by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

January 22, 2009

Pursuing the notion that there is strength in numbers, Michael Jay is working to entice more adults to sign up for Jewish education courses at 40 different synagogues and agencies in the MetroWest community.

The West Caldwell resident is the newly appointed director of Rimon, the educational clearinghouse run out of the Leon & Toby Cooperman JCC, Ross Family Campus, in West Orange.

“Rimon” is the Hebrew word for pomegranate, and Jay believes it is an appropriate metaphor for his program’s mission.

“There are all those little seeds out there with their own little lives, but they are all there together in that big piece of fruit,” he said.

The Jewish Community Foundation of MetroWest, the planned giving and endowment arm of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, has been responsible for targeted fund-raising and expanding the base of funders for the Rimon initiative.

As Rimon publishes its spring catalogue, he said, “we want to enable people from various settings to go from one shul to another.

“If someone at Temple B’nai Abraham wants to take a class in Yiddish, and Temple B’nai Abraham doesn’t offer a class in Yiddish, they can look in the Rimon catalogue, find out where Yiddish is offered, and contact one of our partners,” he said.

“You don’t have to be a member of a temple, nor do you even have to be Jewish,” said Jay. “But obviously, what we are looking to do is serve people who want to have a broader Jewish education.”

Rimon is now in its second year, and its course listings fall into broad categories Jay called “foundation stones.” They include Bible studies, rabbinic texts, Hebrew, prayer, and such philosophical areas as “journeying from where we’ve been,” “considering what we think and feel,” “exploring how we live,” and “seeing who we are.”

The courses are run independently of Rimon.

“We don’t guide the content. We don’t tell people what they have to teach,” Jay said. Partners in the program “run the spectrum” of ideas and tendencies in organized Judaism, and, he added, “we want to cross-pollinate so people can get a sense of what is going on in other parts of their community.”

Refound Judaism

Jay took an indirect trip to the field of Jewish learning.

He was born in Brooklyn, and his family moved to the town of Monsey in New York’s Rockland Country when he was four years old. He jokes that he grew up “on the wrong side of the tracks” as a Conservative Jew amid a largely hasidic and fervently Orthodox population.

He attended public school, majored in communications at Boston University, then received a law degree from Seton Hall University.

In addition to his 20-hour-a-week job at Rimon, Jay maintains a real estate law firm in Caldwell and is attending the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He expects to be ordained as a Conservative rabbi in 2012.

It was “many years ago” that he and his wife, Sheri, became active in the Young Couples Division of what was then the United Jewish Federation of MetroWest. “We refound our Judaism through the federation,” he said.

The couple became members of Congregation Agudath Israel of West Essex in Caldwell and signed up for an adult b’nei mitzva class at the synagogue.

“It introduced us to how comfortable you could be made in a davening setting. We were coming from a very different place than when we were forced to do it as kids. It was such a friendly, low-risk environment and a wonderful experience,” he said.

That experience led Jay to the synagogue’s learners’ minyan, which he described as “a shortened Shabbat morning service with a learning component,” followed by the regular Torah reading — “a very comfortable transition.”

Then, he said, “I decided to go to rabbinical school.”

Four years ago, Jay enrolled at JTS, which, he said, “is clearly where I should be. It’s hard, and I enjoy the classes so much. But I have to run a law practice and be a student, a father, and a husband all at once.” His daughter is a ninth-grade student at Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union.

“When I get ordained, I’m not really sure whether I am going to teach or get a pulpit. I am going to check out my options,” he said.

“There is no better thing than to see that people get educated. That is why this is so attractive to me. I am now in a position to help other people. If somebody wants to learn, and we can give them easy access, who knows where that is going to lead for that person. The more people who learn, the stronger you make the community.”

People interested in studying or teaching through Rimon should contact Jay at 973-530-3489 or mjay@jccmetrowest.org.

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