Cleveland, Ohio has been known for baseball futility and urban decay, but now one American rabbi wants to make it a center of Jewish spiritual renewal. Many Americans have long been enticed by the prospect of creating ideal spiritual communities. Whether as notable participants in experiments like Esalen, the California New Age collective known for naked massage and radical religious experimentation, or as builders of black-hat fundamentalist enclaves, Jews have been influential in these efforts for decades. Tiferet Village, a Cleveland Heights-based community housed (for the moment) mostly in the mind of its founder, Rabbi Yakov Travis, is a recent stab at creating a free-form spiritual commune.

Travis received his ordination in Israel and his PhD from Brandeis, where he focused on Kabbalistic thought. When he talks about Tiferet Village, he draws on his studies in Kabbalah to explain the cornerstone of the community's existence and says his vision of the community is embodied in its name, which means splendor. He calls participants “cultural creatives,” by which he says he means people who embrace a “universally applicable spirituality.”

The community's intended core is a study hall for daily learning in Jewish texts. Travis hopes to emphasize an open approach to different types of study methods and that Tiferet Village residents will share a three-fold commitment to textual study, participation in a communal environment conducive to spiritual expression, and some form of social activism.

While the group's website notes that it is still searching around the country for a home, it has for now settled on Cleveland Heights, a choice that seems based at least equally on its proximity to Siegal College (where Travis is a professor) as to the livability and affordability of the area. For now, Tiferet Village has not yet settled on a permanent home, but it seems clear that it intends to acquire a physical space for the focus of its aspirations.

If Tiferet Village is different from the mostly-failed American communal experiments of the 1960s and 1970s it is in its insistence on its Jewishness. It shares with those prior groups a belief in each individual's absolute freedom but also seeks to maintain what it calls a commitment to “the rhythms and practices of Jewish spiritual wisdom.” That the idea has gained any degree of momentum is probably best seen as one more sign of the longing for truth, spirituality, and community felt by many young American Jews and their sense that established Jewish institutions don't or can't meet that felt need.

Benjamin Muller serves on the board of the Columbia Bayit, a Jewish student cooperative attached to the university. Ben is from Antwerp, Belgium and lives in New York City.

Matthew Ackerman received a Master's degree from the graduate school of the Jewish Theological Seminary in May 2007. He lives in New York.