Some Jews to Watch in the 1980s
SOME JEWS TO WATCH IN THE 1980'S First, the good news: There are many, many more people who might have been included in the article which follows. Limitations of space and time, of information and...
...With regard to the subjective data on how Jews are feeling better about themselves, the growing number of positively Identifying Jews, the Judaic orientation of the organized Jewish community, the enhanced involvement in Jewish studies, the fundamental centrality of Israel, and the Increasing responsibility that American Jewry feels for klal Yisrael, there is room for guarded optimism...
...What I had seen as Jewish models others perceived as male Moment/29 models...
...I just became Director of City University's Center for Jewish Policy and Research and hope to use that position to effect a bridge between Jewish intellectuals and the organized community...
...What used to be attributed to naivete, I would like to see watched over and nurtured...
...I call the '80s the beginning of a post-suburban era, in which the long-term trend toward trivializing religion may be reversed...
...participants in havurot and leadership development groups...
...Both my parents made their careers in Jewish education...
...Since my early childhood I have been extremely active in Jewish youth groups, particularly the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization...
...It has the Jewish scholars, the numbers, and the ability...
...The interaction that results from that kind of pluralism continually challenges me to reevaluate my Jewish life style...
...married My Jewish commitment, I believe, derives in largest measure from my childhood experiences...
...My optimism emerges when I think about the following developments: the proliferation of Jewish camps and day schools, the growth of the havurah movement, the gradual changes evident within many of the Federations, and the substantial number of individuals freely choosing full or partial careers in Jewish life (as demonstrated by the 1500 people who have formed the grass roots movement of the Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education...
...Sure...
...During the '80s this generation will come into its own—the possibilities are endless...
...Contact with the Jewish family, memories of grandparents rooted in the past, exposure to upright and inspiring rabbinic models as a child and as a college student, living in Israel for a year, all played their part...
...Finally, I am encouraged that the community is more open to several "minority" groups to which I currently belong— the religious, the young, women, and singles...
...During the '70s a new generation of Jewish educators appeared...
...He proclaimed the holiday upon his restoration to a position of great prestige following an anti-Semitic episode which threatened his own life as well as the safety of the entire Austrian Jewish community...
...The chronicle text contains six centuries of our family's genealogy...
...To the extent that I am able to touch the hearts and minds of adult Jewish leaders, to that extent will I consider my work successful...
...That legacy includes two languages and literatures of our own, a wealth of learning and of innovation, a teeming variety of political possibilities...
...Headmaster, Solomon Schechter Day School, Newton...
...Assistant Rabbi, Park Avenue Synagogue, New York...
...Some of the reasons have strictly to do with the accidents of life...
...In viewing the American Jewish community today, I am optimistic concerning the ability and capacity of our Jewish community leadership to mobilize and energize themselves in the development of financial resources which will be required to support and sustain our local, national, and worldwide responsibilities...
...William Novak Newton York U., Brandels (MA...
...I want to stimulate American Jewish attachment to the Jewish values and interests I hold dear...
...Here and there, a trip to Israel or a particular teacher made a key difference...
...We asked the invitees—by intent, people 35 or younger, although a couple of 37-year-olds snuck by us—to respond to three questions: How did they come by their commitment to the Jewish world...
...My parents are good ethnic Jews from Brooklyn...
...Jon Woocher, Framlngham Temple U. (Ph...
...To this day, they remain uncompromising in their obedience to the humanist moral commandments "between man and man...
...administer a large and growing budget, interact with a distinguished lay board, influence program creation and development, and try my hand at strengthening an important component of the nonprofit sector...
...Associate Exec, VP, Council of Jewish Community Federation, Rochester...
...Certainly we must do a much better job of educating our young people...
...At the same time, we must provide stimuli and support to young Jewish artists, to express their Judaism through the medium they choose...
...The scholars all assert the importance of involvement in the ongoing life of the community, eschewing the ivory tower...
...Every issue is talked of as a survival issue of the highest priority—Jewish education, Jewish population, Jewish community organization, Jewish political clout, Jewish culture...
...But I face the future with genuine optimism...
...It will be a place for parents and children to explore together on a Sunday afternoon...
...I hope to contribute to a better appreciation of the richness of the world of East European Jewry that was destroyed, not, mainly, to mourn it but so that we may claim our rightful legacy...
...I became an ardent Zionist who hated oppression of any minority, an observant Jew whose own strong faith did not shake his conviction that secularism was a more honest response for most Jews, a fluent Hebraist who wished his parents had spoken more Yiddish at home, or at least French, a social scientist whose highest respect is for Jewish scholars, a political activist who thinks that the deeper problems are beyond political negotiation and are in the realms of culture and meaning...
...was Executive Director, National Jewish Conference Center...
...This, interestingly enough, was not primarily motivated by religious feelings, of which I was then quite innocent, but by intellectual curiosity for the exotic...
...As I travel through the country and perceive the interest in and commitment to exploring Jewish education and Jewish lifestyles, I am optimistic about the quality of Jewish life in the next decade...
...Optimistic Factors: Israeli-Egyptian Peace, emergence and strengthening of havurot, CAJE, growing emphasis on small groups and small institutions, Peace Now, survival of the synagogue (during a decade when many thought that synagogues were finished), growth of day schools, growth of high quality Jewish media (moment, Response, Baltimore Jewish Times, Sh'ma...
...We came to New York when I was 10...
...writer...
...Twelve months later, I entered the Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion to begin my rabbinic studies...
...I would hope that an acknowledgement, respect, and exploration of the spiritual, the ephemeral, and the "deeply felt" continues to grow...
...During the long period of recuperation, I confronted the meaning of life, the things that mattered most to me, and felt a new, deeply spiritual sense of purpose—and even calling...
...I attended Jewish day school and Hebrew summer camp in a universe otherwise inhabited by unintelligible French Catholics and aloof Wasps...
...Orthodoxy needs a kind of halachic chalutziut (legal pioneering...
...This is among my hopes for the coming decade...
...Cohen as a bunch of effete intellectual snobs, at the time (only to become one later...
...Samuel Norich, New York U. of Wisconsin (Ph...
...Perhaps my professional skills of group analysis, leadership training, organizational development, will be useful...
...Then at the age of 20 I learned that I had a rare form of cancer...
...Assistant Rabbi at Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco I grew up in a Reform/ Conservative household, where there was great respect for rabbi and synagogue...
...Harlan Wechsler, New York Harvard College, Jewish Theological Seminary...
...I sense that the possibilities of doing so will be manifest in the decade ahead...
...I viewed Novak, Mintz, and S,P...
...It means helping American Jews find spiritual significance in our religious heritage, while also helping us rind the optimal relationships with others here in the United States...
...it convinced me that life's ultimate meaning requires a transcendental grounding and that my personal destiny was inextricably intertwined with that of klal Yisrael...
...My area of focused contribution may lie at the margins of the Jewish future...
