The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, at its 40th Anniversary meeting in Jerusalem in July 2004, launched a bold and innovative pilot program in the United States for the propagation of the Hebrew language. The UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey has been selected as the pilot community for the program.

There has been a serious decline in Hebrew in recent decades in the United States. The pilot project seeks both to introduce more effective programs for the propagation of Hebrew in Jewish schools in Bergen County, NJ and to change the culture regarding the use of Hebrew in the schools and community.

The programmatic focus of the program will be on Hebrew language as a portal to Jewish culture, literacy and Jewish texts, not primarily on spoken fluency. The pilot project will, in the first phase, be implemented in early childhood education programs throughout Bergen County, working closely and cooperatively with Jewish school principals and teachers.

Bergen County, NJ was selected as the pilot community due its strong Jewish educational system, the quality of its Jewish institutions, the high level of support for, study in and travel to Israel, and the quality of its Jewish communal, educational and rabbinical leadership.

It is hoped that success in the educational system will serve as a catalyst for change in other community settings and institutions such as synagogues, camps, community centers, and on university campuses. If successful in this model community, the program could then be replicated in other communities in the United States and the Diaspora.

The program was launched at a community-wide meeting in Bergen County on Wednesday, May 25, 2005, 7:30 pm, at the JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly, NJ. The major speaker was Leon Wieseltier, renown author and critic, who has served as the literary editor of The New Republic since 1983. His best known book, Kaddish, won the National Jewish Book Award. The subject of his address will be “The Sin of American Jewry.”