New Yorker Scott Shay who wrote “Getting Our Groove Back: How to Energize American Jewry,” who headlined Winnipeg's Limmud Festival of Jewish Learning is the founder of a new Jewish custom designed to engage Jewish adults in Jewish education ---the Chai Mitvah, a cyclical 18-year bar/bat mitzvah.

Shay, a banker, (he is the Chairman of Signature Bank) who is not a professional educator, enlisted the help of Audrey Lichter, a veteran in Jewish education, to help develop a curriculum and launch the Chai Mitzvah program, which now has "1000 participants", in communities such as communities in Manhattan, Westchester and Long Island in New York, as well as Hartford, Conneticut, "which has only 5000 Jews". Shay hopes Winnipeg will be a community that joins the Chai Mitzvah program, whose participants span the religious spectrum, from unaffiliated to Reform to Orthodox to the unaffiliated. 

The Chai Mitzvah program, which builds community '"encourages adults to take time to reflect on where they are Jewishly, " and is a unique engagement program, is comprised of five steps:

1. Attend monthly group learning with a set curriculum provided by Chai Mitzvah

2. Choose an independent study topic for the year

3. Choose a ritual/spiritual practice to take on for a year

4. Choose a social action activity to commit to for the year.

5. Celebrate the journey

Participants, who are divided into four age cohorts (26-33, 46-52, 64-70 and 80-plus), make an eight-month commitment to complete these steps. As Shay outlined in a session at Limmud, the adoption of a new ritual can vary widely, from lighting the Sabbath candles or reading a Torah portion, or reciting the morning prayers. It depends on the individual to choose a ritual that is meaningful to them.

In the session he led, Shay examined the theme of spiritually preparing ourselves for Passover, and creating new symbols and rituals that help us fully engage in Passover Seders. Ideas such as using props to enable children to act out the plagues, examining the meaning of the plagues (i.e. darkness is not only physical but spiritual darkness), as well as the notion of "The Cup of Miriam" were discussed by Limmud participants who attended Shay's session on March 13. Participants shared ideas with each other.

As Shay explained, "In recent times, in addition to a cup for the prophet Elijah, people have begun to add the cup of Miriam (who was Moses's older sister) to their seder table. Miriam's cup (Kos Miriam) is filled with water. The tradition comes from a legend that a well filled with life sustaining waters (Mayim Chayim) followed the Israelites through the dessert while Miriam was alive. " As Shay continued, at the outset of the Seder " guests are asked to pour a little water from their own water glass into the Kos Miryam. As each person pours into the cup of the water, they recite the name of a woman who was nurtured or inspired them this year."  One of the Limmud participants shared that his daughter had adapted the Miriam's cup tradition by using a chip and dip bowl, filling the chip portion of the bowl with floating candles in water, and participants named women who had inspired them as the floating candles were lit.  

In examining the meaning of the Passover holiday, Shay also spoke about how each participant can mention something which shackles or constraints them in reaching their own inner freedom and potential. Participants can be asked to clean their spiritual "inner house." He referred to the thinking of one of the first women to be granted Orthodox Smicha, Haviva Ner David, who shared a personal ritual she performs each year before Pesach that she set out in " The Women's Passover Companion (p.52): 

"As I clean I compile a list of all my own personal spiritual and psychological chametz-the things that keep me enslaved to my evil inclination, the foibles that I hold on to that keep me from total, unencumbered, unfettered faith in the Almighty, the things that prevent me from being what I would like to or could be. Then, when I burn the chametz on the eve of Pesach, I toss that list into the fire and watch it burn."

Shay emphasized that Chai Mitzvah is designed to serve as a catalyst to ignite deeper Jewish engagement and continued growth into the 21st century. 

Editor's note: As an aside, I was reading about the Passover holiday in Edgar Bronfman's book, Why Be Jewish, and he notes the existence of Helenistic (Greek) influences on the Jews as reflected in the Seder. Bronfman writes:  "There are many explanations for the absence of women in the traditional Haggaddah, one being Helinistic influences on the Jews. The seder itself, in fact, is modeled on a Greek symposium in which scholars gathered to eat and drink multiple glasses of wine as they discussed intellectual ideas with male colleagues.  These symposiums did not include women, who were generously relegated to the private, not public, spheres."