...I knew how to think the Cross idolatrous and menacing, even as my fascination with its victim swelled...
...My mother was born in Canada, into a large close-knit family...
...We have to begin to reach out to the young, the aged and the handicapped, and bring them close to the Arts...
...I am continually discouraged by the insularity and lack of perspective that the JEWISH COMMUNITY (whatever that term may really mean...
...So auspicious a collection of talent and energy of commitment and of competence is a delight to be able to share with our readers...
...The aforementioned back door opened in college...
...married, two children I was raised in Boston in a home where our Jewishness was taken for granted as an essential element of our identity...
...Within the soul of the Jewish people is nestled the seed of a better world, but we have been so extremely uncomfortable with and defensive about our existence as a definable people and religion that ,we have covered over the spirit which gave us birth...
...married, three children My parents are cardiac Jews (having good Jewish hearts) but my Jewish upbringing was middling—in middle class, middle brow, suburban New York...
...In college, I majored in Religious Studies, with a focus on ethics...
...married, two children I'm not sure we ever fully grasp the process of how we get to where we are, but I can note a few highlights: A Rabbi and Cantor (Samuel Chiel and Max Wohlberg) who demonstrated that "professional" Jews could be intelligent, warm, humane, and courageous...
...I'm hopeful that soon the Conservative movement will ordain women...
...In the years that followed, both in college and at HUC, and now through my work as a rabbi, I've tried to explore Jewish tradition as the source of my values and the Jewish community as my home...
...All it needs is the will in order to make it a truly mature and forceful entity...
...My four years in the Havurah were intense, stimulating, and uniquely satisfying...
...With his guidance, I became intimate with liberal Christian theology and wrote my thesis on the theology of Paul Tillich as applied to the writings of William Faulkner...
...I am most optimistic about the center, the committed core of Jews who are constantly renewing their knowledge and love of Jewish Tradition and Community...
...And what I myself most want to reclaim is the once crystal clear recognition of a Jewish polity, encompassing the entire Jewish people, all of whom were responsible, and to whom the Jewish people's leaders held themselves accountable...
...they have to take responsibility for their own Jewishness, and me for mine...
...But my optimism outweighs my pessimism—the center has sticking power...
...Assistant Professor of Jewish Communal Service, Brandels...
...Participation in some Jewish studies program will not generate a practice that compares with the practice of halacha, or with the thick and spontaneous Hebrew life in Israel...
...I'm fearful about Israel...
...Others may prefer to leave this hapless task and work only on family, community and culture...
...Those first 10 years didn't make me a Jew, but they did a lot to define the choice for me when I came to make such a commitment 10 or 12 years later...
...Yet, until my junior year of college, I was still undecided...
...actress, playwright...
...In the small town where I was raised, it was my father who organized a one room schoolhouse to teach Hebrew, for example...
...Executive Director, 92nd Street Y; was Executive Director, Task Force on the New York City Crisis The personal and professional odyssey that finds me the Executive Director of the 92nd Street Y does, on one level, seem fortuitous...
...Jews who choose to be unaffiliated with all our organizations are becoming the norm...
...Columbia (J.D...
...The American Jewish community is like a Jelly doughnut—richest in the center, flakiest at the edges...
...I am pessimistic about the capacity of the American Jewish community to generate the resources required to imaginatively satisfy the needs of its constituents...
...As a child, I attended a nominally Orthodox Hebrew Day School in Toronto, but it wasn't until I started spending summers at Camp Ramah (ten in a row, from when I was 13) that I became really excited about being Jewish, as I began to understand some of its many implications...
...We went also to Camp Massad, a Hebrew-speaking camp founded by secular cultural Zionists, but mixed with neo-Orthodox enthusiasts, Israelis with culture shock, and excellent water-skiing instructors...
...evolving academic interests which led me eventually to the conclusion that Jewish study and teaching touched more of what concerned me and what I did well than other possible professions...
...It must be inspired by a realistic look at, the needs of those who call themselves —or would like to call themselves—Jews...
...I hope I will also be a good father and husband...
...Perhaps the prudent betting person, basing predictions on present enmities and resistance to change, would sharpen the weapons of Jewish combat, preparing to wage war, not to end it...
...Personally, I hope to increase the number of my children beyond its present two...
...We Jews have endured for 4000 years, in spite of oppression and extermination, bigotry and persecution...
...After college I moved to New York to become editor of Response, and I joined the New York Havurah at the beginning of its first year...
...Thoughtful people are entering positions of Jewish leadership...
...Pessimistic...
...I would hope that a major priority on the Jewish communal agenda would be that of human resource development so that there will continue to be developed a continuing cadre of dedicated and committed Jewish leadership, both volunteer and professional, who will be equipped to guide the destinies of our Jewish communities...
...What I fear is a siege mentality which will not only result to defensiveness and narrowness of vision about what we are and might be, but also set us against one another in our survival anxiety and rob us of the chance to find common purposes, directions, and disciplines...
...formerly, Director of The Institute for Jewish Policy Planning of Synagogue Council of America...
...I have great hopes for the havurah Jews, Conservative soldiers (Ramah parents, Schechter parents), Reconstructionist Jews, UJA Young Leaders, and my intellectual friends...
...During this time Response flourished, publishing a new translation of Genesis by Everett Fox, a special issue on the effects of the Yom Kippur War, and a well-known anthology entitled The Jewish Woman...
...American Jews—at least some of them—will organically move beyond nostalgia, Israel, defense, and liberalism as rationales for Jewish life...
...Theology and community therefore are the two poles toward which I see my own work being pulled...
...Academically, I hope to complete the writing of three works: a social and religious history of Rabbinic Judaism in the third century, a history of Jewish-Christian relationships in Antiquity...
...I have seen the faces of a new generation of Jewish youth and adults, eager to know and feel and celebrate their Judaism in fresh and modern ways...
...I was brought up in an observant Conservative home...
...For that I have to thank friends at Kibbutz Langdon, the havurah and bayit I lived in for three years in Madison...
...Professionally: To utilize existing institutional channels so larger segments of American Jews can find a context to create their own synthesis of Jewish living, one that has meaning for them...
...Communally, I hope to be involved in enrichment programs which are structured to enhance the quality of learning and commitment of Jewish civil servants, be they lay or professional...
...My commitment came from my grandparents, my parents, my teachers, the schools I attended, the camps I went to, the youth groups I belonged to, the songs I learned around campfires and in front of embassies...
...We must eliminate the economic and social problems which threaten that stability among people and nations which is a prerequisite for the flourishing of freedom and peace...
...married, two children I was-born in Boise, Idaho and raised in St...
...Solving these problems is a Jewish obligation...
...The commitment, however, when studied in such an analytical way, really doesn't make that much sense...
...Things are getting better...
...these too are good signs for the 1980s...
...What, in the American Jewish community today, do they feel optimistic about, and what causes them pessimistic response...
