Rabbi Barry Freundel is the leader of Kesher Israel, a Modern Orthodox congregation in Washington, D.C., whose members include a U.S. senator and a number of other government officials. The congregation maintains an eruv in the middle of the nation’s capital.

Rabbi Andy Bachman and his wife, Rachel Altstein, are leaders in the burgeoning emergent synagogue movement. They are founders of Brooklyn Jews, an informal congregation of young, urban Jews in the New York borough. In 2007, Andy became the head rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim, the borough’s largest Reform synagogue. He writes a blog that is widely read […]

Vardit Ringvald is a professor of Hebrew at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., and is the director of a summer Hebrew language school run by Brandeis and Middlebury College in Vermont.

Gallia Porat is a lecturer in modern and biblical Hebrew at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. She has developed her own technique for teaching Hebrew to teenagers and adults. She has also taught Hebrew to new immigrants to Israel.

Read a July 2, 2002, story from Beliefnet.com that examine the potential impact of vouchers on Muslim schools.

Listen to a Jan. 16, 2006, story from National Public Radio’s Morning Edition about the Florida Supreme Court ruling that the voucher program violates the state constitution and the difficulties the voucher movement faces.

On May 7, 2013, The Supreme Court of Louisiana ruled that the state’s voucher system was unconstitutional. The court said that the money going towards the program and the private schools the vouchers are used towards should be used towards the public school system instead.

The Rev. Jennifer Jones-Bridgett is executive director the Louisiana chapter of People Improving Communities through Organizing, also known as PICO Louisiana or PICO LIFT (Louisiana Interfaith Together). This network of more than 100 faith communities has developed a “Covenant to Rebuild Louisiana,” which calls for clergy to work together with government leaders.

Jim Pate is executive director of New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, which worked to clean up homes damaged by Katrina and to build hundreds of new houses.