Orthodox Union, ParnossahWorks, New York
ParnossahWorks (meaning Livelihood) is an innovative young program that responds to an often overlooked problem facing the Jewish community – unemployment among highly trained mid-career professionals who have lost jobs due to retrenchment or outsourcing. ParnossahWorks is dedicated to helping these professionals become self-reliant once more by supporting them in their efforts to find meaningful employment. The program creatively combines intensive synagogue involvement, sophisticated web technology, and face-to-face counseling to bring jobs to people. Targum Shlishi’s support in 2006 and 2007 was intended to help the program expand its reach from the New York metropolitan area to work with Jewish organizations nationwide. The program grew in 2007, with notable accomplishments being the establishment of a Virtual Job Fair, linking job seekers with major companies by means of high-tech Live-Virtual-Video interviews in which employers conduct interviews from their offices while applicants are in private computer booths in the offices of the Orthodox Union. In addition, in 2007 ParnossahWorks initiated a virtual job board that posts thousands of jobs, reaches people across the U.S., and receives from six to nine thousand hits a week. ParnossahWorks is a joint initiative of the Orthodox Union and FEGS Health and Human Services System. www.parnossahworks.org

Canfei Nesharim, Eitz Chaim Hi: A Weekly Commentary on Torah, Environmental Learning, and Action, New York
Canfei Nesharim is developing a Torah commentary that will include environmentally related Jewish teachings on each of the fifty-four weekly Torah portions. The goal of each teaching will be to inspire and empower the audience to take environmental actions. The teachings are intended as a resource for activities, learning sessions, and educational programs. The materials will be written by prominent Orthodox rabbis such as Rabbi Norman Lamm, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Rabbi Michael Melchior, and Rabbi Dov Berkowitz. The weekly essay will be distributed to at least 25,000 people via an e-mail series, will be accessible in a web-based resource library, and will be published in a book. Targum Shlishi is supporting this project in 2007 and 2008; e-mails are scheduled to begin in fall 2007 and book publication is expected in 2008. In addition, Targum Shlishi continues with its support of Canfei Nesharim’s program True Joy Through Water: Appreciate Water This Sukkot and Shemini Atzeres, an initiative whose goal is to foster the appreciation of water and the connections between Torah, nature, and our responsibility to protect the environment. Canfei Nesharim organized this initiative over Sukkot and Shemini Atzeres when it brought its programming to more than thirty communities. Canfei Nesharim (“the wings of eagles”) is a new organization, launched in 2003, that is dedicated to inspiring the Orthodox Jewish community to understand and act on the relationship between Jewish law, traditional Jewish sources, and modern environmental issues. www.canfeinesharim.org

Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning at Temple Emanu-El, Artists’ Beit Midrash, New York
A beit midrash is literally a “house of study,” but a more appropriate translation might be “community of learners.” The Artists’ Beit Midrash was co-facilitated by Rabbi Leon Morris and Tobi Kahn, a renowned modern artist, and designed to allow artists to explore Jewish sources within a community of peers and create new works inspired by the texts that they study. Each year the Artists’ Beit Midrash focuses on one particular theme, exploring it through biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern Jewish texts. The theme for 2007 was “The Holy and the Mundane.” Targum Shlishi’s support was applied to several aspects of the program, including Tobi Kahn’s participation. www.adultjewishlearning.org

Mechon Hadar, Minyan Resource Guide, New York
Many young Jews in the United States are searching for ways to become more connected to their faith through prayer, study, and social action, yet they remain disconnected from traditional Jewish institutions. Targum Shlishi is supporting Mechon Hadar's efforts to help close this gap through the development of an online resource guide. The resource guide is designed to assist Jews in their twenties and thirties who are seeking spiritual expression through new independent minyanim. The Minyan Resource Guide is a starter kit for grassroots prayer communities across the U.S. The guide provides information on subjects such as how to run complicated services and how to think strategically about issues such as membership, children, and hospitality. www.mechonhadar.org

Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, Hebrew to Preschoolers, Bergen County, New Jersey
For Jews who don’t live in Israel, Hebrew is becoming a lost language. In the first organized and widespread effort in the U.S. to teach Hebrew to pre-school children, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture is partnering with the UJA-Federation of Northern New Jersey to bring Hebrew classes to children at Jewish schools in Bergen County, New Jersey. A grant from Targum Shlishi has enabled the Memorial Foundation and the UJA-Federation of Northern New Jersey to pilot this educational program at eighteen schools in a single community to test the synergistic effects of having so many new Hebrew-speaking children growing up in the same area. The program, which other communities could easily replicate, is enrolling students ages three through six. www.mfjc.org

Jewish Legal Heritage Society, Podcasts on Jewish Thought and the Environment, Israel
While Torah scholarship and environmental studies may not typically be considered together, in fact Jewish law has much to say about man’s responsibility to nature. That theme is at the heart of a series of three podcasts produced in Israel by the Jewish Legal Heritage Society (JLHS) with a grant from Targum Shlishi. The podcasts are based on the book Environment and Judaism: Legal and Philosophical Perspectives by Nahum Rakover, a scholar of traditional Jewish law and head of the JLHS. The series, entitled The Jewish Relationship to the Environment, includes the podcasts Green, Why?, Spirituality and the Environment, and Environment – How? The podcasts represent Targum Shlishi’s first effort at developing audio material for the Internet. The podcasts are available as free downloads from iTunes and other podcast distributors, including Podcast Blaster and on the Targum Shlishi website. www.mishpativri.org.il

Jewish Museum of Florida, Museum Website, Miami Beach 
Targum Shlishi supported a redesign of the museum’s website that took place in 2006-07. The goal of the redesign was to upgrade the website and make it more sophisticated and user-friendly. The museum has received positive feedback in response to the redesign and has also experienced an increase in research requests. “For many, the website may be their first contact with our museum and we now know that this initial experience will be a very positive one. Many visitors have told us that they came to the museum because they were intrigued by our website,” says Jo Ann Arnowitz, associate director of the museum. The Jewish Museum of Florida opened to the public in 1995. The museum’s mission is to collect, preserve, and interpret the material evidence of the Florida Jewish experience from 1763 to the present. It is the first museum in the country to document the history of an ethnic group within a state, and Florida is the first state to have a museum chronicling its Jewish history. www.jewishmuseum.com

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