...married, two children I sometimes believe that I was born with a commitment to the Jewish world...
...I was raised in an authentic Jewish home in the Bronx, NY, where charity, memory, and loyalty were pervasive...
...I'm also optimistic because American Jewish life is changing, away from the dominance of large membership organizations, and In favor of more diverse, more direct, and more experiential modes of Jewish commitment In addition, the various aspects of Jewish life are becoming somewhat less fragmented: it is no longer unlikely, for example, that somebody interested in Yiddish should also be interested in religious issues...
...Beyond my work at 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue, I hope to convey through public speaking and writing some of the skills, techniques, and objectives that will contribute to strengthening Jewish institutions and the Jewish community...
...At Amherst, 1 was influenced by a very fine liberal Protestant professor who carefully structured the sense of Christian thought...
...But first I had to find that community and feel part of it...
...Problems, therefore, are great...
...they are the statements of people who appear very comfortable with their commitment...
...So I sought out Rabbi Eugene Borowitz, and while sitting in a bar with him two weeks after I graduated, I decided to apply to the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion...
...But I must say that they are no surprise at all, whereas the pluses which we have amassed do sometimes surprise...
...for teachers, principals and youth group leaders to get ideas, insights and creative energy...
...Executive Director, Jewish Welfare Federation of San Francisco, Marin County and the Peninsula...
...Rather, the one incorporeal God presided over my large, restless and adoring family...
...The two models were brought into a complementary relationship with each other by my family, my Orthodoxy, and my education—twelve years of yeshiva...
...get more and more courageous with every step...
...her Jewish experience was warmer, and less painful...
...I was raised in an Orthodox home...
...History has taught us that...
...Theater for me is a spiritual discipline, especially when dealing with "non-religious" themes...
...Part of that process is a restructuring of Jewish knowledge, and of Jewish institutions which define and transmit that knowledge...
...Ergo, the marriage...
...I like to think that my teaching, writing, and work in the community might help further this process...
...David Saperstein Reynold Levy Daniel Syme David Saperstein, Washington Cornell, Hebrew Union College (rabbi...
...While we were not traditionally observant, our household was marked by the rhythm of the Jewish calendar...
...I'm optimistic about the exciting energy that I see emerging from people exploring new ritual, especially women's ritual, and from people searching for an authentic kind of spirituality...
...Associate Professor, Sociology, Queens College, Editor, Response My involvement in Jewish life can best be described as evolutionary and developmental, each step following logically upon the other...
...Director of Education, Union of American Hebrew Congregations...
...I look to a challenge to the status quo within the confines of and with the respect for the basic truth of our tradition...
...I work with many different kinds of Jews—Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, secular, assimilated, American, Iranian, Russian, Mexican, South African, Israeli, and more...
...Cindy Chazan, Toronto McGill, Brandeis (M.A...
...I am optimistic because there is nothing uncontrollable or unchangeable about the above phenomena...
...On my agenda—to mature as a scholar and teacher and contribute my professional insights toward lively debate within the Jewish community...
...Second, the lines between the academy and the organizational world are blurred...
...In that way, Jewish teaching can become concretized...
...Professor of Liturgy and Related Literature, HUC...
...It is a frustrating situation for people like me who are deeply committed to the survival and growth of the State of Israel, but disagree with the present government's methods of pursuing this goal...
...It is my hope that within the next 10 years the relationship between the Diaspora and Israel will be strengthened...
...All this in 10 years...
...I am pessimistic when I confront the trend toward intermarriage, the staggering figures of unaffiliated families, and the lack of qualified personnel in Jewish education...
...I hope we Jews—in America, and Israel, and elsewhere—will come to regard ourselves as members of a single polity again...
...Nonetheless, the experience was pivotal...
...I got to know my uncle, who had gone through the war with my father, and through him learned much more about my parents...
...My father was from Bialystok, an aspiring freethinker delighted by the democratic West and his own good fortune...
...Limitations of space and time, of information and of judgment, led to the selection we here present...
...We are getting smaller from our lack of physical regeneration as well...
...These Montreal Jewish contradictions produced many varieties of Jews...
...On the other hand, the small numbers who will remain actively Jewish, perhaps 20 percent (including the Orthodox), boast a number of highly creative people who will rebuild a Judaism particularly adapted to our modern, open society...
...If we withdraw from these prophetic struggles, we will have laid the seeds for our own destruction...
...The humanist model was embodied by my more secular aunts and uncles who perceived the Jewish mandate to be ethical behavior in its purest form...
...Can it possibly be that this same people should not now be able to live and thrive in a free and open society...
...I actually loved Hebrew School and excelled at it...
...goyim who might be cultivated, like the rest of Quebec, for business...
...Steven M. Cohen, New York Columbia (Ph.D...
...His children will know of many Jewish worlds, some of them frightening, all of them powerful...
...Kashrut, Shabbat, and holidays were vital dimensions of our life as a family...
...Brian Lurie, San Francisco Lafayette College, Hebrew Union College (rabbi...
...What converted my generally affirmative interest into real excitement was a high school summer program in Israel...
...I recall our traveling some 70 miles to visit the only "nearby" Jewish bookstore...
...The failure to control nuclear proliferation will result in nuclear weapons being introduced into the Middle East (perhaps first in Libya) with devastating consequences for the prospects of peace in the region...
...Jewish Theological Seminary (rabbi...
...Those who would deny the prospect for continuing growth in the vigor and productivity of the American Jewish community must somehow explain away this impressive group of young men and women who are moving (or have moved) into leadership positions in that community...
...I grew up more connected to the social action committee meetings of our Reform synagogue than to Jewish rituals...
...A young rabbi encouraged me to attend Ramah...
...coordinator, Museum Utilization for Student Education Project at Hebrew Union College Skirball Museum...
...The 92nd Street Y was looking for a chief executive...
...First, it is pluralistic...
...Such people form the critical mass which could revitalize our community, but they need to be brought together, to overcome the stereotypes they hold of one another, and to explore the rationales and realizations of Jewish commitment which we share or might come to share...
...Moreover, our Jewish education was considered as important as our secular studies, and this without a day school education...
...Camp Ramah, which provided an opportunity to acquire Jewish competencies and to share these with friends...
...Although nearly cavalier about halacha, especially during the Stanley Cup playoffs, I had never doubted the importance of Torah and Mitzvot to my moral fiber and aesthetic sense...
...Indeed, possessing now both the resources and the will, we need but get our act together to see the dawn of a new Jewish epoch...
...Never in the history of humankind has the world so desperately needed the application of Jewish values and ethics...
...Third, it impacts on a very important American Institution, the university...
...parents who made an effort to deepen their own Jewish involvement as my brother and I grew up...
...The most significant influence on the content of my Jewishness and my deep involvement was Camp Ramah...
...alumni of USY, NFTY, NCSY, and Zionist groups...
