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From the revelation at Mt. Sinai to the thought of Zionist intellectual Ahad Ha'am, the Me'ah program's two-year curriculum covers more than 4,000 years of Jewish civilization and will be offered beginning next fall to Middlesex area residents.

On March 10, the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County will host a "Taste of Me'ah," a free one-and-a-half hour session that will introduce prospective students to the renowned adult education program. The session will include a sample 45-minute class taught by Tamar Jacobowitz, an advanced doctoral candidate in Midrash at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by a presentation by an alum of the program as well as a time left for questions.

The program, created at Boston Hebrew College in 1994 by Rabbi Dr. David Starr, is divided into four separate "modules," each taught by a different faculty member. Each module, 10 weeks long, focuses on biblical, rabbinic, medieval, and modern Judaism respectively. In the end, the program totals 100 hours of class time, as its namesake indicates (Me'ah is the Hebrew word for 100).

Each module will be held at a different area synagogue, which will be determined based on who eventually enrolls in the program.

Me'ah's arrival in Middlesex County came after Hazzan Sheldon Levin of Congregation Neve Shalom, familiar with the program, thought it would be a worthy one to bring to the community and called a meeting with area rabbis and synagogue leaders, who agreed.

"Many of our synagogues have wonderful one-shot lectures from scholars, and scholars-in-residence programs, as well as film series, and rabbis who lead adult education classes," explained Levin, who also serves as the adult education director at Neve Shalom. "But they all tend to be at the beginner or middle level and rarely do we get a serious advanced level."

The Me'ah program, Levin said, was a way to "up the ante" and bring in university faculty and advanced graduate students to teach an intensive, extended course on his respective expertise.

The program is a partnership between the federation and, as of now, eight area synagogues: East Brunswick Jewish Center, Congregation Neve Shalom, Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth, Congregation B'nai Tikvah, Anshe Emeth Memorial Temple, Temple Emanu-El (Edison), Temple Beth El (Somerset), and Temple B'nai Shalom.

Eliot Spack, the former executive director of the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education (CAJE) and an Edison resident, is helping to coordinate the program for the Federation.

"Me'ah represents a commitment to intense adult Jewish learning," Spack said, adding that a major tenet in the Jewish tradition is the lifelong pursuit of learning. "There is no time when we say we ultimately have learned everything."

While synagogues often host adult education opportunities through classes and lectures, the uniqueness of the program, according to Spack, is the quality of the faculty.

While the faculty has not yet been determined, they will most likely be drawn from institutions such as Rutgers, Princeton, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Columbia.

"Me'ah is not an experiment," Spack said, noting that since its founding, the program has produced thousands of alumni. "It's a proven commodity."

"We're excited about this opportunity. We want to help people stretch themselves cognitively in whatever ways they can," he said. While the Me'ah program shares a core curriculum, the faculty members bring their own expertise and perspectives to class, said Shonnie Lebovitz, associate executive director of the Me'ah National Initiative.

"I have this great opportunity to learn from these fabulous educators, these fabulous academic experts," Lebovitz said, explaining that as part of her job she sits in on classes around the country. "It's exciting to hear the same topic from different faculty. It's just fascinating."

Lebovitz, an alumna of the program herself, said that despite having had a rich religious school upbringing and a year at Hebrew University while in college, Me'ah offered a more intense and in-depth approach to studying Judaism and Jewish history.

"I never really had the chance to look at Jewish history from an adult education perspective," she said.

In addition to enhancing her own knowledge of Judaism, her enrollment in the program also allowed her to set an example about the importance of Jewish learning for her grown children.

"It provided an opportunity for role modeling that I hadn't anticipated," she said.

Gerrie Bamira, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County, said that the Me'ah program represented the federation's own priorities.

"The federation is very committed to Jewish learning on both a personal and communal level," she said.

The partnership between the federation and synagogues, Bamira said, sends a "positive message-that we share the common value of Jewish learning."

A "Taste of Me'ah" will be held on Wednesday, March 10 at the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County (230 Old Bridge Turnpike, South River) at 7:30 p.m.