copies of the book. It plans to keep about 500 in the synagogue and give the rest to member families, as well as to upcoming Bar and Bat Mitzvah students.

Carr said that "the guiding philosophy of the book was to try to find as many options and as many entry points to prayer as we could."

Two Educators Earn Fellowships and Some Travel

A pair of local Jewish educators has been accepted into fellowship programs that look to increase engagement in Jewish life among teens and adults.

Renée Goldfarb, who serves as director of the western branch of the Jewish Community High School at Gratz College, was chosen to be part of Project InCiTE (Innovating Creative Teen Engagement).

All 20 candidates, chosen from around the country, will each create a teen education program centered around Israel and Jewish peoplehood.

As part of the two-year endeavor, Goldfarb will participate in a 10-day seminar in Israel this December, after which each honoree will formulate his or her specific programming strategy.

While Goldfarb said that organizers had asked fellows not to start their program planning until they return from Israel, the local educator pointed out that she definitely wanted to do a project based around technology.

Because today's adolescents are already using services like Facebook, blogs and Twitter in their daily lives, she said that it makes sense to pursue Jewish educational goals through similar means.

Fittingly, Goldfarb used a computer metaphor to describe Project InCiTE: "This is like teen education 2.0," she said. "It's trying to take it to the next level and do something that hasn't been done before."

Elana Rivel was also recently chosen as a recipient of a Jim Joseph Foundation Fellowship for work centered on leadership, community-building, Jewish literacy and technology. The two-year program is sponsored by the Lookstein Center at Israel's Bar-Ilan University, and includes a number of retreats both in the United States and in Israel.

Rivel currently serves as director of educational resource development at the recently merged Auerbach Central Agency for Jewish Education and Jewish Outreach Partnership.

Her work is centered on using the Web and similar platforms to bring together professionals and lay leaders in synagogue life -- something she already has a bit of experience with through her job.

"Part of what I want to learn how to do is how to increase the conversation, how to get people to come back and share what they're doing," said Rivel.

Incidentally, both Goldfarb and Rivel are members at Temple Sinai in Dresher.

That proximity will enable the pair to share what they've been learning, said Rivel, who added that the Philadelphia community as a whole also benefits by having two educators selected for such potentially creative fellowship endeavors.

Agencies Blend to Make a Single Education Entity

Back in May, the boards of the Jewish Outreach Partnership and the Auerbach Central Agency for Jewish Education approved a plan for the two agencies to merge.

As of Oct. 1, the two officially became one.

The merger has occurred during a time of unprecedented contraction in the local and national Jewish community as a result of the economic downturn. A number of groups similar to ACAJE have closed or struggled to stay afloat.

"We decided to get married. We signed the papers, now we're married: How does life change?" posited Rabbi Phillip Warmflash, executive director of the new organization that has 25 employees and roughly a $2 million annual budget.

One of the first orders of business is coming up with a suitable moniker.

Another is getting the 50-plus-member board of directors up and running, while also streamlining the activities of two formerly separate endeavors: one devoted to Hebrew-school education, the other focused on synagogue growth and engagement.