...What I would most like to achieve is to help create a "Jewel": a Cultural Arts Center that is both the pride of the Jewish community as well as an example to others...
...The intellectual strength, the creative energy, and the latent leadership to alter these conditions is present in abundance...
...Both stemmed from a committed rabbinic family in which much of our free time was spent in exploring the nature of Jewish life in America, Israel, and throughout the world—as well as within ourselves...
...Darrell Friedman New York U. C. Berkeley (MSW...
...I take seriously the power of ideas and the importance of Jewish communal life...
...I have been asked repeatedly why someone with a law degree and a doctorate in political science would choose to direct a Jewish community center, albeit the best known, oldest, largest, and most distinguished in America...
...I become optimistic when I see leaders within our Institutions taking courageous stands that may not be popular with some, but that will force the kind of restructuring and redefinition that I spoke of above...
...If there are lessons that can be learned from the American Jewish Community to make our struggle easier, we must learn them...
...There, the beauty and power of Jewish religious life came through to me, became real for me, and Jewish life has been an ongoing and major aspect of all that I have done—professionally and non-professionally—ever since then...
...Educated at top universities and deeply affected by the "free school" movement of the '60s, these people started innovative schools, created new curricula and media projects, and organized the Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education...
...married, two children Despite the front door being wide open all the time, my commitment to the Jewish world was by way of the back door...
...baby Yiddish, increasing Hebrew and—in spite of the engulfing Quebecois—American English...
...Since that time, I realize I have moved radically from a primary Involvement with theology, and have discovered that I love Jews even as much as Judaism...
...I want to be one of the small critical group of young Jews who are building a creative and critical Jewish intellectual life...
...We belonged to a Reform congregation as an affirmative choice...
...Consultant to the National Foundation for Jewish Culture My Jewish upbringing was fairly typical...
...Washington correspondant for Jerusalem Post...
...The marriage of Cultural Arts and the Jewish Community has incredible potential for the future...
...The optimist says, "No, they can be worse...
...They sent my brothers and me to an independent Jewish day school with a tangled identity, formed of a Russian Haskalah secular principal, and a British formal Orthodox rabbi...
...Susan Merson, New York Boston University, S.F.A...
...I lived mainly among Jews, spoke Yiddish, went to cheder...
...I believe very firmly (based on experience) that with non-threatening and supportive strategies, Jewish adults are receptive, and even eager, to engage In serious personal Jewish education...
...Conversely, I am most pessimistic about the peripheral Jews who, I fear, will assimilate at ever increasing rates, through intermarriage and simple erosion of knowledge and emotional attachment...
...The non-verbal and verbal messages of our institutions are so distant from each other as to make the organizational voice of our community irrelevant at the best, and insipid at the worst...
...What used to be a cause for embarrassment is now something I would choose to cultivate and preserve...
...Frankly, our expectations upon initiating this project, great though they were no match for its result...
...Laura Geller Los Angeles Brown, Hebrew Union College (rabbi): Director, Hillel Foundation, U. of Southern California My Jewish commitment comes both as an accident and as a logical extension of my background...
...Nevertheless, this seems the only view which is likely to invite more American Jews to study Jewish sources and efforts...
...I had tremendous admiration, yea reverence, for my Rabbi, Abba Hillel Silver, of blessed memory...
...Unlike him, I lived several years in Israel, and finally resolved that I could not do justice to myself there...
...I never heard of a youth movement, but I was the leader of the Tallis 'n Tfillin club to my shul until age 17...
...My hope Is that we can develop a community with a kind of secular halacha, in which Jewish Identity would be supplemented by regular and active duty in Jewish advocacy, social service, philanthropy, or communal work...
...As my commitment to Judaism grew and I first began to see the possibility of sharing that commitment through work as a rabbi, I wanted to work on a college campus...
...Can this "Jewish survival" be an end in itself...
...His life ended badly, and I inherited all too willingly his competing impulses...
...Utilizing our creativity and ingenuity, coupled with our goal of social betterment for all mankind, and particularly for the disadvantaged, the North American Jewish community, in my judgment, will attain and achieve new fund-raising levels not heretofore imagined possible...
...This is not a matter of commitment...
...Educational Director and Executive Director, Society for the Advancement of Judaism...
...I want to help build the new structure, and to participate in the process of redefining and transmitting a Jewish model of reality worthy of serious adult commitment...
...was Executive Editor, moment...
...And the organization types, in many cases, have considerable academic training...
...I hope, as well, to write a great deal more in the area of American foreign policy...
...At the same time, I was involved in anti-war activities and community organizing efforts...
...In each, I learned that all things Jewish are mine—the rights as well as the obligations...
...Co-Director and Counsel, Religious Action Center, Associate Director, Commission on Social Action, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, Central Conference of American Rabbis...
...I want everything I've Just outlined to blossom into a pluralistic, egalitarian JewMoment/23 ish community where people take responsibility for their Jewish lives by wrestling with each other, with Jewish tradition, and with God...
...Extensive exploratory surgery revealed that the normally fast-spreading malignancy had not spread...
...Rabbi, Woodlands Community Temple...
...It is our responsibility, too, to bring the Art and Culture of Israel to the Diaspora...
...He went on to be a doctor and to marry a rabbi's daughter...
...In the meantime, I had gotten further and further from any Jewish involvement...
...As a Hillel rabbi, I am in a position to raise certain questions about the nature of the university and the values that it expresses...
...Director, Koffier Center of the Arts, Jewish Community Center, Toronto My grandparents came from Europe with excellent Jewish educations, and managed to instill these values in their children, and on to their grandchildren...
...Following my freshman year at the University of California, I was a summer participant at the Brandeis Camp Institute in California...
...But most of all, I am optimistic because I believe in the North American Jewish community, caring and devoted men and women who in the last generation saved Jews, and who in our generation, whatever the obstacles, will succeed in preserving and enriching Judaism...
...And we, the first generation with the potential to be the last, must not fall to control the nuclear arms race...
...This will must come from a leadership Imbued with a sense of mission and purpose of the Jewish people and an understanding of the true role that American Jewry can play in the continuum...
...Paula Hyman, New York Radcliffe, Columbia (Ph...
...I also found Israel to be "necessary" for me, to a way that America, and even New York, were not...
...So I took time off from school and spent six months on a kibbutz where I began to see myself as a Jew and Judaism as the source of my ethical convictions...
...And I have always believed that the responsibility undertaken by the centuries of named and unnamed relatives is now mine...
...adjunct professor, comparative Jewish and American law, Georgetown Deeply nurtured commitments to the vitality of the Jewish community and to the tasks of tikun olam were the sources of my involvement in Jewish life...
...has on itself in relation to the society as a whole...
...Joshua Elkin Lexington Columbia (D...
...During the 1980s, I hope to do my part in bringing Jewish Journalism out of the dark ages...
...I didn't "come back" (t'shuvah) until I visited Israel to 1967, and went again for a year in 1969-70...
