U.S. Jews Struggling to Find Jewish Patterns of Life, Dialogue Told

An American Orthodox scholar told the closing session of the sixth annual American-Israel Dialogue here that while synagogues in America were largely a failure, there was a “profound struggle” among American Jews to discover a genuinely Jewish pattern of community life. Prof. Marvin Fox of Ohio State University also told the American Jewish Congress-sponsored event that most American Jews and Israelis, while embarrassed by religion, carried within themselves a spiritual yearning they could neither identify nor express. He expressed the view that in Israel too, the same Jews who proclaimed irreligion as a principal and program nevertheless lived their lives with remarkable moral sensitivity. He added that the Jews of Israel had built a society that glorified God by showing what man could do.

Another American panelist, Prof. Percival Goodman of Columbia University said that if Israel had any mission, it must be in the words of Micah – “to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.” Rabbi Richard Rubenstein, Hillel Foundation director at Pittsburgh University, told the session that “our motto should be ‘ Masada shall not fall again,'” which he explained meant that defending Israel was essential because otherwise there would be another holocaust.

An American Reform rabbi told the North American Labor Zionist conference at Beth Berl that American Jews felt less secure psychologically than they did a year ago. Rabbi Richard Hirsch. director of the religious action center of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in Washington, also said that living in Israel provided a sense of psychological security and a framework for social idealism to a degree which led him to believe that “Israel will become more of a magnet for idealistic American Jewish youth.”