A longtime educational initiative geared towards Jewish communal volunteers will be coming to the St. Louis area by 2015.

“It’s a very serious Jewish studies curriculum with leadership learning as related to the history of our people,” said Cindy Chazan, vice-president of the Wexner Foundation. “The fellows are taught various leadership strategies and thought processes, how to be change agents, what it takes to build community.”

The Wexner Heritage Program will consist of a two-year lesson plan with each year divided into 18 sessions. The first half will be a review of Jewish history from Genesis to the medieval period to modern Jewry in the United States and Israel. The second year will cover Jewish thought and literature exploring rabbinic texts and examining liturgy and prayer before moving into a section on modern Jewish feelings regarding God, Israel and the Torah.

Chazan’s Ohio-based group has been putting on the effort since 1985, selecting 20 Jews from communal volunteer positions in each city where the program is active. Wexner puts up half the money for the initiative with the target community raising the other half. St. Louis’s contribution is donated from the Rubin Family Foundation, a project of Pam and Ron Rubin and their children.

Jewish Federation will administer the effort locally with nominations for the slots opening late next year and the program getting underway the following summer.

“The Wexner Heritage Program provides a unique opportunity to deepen in a really substantive and serious way an understanding of Jewish history, culture and ideas for the sake of advancing Jewish leadership in the community,” said Andrew Rehfeld, president and CEO of the Federation. “It is certainly one of the best, perhaps the best, program that does that nationwide.”

Nominees, who will fall between the ages of 30 and 45, will be expected to attend local seminars every two weeks but will also commit to three out-of-town sessions lasting as much as a week at a time. One will take place in Israel.

Program director Rabbi Jay Moses said that those in their 30s or early 40s are settled enough to concentrate on the future but have often not yet risen into leadership roles.

“The focus is on the future and their potential so some people may have already demonstrated a track record of involvement and leadership while others will be more heavily on the potential side,” he said.

The idea is based on the experiences of Les Wexner, the organization’s founder, who felt he needed to know more about the Jewish community to properly take on greater responsibility.

“It was true 30 years ago and it is still true today that people are brought into communal leadership opportunities feeling like their own Jewish education was lacking in their youth,” said Moses.

Some parts of the program will concentrate on contemporary challenges of Jewish leadership but much of the focus will look at history and culture. Some 1,800 volunteer leaders have gone through the program over the years nationwide. Generally, three localities are selected annually. In addition to St. Louis, Los Angeles and a section of New Jersey have also been chosen for the 2015 initiative.

Since its inception, 33 communities have gone through the program. In fact, this isn’t St. Louis’s first go-round. It was part of the Wexner initiative in 1987 as well.

Chazan said that Wexner has witnessed a huge impact from its efforts over the years and that it is not uncommon for participants to dramatically change their own lifestyle based on their experiences, sometimes sending their children to a different school or making decisions to view the Jewish State as a more integral part of their Jewish identity.

“An email that I got this morning from an alum said, ‘I’m in Israel now leading a community mission of 100. I never thought that I would do this 10 years ago. Thank you,’” she said.

Another key aspect of the effort can be seen in its alumni network. Those who participate in the Wexner initiative often keep in touch with others who have had the same training.

“We don’t see this as a two-year standalone,” said Chazan. “We see this as a lifelong gift. We also see it as a lifelong commitment on the part of the members. We hope that they are going to learn to be stronger leaders.”

Ron Rubin of the Rubin Family Foundation said that was true.

“They’ll form a close bond with each other,” he said. “By sharing the program with 20 other St. Louis Jewish leaders, they’ll have a certain bond that I think is fantastic.”