...Perhaps if I do and others join, it will seem more probable and more palpable to Jews, Arabs and others...
...expanding contacts with Young Leadership to federations and UJA who challenged me to put into practice what I preach about our community and its possibilities...
...What I am most pessimistic about is the relationship of American Jews to the State of Israel...
...I'm optimistic about Jewish life to America, not because Jewish life in this country is particularly healthy, but because I think we have recently bottomed out and have turned the corner...
...That is, Hebrew school at an affluent suburban synagogue (Shaarey Zedek in South-field, Michigan) from age four through age seventeen, and my love for Jewishness often getting predictably and deliciously confused with the predictable but highly Jewish president, of the Junior Congregation...
...married, one child...
...Editor, Response...
...I'm pessimistic because of the kind of pre-professionalism and professionalism that I see on campus in so many students and faculty that puts blinders on their concern for larger issues...
...was Executive Assistant at UJA of Greater New York...
...I am less optimistic about our willingness to apply the values of our tradition to the serious political challenges we face: maintaining Jewish influence in this country by yet more effective utilization of our democratic rights, maintaining American public support for Israel as the Middle East confronts the morally and politically difficult problems of the settlements, the Palestinians and the West Bank territories, maintaining a constituency for a rational foreign policy based on concern for human rights and effective progress towards disarmament...
...writer, researcher...
...and a theological-literary study of the Jewish liturgy...
...The doctors called it a miracle...
...More recently, I have been active as a Jewish Journalist, writing for moment and other publications, and working on two Jewish books: one on Jewish humor, and one on the personal dimensions of American Jewish life...
...With regard to the objective sociological data on the birth rate, the marriage rate, and the divorce rate, there is room for guarded pessimism...
...I am also pleased that the Orthodox movement is more willing to discuss issues it once dismissed—even though greater creativity and courage are still required in order to keep the halacha in constant dialectic with feminism and the other challenges of modernity...
...We don't have a hierarchy of big givers who wield power...
...Daniel Syme, New York U. of Michigan, Hebrew Union College (rabbi...
...then I will be blessed, eh...
...my grandfather was the president of a small Sephardic synagogue in Coney Island...
...That means generating political and financial support for Israel, while also generating involvement In fulfilling the Zionist dream to Israel...
...Jews cannot separate our universal and particular concerns...
...But the real challenge, and my personal dream for the next decade, is to be instrumental in creating a renaissance of adult Jewish learning...
...I think not...
...I have little desire to change what I am doing during the coming decade—only to do it more effectively...
...I was class valedictorian and Shacharis davener...
...I have watched the emergence of the Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education, the National Jewish Resource Center, the National Havurah Conference and a host of other new and vital manifestations of creativity and commitment...
...I want to help focus convergent Jewish values and American democratic ideals on the problems of our society and the world...
...I look for continuing self examination and opening to change...
...A serious commitment to Jewish education must be in my genes: Both sets of grandparents were deeply religious and avid Zionists...
...And that is all good...
...The Canadian Jewish Community has the good fortune of being about 10-25 years behind its American counterpart...
...For myself, if I can keep growing, changing, and deepening...
...The religious model was expressed in a modern Orthodox upbringing based on an uncompromising obedience to halacha—to a liberal form...
...Now and then I am startled by the Talmud's good sense, but mainly when it seems to have anticipated the much more elaborate moral and psychoanalytic arguments of the moderns (for whom the Shechina has anyway seemed less than a match...
...The covenant between God and the Jews was presented to me by two different models, the one humanist, the other religious...
...America welcomes ethnic and religious diversity in a way in which it didn't just a few years ago, and the power of religion is appreciated by more people today than it was when simplistic scientific answers seemed to becloud all religious ideas...
...There is genius and spunk to Israel's cultural assertions, but I'd grown accustomed to living on the questions...
...We will never be safe, never secure, except in a world of peace, in a society of decency and equality...
...Granted, this is Baron's (and Gibbon's) view of the Jews, not Rambam's—Jews as a light on the nations, not to them...
...Law, the theater and psychology all remained possibilities...
...Impressionable as I was at age 16 (I hope I am still that open, almost 20 years later), I was overwhelmed with the romance of building a live Jewish society...
...for the most part, the current commitment is a natural product of home and of school...
...Bernard Avishai, New York U. of Toronto (Ph...
...My hopes of contribution are in two areas: First, to begin to solve some of the moral and intellectual problems of our time by applying the tradition of Jewish theology...
...After I spent a summer working within the black community, the local SCLC organizer told me that it was time for me to go home, to work with my own community...
...meanwhile, established institutions are reaching out in new directions...
...I hope to help convince our communities that charity can be given without plagues, that rabbis need not behave like gods to have purpose, that synagogues can exist without sisterhoods, that death need not be feared, that our members have integrity if we would only help them find it, that our institutions have vital purposes beyond self-perpetuation, that the future lies not only in structural change alone, but in a total redefinition of the purpose of our institutions...
...Yediot Achranot...
...After a spell of barmitzvah lessons, I spent my high school and college years learning to be a cultured person...
...We must continue to view Cultural Arts as a vehicle to bring our vibrant history, customs and legends to the public...
...Most likely in 1990, we will still be embroiled in bloody conflict with the Palestinians, and many other Arabs, and cut off from vital participation in the developing world...
...As regards my major area of professional commitment, I would like to see the 92nd Street Y enlarge, extend, and enrich its high quality performing arts program, to see the institution I lead become a major contributor to the field of Jewish education for adults and children, to continue to develop programs for special and much neglected Jewish populations—the learning disabled, the mentally retarded, the single parent, the senior adult, and to explore the utilization of new forms of telecommunication to reach larger audiences with the excitement, vitality, and richness of our diverse program strengths...
...Director, Commission on Soviet Jewish Life and Director of Programming, Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry Every year of my life, on the first day of Adar, my family has gathered for a commemorative holiday proclaimed in 1644 by our ancestor, Rabbi Yom Tov Lippman Heller...
...Arlene Agus, New York Brooklyn College...
...Surely Judaism can spark a desire to look harder at these discarded areas of ourselves in a vibrant and vital way...
...Such exploration provides the roots which nourish and strengthen the Jewish community...
...was rabbi, Temple Beth Or of the Deaf...
...John Huskay, New York Jewish Theological Seminary, Columbia (Ph...
...That is obvious...
...Most recently, I've become something of a federation activist as President of the Jewish Association for College Youth and a New York Federation Board member...
...Finally, the statements are unapologetic...
...Isa Aron, Los Angeles Swarthmore, U. of Chicago (Ph...
...Although I had had the privilege of serving as a lay leader and as a member of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Jewish Federation, I wanted to pursue my vocational aspirations in the field of Jewish communal service...
...In high school, I was deeply affected by my experiences in youth group, NFTY camps, and a NFTY trip to Israel...
