When the Jewish Community Centers first began operating in the United States 130 years ago — the first one was in Baltimore, Md. — they helped Jews become good Americans. The success of that effort within the context of an open society began to haunt the Jewish community as more and more Jews found niches in the political, social, economic, artistic and scientific stratas of American society. Now there is an effort to help Americans become good Jews.
This was the basic theme of the luncheon session Saturday of the special convention of the JWB, the first such convention in its history. The pervasive concern of the 260 Jewish Community Center (JCC) leaders from 90 cities across the United States and Canada was articulated by Shoshana Cardin, president of the Council of Jewish Federations.
A MAJOR NATIONAL THRUST
“The greatest fear we share, other than the future of the State of Israel, is the continuity of the American Jewish community as a viable American Jewish community,” she said. She pointed out that this concern was not limited to the leadership of the JCCs and the CJF. “Jewish identity and continuity is a worldwide concern now, “Cardin said.
The task of maximizing Jewish education — the underlying theme of the convention — is the most critical issue on the agenda of the American Jewish community, she stated. “A major national thrust is to make Jewish identity an integral part of all Center planning, not an additional program,” Cardin declared.
She pointed out that Jewish Federations are vitally concerned with the issue of Jewish education and have been placing this issue at the top of their agendas over the past 10 years.
“If we look at funding — and Federations do look at funding — as one indicator of what has happened nationally this past year, Federations allocated $42.5 million to formal Jewish education, ” Cardin said. “This went to Jewish educational bureaus day schools, supplemental schools, what we call formal Jewish education. That does not include the growth of Judaic studies on campuses.”
MORE INVOLVEMENT IN JEWISH EDUCATION NEEDED
She noted that “we went from approximately 20 campus sites in the middle and late ’60s to over 300 today, many of which are subsidized by Federation programing, that is, by Federation monies. All of this is part of the awareness that we needed more involvement in what we call Jewish education, and, in fact, communities are beginning to look to various entities to supply that sense of Yiddishkeit that all of us felt was slipping away from us.”
The Center, Cardin said, “is the institution which appeals best to the disaffected, uninvolved or uncomitted Jew at his point. “But the Center is not alone in the effort to attract such Jews and not alone in the effort to maximize Jewish education. Centers and Federations have a shared responsibility in this task. “The CJF can offer its hand as a partner in the actual work that faces all of us, “Cardin said.
She expressed exhilaration and excitement about the report of the Commission on Maximizing Jewish Educational Effectiveness of Jewish Community Centers — which formed the basis for the special convention — a two-year study by a blue-ribbon panel headed by Morton Mandel, a former CJF president who is now chairman of the Jewish Education Committee of the Jewish Agency. Cardin was a member of that commission.
The report, and the convention whose task was to take steps to implement the recommendations of the report, “is the most exciting, positive action that has come forward in decades in Jewish communal life,” Cardin declared. “For the first time it’s not only money and programing. For the first time we are talking about a positive force: an entity that will help all of us come together recognizing that we share a common destiny, and that is a viable Jewish community.”
Mandel, who is also a former JWB president, told the JCC leaders that there is a concern worldwide about Jewish continuity. “Will there be this kind of caring Jewish leadership 50 years from now or 100 years from now?” he asked.
PARADOXICAL SITUATION OF NORTH AMERICAN JEWRY
There is a growing concern “that the Jewish world is in trouble,” he said. Paradoxically, the North American Jewish community is in trouble because of its great success in beating down the doors in industry, commerce, medical schools, insurance companies and institutions of higher learning that were once closed to them, Mandel observed. In many instances Jews were able to achieve positions in the higher echelons of the corporate world.
“We’ve been so successful, that in our great success lie the seeds of our potential failure because it’s now easy to function in the general society,” he said. “You don’t have to be Jewish; the doors are open. You can be active in a symphony (orchestra) instead of your Federation campaign. Why should young people choose to be Jewish?”
Jews worked very hard to become mainstream Americans, Mandel noted. This was an error, the objective should have been to become mainstream Jewish Americans, he said. He expressed concern that “unless we mount the kind of attack that will declare war on the horrendous statistics of assimilation, about not caring and indifference, about the fact that a growing number of young people are receiving no Jewish education — and that number is increasing worldwide — we are going to lose. But we will mount that attack.”
THE TITLE OF THE WAR IN NORTH AMERICA
The “title of the war” in North America, Mondel said, “is how to live as Jews in an open society, how young people can live positively as Jews in an open society where there is for them freedom of choice, the kind of freedom of choice the older generation of Jews did not have.”
The consensus among experts is that Jewish education “is in a state of disarray in the entire Jewish world, that we are losing,” he said. “Jewish communities are disappearing literally, but also disappearing because Jews are not maintaining affiliation and identification.”
To combat this disaster, the State of Israel and the Jewish Agency formed a Joint Program for Jewish Education in the Diaspora in 1979 in an effort to deal with “the despair in the Jewish world,” Mandel said, and is making $5 million a year available to be used to encourage innovative programs and efforts to ensure Jewish continuity, specifically with regard to Jewish education, formal and informal. It is also developing outreach programs and projects.
Mandel pointed out that for years since the founding of the Jewish State, the Jewish Agency had three major departments: aliya and absorption, getting rural settlements going in Israel, and youth aliya. Five years ago the Agency added Project Renewal and last June it added Jewish education out of a deep concern about the future of the Jewish people, he observed.
The agenda of Jewish organizations is changing, the priorities are changing, Mandel said. The focus is now beginning to shift to Jewish education. The focus is now beginning to shift to Jewish education. The JCCs have a unique opportunity to reach out affirmatively to inspire old and young alike “with the dream of a new and exciting future for the Jewish people,” he said. Jewish leaders “must pick up the torch of Jewish education, ” Mandel declared, or the light of Jewish continuity will be extinguished.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
