Perhaps we can think of New Orleans as a modern-day pilgrimage site. Since Hurricane Katrina, the city has become a primary service-learning destination for American Jews. Michael Weil, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, frequently reminds visitors that New Orleans, according to the New York Jewish Week, is now “The New Mecca of Tikkun Olam.”

If North America, Europe, and Israel have each spawned rapidly-growing, Jewishly inspired social change organizations, why has knowledge-sharing and collaboration between these organizations been sporadic at best?

What’s your Katrina story?” We were asked this question on the second day of our year-long commitment to social justice through AVODAH: the Jewish Service Corps in New Orleans. Ten young transplants to the city, we sat on rickety folding chairs in a circle in the backyard of our house in Uptown. With the instruction that one person talk for five minutes straight and the listeners sit quietly and focus only on what the speaker was saying, we began sharing how we were affected when the levees broke.

Concepts of tikkun olam and tzedakah are instilled in Jewish children from an early age. They learn to put a coin in the pushke, to say prayers before and after eating, to share mishloach manot (gifts for friends) on Purim, and on Passover to invite Elijah—and anyone who is hungry—so that they may join and eat.

Since moving to Rwanda for the year, I have been struck by the countless Rwandese who decided to return to Rwanda from Canada, EU countries, the United States, Uganda, South Africa, and more countries in order to help rebuild Rwanda. Many could and wanted to return specifically in order to utilize the skills, experiences, and education they gained while living in their respective countries of asylum.

Jennifer Levine was 17 years old as she watched her sister celebrate the milestone of becoming a bat mitzvah. She recalls feeling envious of her 13-yearold sibling and even now, over 20 years later, she remembers experiencing a sense of loss. She recognized that there was a place for her sister because she was “mainstream” —she learned in the same way as most other kids. But Levine, now the education director at Temple Emanu-El of Closter, NJ, had dyslexia—and so her Jewish identity had a vastly different evolution.

Never feeling accepted by the Jewish community, never offered opportunities to explore her Jewish identity, she did not connect her commitment to service to the values that undergird Jewish life—to the fundamental meaning of what it means to be Jewish.

It did not take long after the Great Recession hit in 2007 for Detroit to emerge as a symbol of American crisis. Most of Detroit’s young Jewish professionals have chosen to chase their dreams in more prosperous urban atmospheres. Yet even in the wake of disaster, a small but vibrant wave of Jewish renewal is gathering momentum and providing hope for Detroit’s future.

Three years ago, the Jewish Social Action Forum (JSAF—initially the Jewish Make Poverty History Coalition) organized as a forum for professionals in the UK with a general interest or specific agenda in social justice. The Forum’s developments—including increased professional leadership, moving from mainly linking Jews with wider campaigns to cultivating a distinct Jewish social action campaign agenda, and establishing itself within the mainstream communal landscape—have allowed for increased impact and a greater sense of direction, yet have posed their own challenges. Does maintaining sufficient consensus limit JSAF’s role in more assertive campaigning? With increased professionalization, how does JSAF mobilize lay and wider support?

Inside the building is a jail, a school, and a temporary home for about 50 young people, mostly teenagers but some who are as young as 12. They are almost all boys, almost all African-American, and almost all awaiting trial on serious charges.

“These kids are not in a detention center because they stole a bottle of nail polish,” says CRC’s advocacy and communications director, Jen Bersdale. “Some of them are accused of very serious crimes, but every time we volunteer with them, we are reminded that in their hearts, they are still just kids.”