...Finally, American Jewry is clearly becoming more autonomous, and is taking itself more seriously...
...synagogue and federation activists...
...At the time, that referred to everything but being Jewish, because that was something I already was...
...Director of Federal Relations of Association of American Universities...
...Study groups and havurot are mainstays in the Jewish lives of many friends, and will continue to be...
...I am optimistic that smaller cadres of Jews will be molding a Judaism and a Jewish community more able to meet these and other human needs for those who do...
...I built the campus Zionist organization during the height of the post Six-Day War propaganda battle, started a Jewish newspaper, was one of the leaders of "the Federation sit-in...
...An example, many of my contemporaries have managed to keep Yiddish alive in their homes, and have made it a crucial part of their lives and their children's education...
...Economic unrest in this nation undermines the ability of America to provide economic aid to its friends, thus threatening Israel's continued well-being...
...What are the hopes they have for the coming decade in terms of their own areas of contribution...
...we spent our meagre funds on Jewish books, rather than extra clothes or household furnishings...
...For an American of Jewish origin, the Jews can remain the object of individual, historical imagination—a record of what may have been thought, said, written, and done by a civilized people for 3000 years...
...I am frankly tired of listening to those prophets of doom who persist in predicting the imminent demise of the North American Jewish community...
...Executive Director, YTVO Institute for Jewish Research...
...Her faith was more direct and gentle...
...married I think that my commitment to the Jewish world has been with me all along, with the exception of one year in college when I toyed with the possibility of work in urban sociology...
...Everywhere I go, talented and dedicated lay leaders tell me of their thirst for Jewish knowledge, and of their determination to find their Jewish selves, their Jewish roots, through exploring their Judaism in depth, using their minds and their intellect...
...He is a Jew, through and through...
...Until I was nine, my family lived in various Jewish DP camps near Munich...
...That made me a Zionist, and in the course of my Jewish political involvement since 19701 came to learn more about being a Jew...
...I hope that the Jewish community can begin to speak to and for the disaffected who might, indeed, have discovered this dusty old thing called Jewishness—and are interested in looking at it once again, but can't seem to find a way that has anything to do with the lives that they choose to lead...
...I would like to show how we can get there, including steps we can take to facilitate the process...
...Associate Professor, City University of New York Graduate Center...
...It is hard to call it an accident, nor are its reasons very obvious...
...I must say, however, that by and large I am more optimistic...
...Second, it is egalitarian...
...reluctance of large segments of Jewish leadership to confront unpleasant and difficult issues...
...I'm not sure that I can change the university, but I certainly can challenge it...
...In peace and cooperation with Egyptians, Palestinians and other Arabs, the Jewish people in Israel and in the diaspora will have our first post-Holocaust opportunity for an era of religious and cultural renewal, and new opportunities for dramatic economic and social development...
...I also hope that the incipient trend to greater funding for Jewish educational programs will not only continue, but will accelerate...
...Jewish Theological Seminary (rabbi...
...Pessimistic: Begin government, declining Jewish commitment and involvement among large segments of American Jews, impact of inflation and declining resources on Jewish institutional life, Commentary, Jewish Week, change in international situation for Jews after Iran and Afghanistan, growing intolerance among and between Jews, swing to the Right of many Jewish communal leaders...
...married, three children My father at age 18 set out alone from his Lithuanian shtetl for a Canada in the midst of a depression...
...Our people are waiting for someone to reach out to them and help them to discover the richness of their heritage, individually and collectively, in homes and camps and Israel and havurot—as well as in synagogues, through books and records and tapes and television and innovative programs—as well as lectures...
...Because I read demographers and because I know so many Jews who Just don't care, I am pessimistic about our size and whatever strength comes with numbers...
...Non-professionally: To work with others to sharpen public and private discussion within American Jewish life regarding public issues which affect the Jewish community...
...If I can contribute to that process, I will have met my personal goals...
...The difference between a pessimist and an optimist: A pessimist says, "Things are so bad that they simply can't be any worse...
...Being convinced of our immortality, I believe we should spend more time and energy perfecting our quality than quarreling over our perpetuation, which makes us insular and little more than self-serving...
...I wanted to test my managerial and leadership capability, i.e...
...I was (in high school) a regional president of BBYO and was fortunate enough to attend their national leadership program in Starlight, PA...
...I hope to bring the Messianic age a bit closer by fomenting a revolution in the structure and purpose of the organizations and institutions of Jewish life, especially the synagogue...
...I am pessimistic about the likelihood that most American Jews will see in their Judaism or Jewishness a primary determinant of life goals and moral values...
...married, two children The question—how did I come to my commitment to the Jewish world?—now seems strange to me, since there is no longer any distinction between my Jewish and non-Jewish commitments...
...Now our responsibility is to deal with the challenge that we can not only appreciate culture, but can actually help mold and set up criteria for Cultural Arts within the Jewish Community...
...It was not until I went away to college that I realized that Jews are actually a small minority group, and that knowledgeable and committed Jews form an even smaller group...
...I believe the American Jewish community is about ready to come of age...
...Happily, with the blossoming of the havurah movement, and the creation of a serious egalitarian prayer service, I am now able to lead services, to layen (read Torah) and serve as a gabbai...
...Surely we will face our challenges...
...I can't be Jewish for them...
...that my turf is the English language and the civil society...
...Those Jews who do not feel that they can support the policies of the Begin government have nowhere to turn...
...There are nodes of Jewish vigor and creativity scattered throughout American Jewry—among Jewish professionals, academics and teachers...
...Director, Special Programs, American Jewish Committee...
...Above all, it will be a place where people can have new and joyful Jewish experiences...
...So things are basically looking up...
...My hope for the next decade is that the North American Jewish community will continue to provide dynamic and inspirational leadership which will develop and stimulate programs and services that will enhance the quality of Jewish life and will provide the ambience in which creative Jewish continuity for the Jewish people in North America and through the world, including Israel, will flourish...
...I have seen the joy with which new Jews, Jews by choice, have freely embraced Judaism, seeing us as we cannot see ourselves, determined to give that vision of ourselves back to us...
...The energy crisis undermines stability in our own land and provides the lever by which Arab countries can manipulate the foreign policies of the developed countries...
...So, too, the God whose presence was so consistently acknowledged in their life stories has always been present to me...
...I am pessimistic about our misplaced faith that institutional thinking spawned in the '50s will even recognize, let alone solve, the problems of the '80s...
...my memory of my parents still seems to me indistinguishable from my sentiments toward the Jews...
...I have always been awed by these generations of people, all of whom committed their lives to Judaism, to what they believed to be God's will...
...Looking beyond the immediate school community, I hope to influence others to enter the field of Jewish education and to contribute toward making it a more respected profession, and one which can compete successfully with other attractive career options...
...I'm pessimistic about how hard it is to try to build the kind of community I spoke about above...
...Chairman, Liturgy Committee, Central Conference of American Rabbis...
