Elana Jacobs, 23, who has a hamsa tattooed on her ankle, takes little comfort in a mainstream Jewish community agenda she calls “limited.”

“There’s a consistent focus on Israel and what’s good for the Jews in a terrorism/counterterrorism way,” said the South Orange native. “It just doesn’t resonate for me. I’m interested in Jews standing for civil rights in the ’60s and involved in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire [of 1911]. I’m interested in Jews fighting for justice for all and not assimilating into an upper-class mentality.”

But far from running from the mainstream, she’s a part of it as a staffer for the San Francisco Bay area’s Jewish Community Relations Council.

And now, thanks to the Los Angeles-based Progressive Jewish Alliance, she will take part in a program training young leaders to work for social justice within the Jewish community.

Jacobs was selected as a member of the third cohort of the Jeremiah Fellowship, an 18-month-long program of seminars, service learning projects, and leadership training.

The goal of the fellowship, according to Jeremiah director Tali Pressman, is “to build a network of people doing really effective social justice work and have a network of peers supporting each other.”

The fellowship builds on the work of the PJA, which was established in 1999 to work on local social, economic, and criminal justice issues from a Jewish — and decidedly left-of-center — perspective. Beneficiaries of its work are often the working poor. It opened an office in 2005 in the Bay Area.

The Jewish Community Endowment Fund of the Bay Area’s Jewish Community Federation has funded $100,000 of the fellowship costs for two years. (The total costs are $70,000 in each city per year.)

Jacobs said she liked the idea of being part of a forum where people are engaged around Jewish issues and then “do something productive.”

PJA addresses the issues that the JCRC does not. “The JCRC position can open doors for me in the Jewish community. I just want to make sure I do that in a way that feels comfortable,” she said.

The fellowship, she said, will enable her to integrate two facets of her personality.

She’s proud of having grown up at Congregation Beth El, a Conservative synagogue in South Orange, where she had her baby naming and became a bat mitzva. She minored in Jewish studies at Smith College and majored in sociology.

At the same time, she said, she embraces her other side: the one that rebelled during religious school, that led her to cross herself as she walked in just for effect (“I almost got kicked out”).

And she also felt she had no place “as a queer woman” in the Judaism she grew up in.

“How do I relate to Judaism?” is the question that kept nagging at her. “I feel really strongly identified with being Jewish. But I balance multiple identities.” And, she added, “I want more out of Judaism than going to see a retro klezmer band.”

Her multifaceted identity is also helping her sort out the next steps on her career path, which could include graduate school for sociology or Jewish studies or perhaps the rabbinate. “I’m asking myself,” she said, “what contribution can I make to the Jewish community and how can I represent the Jewish community to others.”

The fellowship is designed for people in their 20s and 30s who demonstrate a strong desire to learn about social justice and Jewish issues. Pressman said they try to gather a group with a diversity of experience.

During the first year, fellows meet twice each month with rabbis, scholars, and elected officials who offer insider and outsider views on social issues.

One recent meeting featured Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller, religious leader of the Reform Congregation Sherith Israel in San Francisco, who led a text study on how Jewish principles inform issues of economic justice.

The last six months the fellows focus on service learning projects. “It could be building a high school curriculum on sweatshops, or it could be speaking at various organizations against the death penalty,” said Pressman.

The fellowship also provides leadership training several times a year, covering topics like how to give effective feedback, plan a meeting, or articulate a vision.

Jacobs discovered PJA when she moved to San Francisco and flirted with joining the organization’s economic justice working group. “I loved what they did and the people involved, but I was not so active,” she said.

So far, she’s enjoying the opportunities the fellowship is providing. She called the session led by Saxe-Taller “fabulous” and added, “Talking about the concept of Shabbat and that God rested, and asking what that means for people working for us, and for the immigrant laborer — it brings everything back to Torah. That resonated for me.”