Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.” How can we relate to those historical figures who hold a place in our Jewish life, having been braver for five minutes longer? Are they a tool to be used by our teachers, or reminders of our own ability reach farther, do more, and make a real difference in the world? We turn to three young rabbis from different streams of Judaism for their thoughts. 

“Covering Jewish life has felt expansive, kaleidoscopic, and unendingly interesting. I don’t need to publish stories that other places can publish. I want to publish stories that really feel like us,” says Alana Newhouse, the 33-year-old editor in chief of Tablet, an online magazine launched by Nextbook in June 2009. Nextbook hired Newhouse to revamp its online literary journal in September 2008. She, in turn, infused Nextbook with additional journalistic elements, which ultimately led to the creation of Tablet’s website.

Imagine there's no computer screen to see. The reason you can't see the screen? You have no access to a computer – not in your house, not in your school, not in the local library.

The future of both Jewish and Zionist strength lies not in the negative default of reparation for past injustices suffered, a concept that does not resonate with my generation, but rather in the positive assertion of our collective identity and purpose.

Podcasts, and the Internet in general, provide people with the ability to learn without going to a physical space or meeting people, to pick and choose amongst different movements and modes of thought, and to remain anonymous. In order to learn, in other words, a Jew doesn’t need to belong to a community. This mode of thinking, which one could argue has arisen as a result of our living in a post-industrialist, on-the-go, individualistic society, stands in marked contrast to traditional Jewish learning, which emphasizes human interaction and community.

Our 400-family congregation recently moved to a new building. The move was long overdue, but the community isn’t wealthy, and it took us over a decade to raise the money. Now we’re exploring our new, spacious home which reflects our core values: intimacy, unpretentiousness, environmentalism, and joyful, pluralistic Judaism. The chair of our capital campaign steering committee put in hundreds of hours rallying our community, holding meetings, negotiating conflicts, giving speeches, and making reports. Without him, we could not have built the building.

The PresenTense Institute (PTI ), a six-week intensive social entrepreneurial bootcamp in Jerusalem, brought together 16 socially-minded young Jews this summer. Operating under the motto “If you do it, it is no dream,” they pursued projects embodying their visions of how to impact and inspire the Jewish people worldwide. The individuals’ projects highlighted here are each connected to religion in a different way.

At the Secular Yeshiva in Israel, students work through a Talmudic debate about what type of gateway and doors should be built at the entrance of a courtyard. For these students, most from nonreligious backgrounds, the debate has real world significance: their South Tel Aviv yeshiva has been broken into several times.

Ruth Wisse is a professor of Yiddish literature, born in Eastern Europe and raised in Canada. Her latest book, Jews and Power (reviewed in Issue Four of these pages), has granted her and her ideas a new attention in the Jewish world, attention that was emphasized by a “festival of ideas” around the book held in New York in May.