Our Founding

In his 5778 (2018) Kol Nidre sermon, Rabbi Michael G. Holzman announced that his congregation, Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation (NVHC), would create a variety of programmatic experiments seeking to rebuild our local culture of democracy and overcome the polarization that has taken over our country. They would do this by creating a spaces for open and honest conversation, inviting engaging and relevant speakers, and facilitating opportunities for action. Members of NVHC do this work in covenant with one another – by asking questions, by sharing viewpoints, and by saying “shamati” – I have heard you.

From that initial sermon, Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation created a series of program models for how to rebuild democracy together as a Jewish community. These models included “Great Texts of America,” which was covered by the Washington Post (see below). The entire Rebuilding Democracy Project also received the 2019 Lippman Kanfer Award for Applied Jewish Wisdom and became the subject of a case study by the Aspen Institute (see below). Soonafter, Rabbi Holzman became part of the faculty of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America which published an article about his work in their journal, Sources (see below).

In 2022-2024, with support from the Lippman Kanfer Foundation, the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Washington, and the Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation Tikkun Olam Fund, the Great Texts of America model became American Scripture Project. A pilot cohort of ten congregations helped us sharpen and refine our materials and pedagogy and demonstrated the need for a collaboration among clergy engaged in this work. From that experience we created this site as our online meeting place.