New York Times on Erica Brown, Jewish Educator

The Arduous Community
By DAVID BROOKS
New York Times
December 20, 2010

For the past few years, there has been a strange motif running through my social life. I’d go out with some writers, and they’d start gushing about someone named Erica Brown. “She has an inner light,” one of them once said. I’d be out with my wife and some of her friends, and they, too, would be raving about Erica Brown. “If she taught a course in making toast, I’d take it,” somebody remarked.

This Brown woman was leading Torah study groups and teaching adult education classes in Jewish thought, and was somehow inspiring Justin Bieber-like enthusiasm. Eventually, I went to her Web site to figure out what all the fuss was about.