...Reuven Kimelman, Waltham Yale (Ph...
...Most American Jews-many more than anyone really believes—will leave the Jewish community...
...For one of modest achievements, I do harbor a bold hope...
...married, two children I was raised on the discourse of immigrant Montreal Jews...
...I hope to spend part of my time writing articles, calling conferences, consulting with agencies, and the other part of my time in some communal pursuit—an agency president or something of the sort...
...Since then, I've become a Jewish historian and have been actively involved in the Jewish feminist movement...
...I am cheered by the fact that at least some segments of the American Jewish community are beginning to address the hard questions of the content and purpose of our survival as a Diaspora community in a post-Israel age and to find new and vital forms of Jewish expression...
...Personally: To continue to find challenging, supporting institutions to do the above...
...What sort of a people do they think we are...
...National Chairperson, Coalition for Alternatives in Jewish Education...
...I am not sanguine about the Jews' already attenuated fellowship ("community" is too strong) in America...
...I am above all optimistic about the survival of the Jewish people, and pessimistic about the time and energy we spend discussing survival as a way of engaging in national narcissism...
...I hope that my school will have a very positive Jewish Impact on its many students —leading them to make affirmative Jewish life choices in the future...
...A creative home congregation, the superb Jewish scholarship of my brother, a mother and father who were fascinating teachers, who worked for years in the civil rights struggle, and who were perhaps the first prominent Jewish leaders to speak out for Soviet Jewry, and exciting role models like Al Vorspan and Rabbis Maurice Elsendrath, Abraham Heschel, Eugene Borowitz, and Balfour Brickner—these were the determining influences in my life...
...Beyond this personal background, I believe the Jewish community—lay and professional—is particularly susceptible to new ideas, novel challenges, and creative thinking...
...married, one child Commitment to the Jewish world...
...And I'm not speaking merely of education for children...
...The Jewish grandparents are no longer around...
...I prefer to work toward reconciliation...
...Our fantasy is of a Jewish "children's museum" devoted to participatory learning: All the exhibits, classes, performances and workshops will be oriented towards teaching different aspects of Jewish history and culture, utilizing a variety of artistic media...
...The next decade will revolve first around family, the growth of children and parents, and community...
...my mother, Sylvia Ettenberg, is a dean at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York...
...Reading through the answers to these questions, one is struck by several things...
...In that respect, I am encouraged that the Jews have been committing more of their energies to the internal Jewish agenda, to the community's inner life, as reflected in the increased focus on Jewish education and cultural pursuits...
...Ira Silverman, Princeton Harvard College, Princeton (MA...
...During the coming decade, I would hope that a greater number of families will opt for some form of intensive Jewish education for their children, as well as for themselves...
...My parents, third generation Americans, were only marginally involved with Jewish life, although my grandparents, great grandparents, and other family members were centrally involved in creating and/or building such institutions as Hadassah, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, and JTS...
...In college, I immediately got involved in campus Jewish activities —partially out of commitment, partially out of ego need...
...More Jewish babies, better Jewish education, and higher values placed on Jewish family life: these are the things that are important to keep us flourishing...
...The various problems we face are old news, and they are now being worked on instead of merely being complained about, so clearly we're better off than we used to be...
...Yet the practice of Jewish history may itself bind some Jewish fathers to their sons in America...
...I am basically optimistic without bounds...
...If things are to happen, students and faculty have to make them happen...
...Because the Jews who do care seem to be coming to an agreement that their commitment must be expressed in lifestyle and to learning, I am guardedly optimistic about our quality and character...
...In this way, I have been able to link my deep-rooted Jewish commitment and love of the Jewish people with my professional goals...
...I remain deliciously confused...
...parents sending their children to day schools...
...The teachers were Jewish prototypes: Holocaust survivors embittered with the world and angry at our self-indulgence, cultural Hebraists on whose heads no yarmulkah seemed to fit but who loved every Hebrew word they taught, "visitors" from Israel who reveled in the geography and history of the land in which they no longer wished to live, learned rabbis, and even rebbes, who fought against our bewildered disrespect for Talmudic logic and intricate debate, and English and French teachers who represented every stage of assimilation and Jewish alienation...
...I am an optimist...
...My hope is that the people of that community, both individually and collectively, will find the center of their lives in the struggle for tikun olam, the Just ordering of human society and the natural resources of the world...
...It is a choice I have never regretted, I am convinced that Jewish education will be the single most important priority on the program of North American Jewry during the 1980s...
...Assistant Professor, Talmud and Midrash, Brandeis...
...Hillel work is unique, and precious in several important ways...
...When I was 14, my grandfather took me to Israel for a six month trip...
...I am pessimistic about the seeming parochialness of the Jewish community's relationship to the outside world...
...It was at college that I first really felt myself to be living in a predominantly Gentile environment (despite the presence of large numbers of "non-Jewish Jews"), and I began seriously to examine the role of my Jewishness in my intellectual, political, and emotional commitments...
...A Jew like that has no need for a "Jewish identity...
...Judaism began to suffer when put to the same rigorous test at which I found Tillichian theory to be so successful...
...I was brought up in the suburbs of New York, exposed to the growing Conservative Synagogue of the '50s, suffering its growth pains as well as sharing in some of its rewards...
...I do, however, think that there is something on both the conscious and unconscious level that caused me to land in a Jewish agency...
...Intermarriage is a powerful plague...
...I caution myself that I live in a secluded world, that there are greater concerns, but I'm optimistic...
...What a shameful waste...
...married My parents are Lodzer Yidn who survived the war...
...How can you put your finger on the spark, the excitement, the power of the tradition which really lit up every step I've ever taken...
...The temptation seems unavoidable to look inward, to squabble among ourselves, and to fall to deal with the exogenous forces acting upon us...
...During the '80s I will be responsible for the planning and implementation of an innovative "Jewish Learning Environment" to be built by Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles...
...A gnawing worry: Will primary Jewish institutions (school, synagogue, havurah, summer camp, youth group) meet the Jewish quality standards our children need and we want...
...Reynold Levy, New York U. of Virginia (Ph...
...First, the overwhelming majority come from strong Jewish backgrounds...
...married, three children Without any doubt, I learned the necessity of Jewish commitment from my parents...
...I attended Amherst College, the spirit of which challenged religious commitment...
...Because the American Jewish community is not that large, I guess I believe that a relatively small number of individuals can have a rather profound influence on the future course of events...
...Finally, I would like to be able to make some successful inroads into the domain of adult Jewish education...
...The 92nd Street Y in New York City has served as a model for all of us, attesting to the fact that Jews have always supported every facet of the arts...
...Yet, as hard as my rabbi, parents, and teachers tried, a changing era prevented them from filling the void of Jewish comprehension which I felt so keenly as a teenager...
...I would like to help portray and elaborate this alternative Jewish future...
...however, there was no pressure on me to follow in their footsteps...
