From its earliest days, the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan has been dedicated to innovating in the Jewish space. One way it does this is by presenting rituals and traditions to the community it serves in new and inspiring ways.

Everyone knows people who see the proverbial glass as half-full. But anyone who has ever met Sarah Heller, who has been coming to the JCC since 2010, would undoubtedly agree that her glass is truly “overflowing.”

In an era in which gatherings of families and friends have become potential minefields, community members with divergent political views are choosing to come together specifically to discuss the issues that may divide them—and break down barriers in the process.

Experiment in Dialogue (EID) hosted its first dinner in April 2017, with subsequent dinners taking place approximately every two months. In October 2017, the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan opened our doors to EID and has hosted each dinner at the JCC since then.

Since the Adaptations program at the JCC opened its doors in 2005, more than 600 adults in their 20s and 30s have discovered the community, purpose, and valuable connections that are so important to all of us, but even more so to those who have difficulty finding them. For that, they can thank Shirley and Jack Silver.

From elementary school to college, children and young adults with special needs are guided toward peers in the classroom, through extracurricular activities and their parents. But what happens once those structured years come to an end?

Forming community connections may not be the first thing people associate with a funeral home. But at Plaza Jewish Community Chapel, the Upper West Side’s only community-owned and– operated Jewish funeral chapel, it’s a priority.

Among those connections are two made through a partnership with the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan: cemetery trips for those looking to visit the graves of family members or friends and What Matters: Caring Conversations About End of Life, an advance care initiative that helps ensure end of life wishes are honored.

For ninth-graders Jason Johnson and Kevin Morales, volunteering as tutors in Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan’s Gift of Literacy and Math programs this summer was something of a déjà vu experience. In elementary school, they were students in the program themselves.

In the JCC’s Goldman-Sonnenfeldt Family Auditorium, a group of 15 teens and senior citizens walk out in silence before a waiting audience. They’re there to share stories—the Holocaust survival stories of the very seniors now seated on the stage. Black-and-white images of the adults, many as children with their families, are projected onto large screens as the teens, solemnly dressed, act out scenes from the adults’ experiences, while the adults and teens take turns narrating their very personal stories.

When the JCC's Joseph Stern Center for Social Responsibility was launched, it already has significant muscle behind it.

Its origins are in Ma'yan, which, through nearly 25 years at Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, provided feminist, social justice, and leadership training to women and teen girls. And with decades of political and social justice experience, Ruth Messinger, the center's social justice activist in residence, and its staff, are working to spread justice and activism throughout the JCC and the community as a whole.

While the brain/body connection for practices like yoga is relatively clear, the link in other fitness modalities is no less important. All are about “consciously connecting how the brain is influenced by movement, or the reverse,” says Chapman.

In 2011, the ReelAbilities NY Film Festival screened the film Wretches and Jabberers, a documentary about two nonverbal men with autism.

Afterward, the film's stars used electronic devices to answer questions from the audience, but it was the communication between the men and the nonverbal children in the audience (via keyboards or pointing to letters on pages their parents were holding) that festival director Isaac (Yitzi) Zablocki found particularly moving.