Recent decades have witnessed a proliferation of programs designed to intensify Diaspora Jewish life. Although each has met with varying degrees of success, it has become clear that one of the most significant determinants of a program’s effectiveness is the retreat component.
In recent years, the Jewish world has come to appreciate the crucial importance of research and evaluation. It is now accepted that without formative analysis at all stages of an initiative’s creation and implementation, programs aimed at the revitalization of Jewish life will have a haphazard chance of success.
The most revolutionary innovation of the Internet is arguably its democratization of information and of communities. Not since the advent of the Gutenberg press have the barriers between people and data been so widely traversed. As China’s recent dealings with Google and Yahoo reveal, it is this open access to information that terrifies repressive regimes.
From Abraham onward, generosity has played a crucial role in the inception and evolution of Jewish values. Even today, in an age of interdenominational quarreling and competing definitions of Jewish authenticity, most Jews can agree on the primacy of tzedakkah. But there are varying interpretations of what tzedakkah entails.
Inherent in the relationship between any community and the arts is a tension over representation. Creative artists seek to express things anew, whereas community leaders often have a vested interest in visions and celebrations of the status quo. In such an atmosphere, conflict is inevitable.
Pharisee, Sadducee, Essene; Karaite, Rabbinite; Kabbalist, Philosopher; Hasid, Mitnaged; Zionist, Bundist. Throughout history, the Jewish people has been demarcated by precise, mutually exclusive categories. With the advent of denominations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Jewish identification stratified still further. “Just Jewish” was never enough. There was always an adjective waiting in the wings.
To many people, the phrase “traditional Jewish family” calls to mind a husband and wife and at least three children, possibly seven. It might summon inherited memories of the shtetl, or images of a father and mother surrounded by their parents and children at the Seder table — three generations, reproducing mightily and wrapped in a web of mutual support.
For those seeking to engage the next generation of Jews, the college years present both opportunities and risks. In recent years, the community has turned its attention to the former. Multi-culturalism and self-discovery — two qualities of campus life that sometimes frighten the insular — have the potential to galvanize students towards a rediscovery of Jewish culture.
For nearly 2000 years, the synagogue has been one of the most emblematic and recognizable institutions in Jewish life. At various times, it has served not only as a sanctuary of prayer, but as a focus of community administration and social life. But in the past two centuries, the synagogue has lost much of its resonance for non-observant Jews, particularly among young people.
Creating and implementing Jewish identity programs can sometimes seem like shooting darts in the dark. Isolated in our Jewish non-profit cocoons, surrounded by others in the same profession, it can be difficult to know whether our ideas are profoundly visionary or foolishly misguided.
