A year ago this September, the ICJS launched the National Jewish Scholars Project at Chizuk Amuno Congregation. As a Jewish board member of the Institute, I participated, along with other Jewish trustees, in early conversations about the project and eagerly watched it unfold over time. Those closest to the project -- the four scholars, the original gathering of Jewish scholars who inspired its creation and the two, then three scholars at the Institute who shepherded a book, a guide and the statement, Dabru Emet, to publication -- remained cautious in their public statements and character-izations. As a trustee, I too felt a keen responsibility to be mindful of the project's real and imagined dangers and oppor-tunities. But equally powerful were my reactions as a layman, a Jew, a parent and an American citizen. The project excited me in a way no other ICJS project had.

First, it signaled that we had truly arrived at a new era in Christian-Jewish relations. It meant that Christians and Jews had done enough work repairing 2000 years of damaged relations to make such an endeavor possible. Entering the third epoch of Jewish-Christian relations, Jews now felt sufficiently safe, confident, and self-aware to believe that our take on Christianity could significantly enrich our self-understanding and provide a valuable resource for Christians. The project would stand as a historic symbol that we had surpassed animosity and mistrust and were ready for serious sacred dialogue about our similarities and our differences. And the timing felt right. It would have been inconceivable a decade before and likely a wasted opportunity if delayed. What a gift to be able to seize the moment!

Second, it held the ICJS mission up to scrutiny in a bold, new way. As I understood it, a simple assumption undergirds the project. The assumption is that scholarship matters: what thoughtful scholars believe and teach can change the world we live in. I found this a potent antidote to our techno-hungry world. Meaning does not boil down to data and depend on those who can produce it quicker and faster. Meaning is about ideas, for humans are driven by their search for truth, not numbers. When human beings engage in work like this over a period of years with sacred intention, the results can be transformative not only for the scholars, but for all those they hope to influence.

Third, the project captured for me, as a learning Jew, the essence of our Jewish tradition. It vitalized for me, in a novel 21st century expression (as a response to a specific 21st-century need), what we call arguing le sheym shemayim, or arguing "for the sake of heaven." Here were four great Jewish scholars and a number of their esteemed colleagues, grappling with the essential tenets of religion not because they were pushed to do it but because they were pulled to it. They were pulled by a shared conviction that understanding what God wants of us is our greatest ongoing human challenge and that when we pursue the answers to that mystery in earnest, with the proper tools and spirit, we are doing holy work.

Finally, the project captured my American imagination. Like so many other Americans, I mourn the loss of our moral compass and the severe degradation of our country's collective values. I believe that we need a core of mainstream Americans who are serious about their religious lives, competent and conver-sant in religious vocabulary and concepts, and prepared to reintroduce responsibly these notions into our common discourse. The Jewish Scholars Project puts such tools at the disposal of its students. The America in which I grew up is not the America my children will inherit. In acknowledging that we live in a world where all of our boundaries are becoming per-meable, the National Jewish Scholars Project provides a powerful model for confronting an essential diversity. It forthrightly suggests that we can best maintain our religious distinctiveness when we fully understand and respect the other. To embrace the other, we need not become the other. But if we do not learn to embrace we will, like Jacob, spend too much of our lives fleeing that which we fear.

Lee M. Hendler has been a member of the ICJS board since 1993 and is the author of The Year Mom Got Religion: One Woman's Mid-life Journey into Judaism.