At times of crisis, Americans have special reason to appreciate groups of people who cultivate values. In this season of Jewish holidays, one can give fervent thanks for the presence in the Greater Boston region of the Jewish community. According to a new book, that community is flourishing now, in some ways more than ever. Nowadays, Jews in this region are enjoying an unprecedented confidence, a vibrant creativity, and a return to roots on the part of both older and younger people.

At least this is one message in “Home Lands: Portraits of the New Jewish Diaspora,” written by Larry Tye, a distinguished local journalist and author. This volume is based on detailed investigation of Jewish communities in seven cities of the world, as well as of the state of Israel.

Tye writes, not just about ideas but also of family history and the lives of individuals. He shares with readers his own family’s story, much of it centering on Haverhill, the city where he grew up. The family’s original name was Tikotsky but his grandmother influenced her husband to change it to Tye.

His main point is that representative communities of Jews around the world –Düsseldorf, Dnepropetrovsk, Boston, Buenos Aires, Dublin, Paris, and Atlanta,  – should no longer be seen as merely people dispersed and waiting to go home to Israel. Instead, that notion of diaspora is out of date. Those communities are here to stay and have become signs of a new vitality.

This vitality is especially vibrant in Boston which “finds itself on the cusp of a wave of Jewish renewal.” To describe this renewal Tye focuses on three distinct spiritual elements that he calls “the three foundations of the new Jewish identity.”

The first is education. Jewish adults who, for a long time, were renowned for being much advanced in their knowledge of secular subjects – science and literature – in recent years have begun to remedy their ignorance of Torah and other religious matters vital to the Jewish tradition. Instead of beginning with their children, many adults have decided that it makes more sense to start with themselves.

This accounts for the success of programs such as Me’ah which in Hebrew means 100. That is the number of hours adults who choose this course spend in the classroom studying the Hebrew scriptures and the history of the Jewish experience. This study is requires serious commitment and work, an investment that has led many to a revitalization of their faith and religious practice.

The second basic foundation stone in the renewal of the Boston Jewish community is the service of God. This centers on the Hebrew concept of “chesed,” God’s loving kindness. This spirituality finds a focus in the synagogue where congregations experience vibrant community life and learn to imagine God in new ways.

The final experience is social action, acts of loving kindness on the part of these renewed people. Called in Hebrew “tzedakah,” this approach involves reaching out to others in need.

As an example of reaching out, Tye quotes a privileged woman who tutors children of color in Boston: “I feel like I am engaging in something that is very Jewish by working with these kids. There’s something spiritual to me about taking what I’ve always thought of as a Jewish values of helping out, and going out there and doing it.”

Boston is not alone among the Jewish communities that put into practice religious education, worship, and social justice. However, Jews in this region have pushed the agenda further than other places have done and the resulting reengagement has been more striking.

People of all faiths have reason to hail this flourishing of Jewish spirituality in our midst. It benefits everyone to realize that the inheritors of a great tradition are repossessing its riches.

Of course, there remain issues of importance still to be reckoned with. The Jewish community continues to grow smaller in numbers, in large part because of assimilation and intermarriage, now at least 34 percent of all marital unions. And some 50 percent of people Jews by heritage are unaffiliated or unconnected to the Jewish community.

Larry Tye, however, feels undeterred by these statistics. The way he envisions his community in the future is “fewer Jews but better Jews.”

The ferment underway among the Jews of Boston and other large population centers thus gives promise of leading to a spiritual community that is even more varied and vital.

Richard Griffin