From The Jewish Week of New York:

One goal will be to “re-energize the synagogues,” which Eisen noted “have nowhere to go but up,” in part because “we are wasting our laity and there is no [sense of] community.” Eisen wants to engage lay members by creating a dialogue between their areas of professional expertise and the Torah, to show that “the things Jews do” are relevant to Jewish law and values.

…One “lifelong concern” he has is “making Israel more important to American Jewry,” he said. Another is “to inspire Jewish leadership.”

Noting that he envisions making JTS into a combination of Hebrew University and the Hartman Institute, a Jerusalem think tank of sorts based on religious pluralism, Eisen said he hopes to involve JTS" “first-class faculty” in using the seminary for both “pure scholarship and applied scholarship, and what I call sponsored research” to tackle problems in Jewish life.

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