...Adult education, then, is my primary agenda for the 1980s...
...I was fortunate to have been brought up in an environment that was rich in Jewish culture, Yiddish language, and an enormous feeling of pride and responsibility for Klal Yisrael...
...In Los Angeles, in particular, old labels, categories and walls are breaking down, and are being replaced by a new sense of pluralism...
...Exploring the nooks and crannies of self-definition, I came across this dusty old thing called Jewishness, and, not satisfied with Philip Roth or Woody Allen or Henny Youngman's explication of it, I thought I'd better take a closer look...
...I rarely know kedusha in the periodic quorums of synagogues, or hear political realism from Zionists and major Presidents...
...married, one child I have been involved in Jewish life since I was a teenager, when I belonged to the high school and college-age youth groups of the Conservative movement...
...This requires enormous attention to infrastructure—collective bargaining, individual and group supervision, promotion, public relations, fund raising...
...And I am happy to be part of this exciting and critical moment in Jewish history...
...It is a love story which is not assured a happy ending...
...It was an experience that changed my life...
...Second, to contribute to an enrichment of Jewish life through the congregational rabbinate by being a Midrash to my community...
...I'm pessimistic because of the economic situation that makes that attitude so prevalent and so functional I'm pessimistic because of students' turn to the right, to an uncritical acceptance of a narrow understanding of "what's good for the Jews" and a growing perception that "what's good for the Jews" is unequivocally right I'm pessimistic because of the lack of interest undergraduate women have in feminism...
...My Jewish Identity was a part of my upbringing, though I never felt much need to concentrate or emphasize it, involving myself with secular and artistic concerns...
...My fascination with ethics and morality led to an interest in theology and raised what for me became an important question: What is the source of my ethical convictions...
...my grandmother is a strict observer of Jewish law and religious practice...
...Louis, Missouri in a fairly typical Conservative Jewish home...
...I am pessimistic about the present quality of lay and professional leadership...
...Oh, yes, the bad news: Search us, we just couldn't find it...
...My father, a rabbi, and my mother, a teacher of both Jewish teenagers and adults, made our home a place in which Jewish observance and Jewish values became an integral part of my life...
...I extended the stay an additional year to spend tenth grade in a B'nai Akiva Yeshivah...
...We must spark such a return for the disaffected...
...Only later did I discover that to many spheres, Jewish values collide with Jewish behaviors—most painfully on the Issue of women...
...Those rituals which were part of our lives were interpreted to us as manifestations of Judaism's concern for justice, equality, and human dignity...
...I am committed to furthering this growing relationship to whatever way I can...
...Lawrence Hoffman, New York Hebrew Union College (rabbi, Ph...
...I read H. Richard Neibuhr and Paul Tillich long before I even heard about Martin Buber or Abraham Heschel...
...I come from a home that is rich with Jewish tradition and values...
...my father, Moshe Ettenberg, while not a professional Jew, continues to study Talmud, often serves as a chazan, and is otherwise occupied with Jewish concerns...
...I am my own best evidence and I do not know what to tell my son...
...I would like to help identify and cultivate our prospective partners in the rapidly changing and fascinating Arab and Islamic worlds...
...I believe my own research, and it tells me that one half of third or later generation Jews will do little or nothing Jewish...
...My optimism, or inspiration, derives mainly from the study of Jewish history...
...It means protecting our successful group status here, while also promoting a renewal of our commitment to social justice for all...
...I bucked against the stereotypes of the JAP and the spoiled rich kids and preferred my Catholic friends...
...For all too long, we have tolerated an obscenity: The most secularly literate adult generation in Jewish history is in large measure being patronized with book reviews and one-shot lectures, occasional discussion breakfasts and holiday workshops, and sits passively and listens to others speak at them...
...I attended a Jewish day school, and then a public high school which was at least 95 percent Jewish...
...My commitment to Jewish education evolved through many inputs: positive parental models, personal Intensive Jewish experiences (camps, Israel, study opportunities), and peer influences (from camps, schooling, and a havurah experience...
...I then moved to Boston, taking Response with me to Brandels, and becoming a member of the Havurat Shalom Community...
...I would like to achieve the rare synthesis of scholarship and communal activity...
...all these stimuli helped me to translate commitment and responsibility beyond the feeling level, and into real life...
...As a writer, I want to produce some good work on various aspects of Jewlshness—especially those areas in which personal feelings and experiences of American Jews intersect with Jewish practices and beliefs...
...New havurot, minyanim, schools, journals, discussion groups and arts projects are springing up...
...This cannot be caused by another holocaust...
...What do I want to achieve during the next 10 years...
...A year in Israel, however, put me back on the track of wanting to work within the Jewish community...
...Some of my energy will address these concerns...
...Graduate Center, City University of New York...
...But he was also intensely Zionist, full of rage after the final solution and serenity about the Jewish State's power and secular Hebrew culture...
...We must effectively apply ethical controls to the use of technology lest "1984" become a reality...
...The rest flowed from that: Hebrew in college, Middle East work to graduate school, and Jewish study once I decided to commit myself to professional work in Jewish life...
...But I am troubled by two things—the loss of so many Jews to the community, on the one hand, and, on the other, our seeming inability to speak as a Jewish community to the social issues that are of concern to the larger society as well...
...I am most optimistic about the many new developments on the Jewish cultural and religious scene...
...I remember my own childhood, the quality (and lack of quality) of the Jewish Education I received, and we are in an insuperably better position today...
...The challenge is to organize and direct their expression...
...Above all, I hope to help create attitudes within synagogues, by which Jews can fully comprehend that they are part of a people sufficiently small that they have importance, and sufficiently great that the people they will affect can help change society...
...That is, my conception of the rabbi's role is to transform the sources of the past into a statement-uttered with nearly every breath—that speaks to Jews today...
...Absent is an animating vision, a passion and a pulsating energy that should characterize Jewish life...
...It requires, in essence, leadership and management of a kind that is still rarely found in the non-profit world...
...I grew up thinking, along with them, that only Orthodoxy (the sane type) was genuine Yiddishkeit, Conservativism was a shady compromise, and Reform was goyish (a swimming pool to a Temple...
...As my work as an artist grew, so, too, my knowledge of the spiritual and its role in my life and definitions...
...Moment/21 Stephen P. Cohen, New York McGill, Harvard (Ph...
...Peter Rubinstein, White Plains Amherst, Hebrew Union College...
...I want to continue to be involved in editing Jewish magazines...
...Jewishness in my parents' home is expressed through concern for social action...
...Assistant Professor, Jewish History, Columbia...
...The breakdown of SALT and attendant discord between the United States and the USSR not only threaten a cut-off of the flow of Soviet Jewish emigrants, but bring us closer to the brink of a nuclear war...
...I gradually moved into leadership positions to the Network/Jewish Student Appeal orbit...
Vol. 5 • March 1980 • No. 3
