B’nai B’rith Convention Gets Optimistic View on American Jewish Youth

Those who fear that the American Jewish community might wither away through self-neglect or the defection of its youth “are not reading the signs that point to the opposite,” Dr. William A. Wexler said here this evening.

In a keynote address opening the 114th annual Convention of B’nai B’rith District 1, Dr. Wexler told the 2, 000 delegates that the contemporary challenges to American Jewish life are “growing pains not death rattles” and that the present generation of American Jewry is “probably hastening the maturing process” more than that of any generation before it.

The ability of American Jewry to raise and spend $250, 000, 000 a year for “the self-sustenance of its community” and for Jewish life elsewhere, including more than $100, 000, 000 for Jewish education in the United States, “is a development that even enthusiasts dared not predict a generation ago.”

Similarly, he added, a youth generation that is “not reluctant to probe Judaism for modern and meaningful terms,” is a reversal of the previous generation in this country. The college campus “which 30 and 40 years ago sought to bury Judaism, now seeks to stimulate it.” The existence of 257 Hillel foundations and a waiting list among American colleges of 315 more, are not the statistics of a withering community.

He noted that one of the strongest forces in Jewish youth was its concern for Soviet Jewry. While he acknowledged the “frailties and shallowness” in Jewish life today, which often give the community more form than substance, they should be viewed with “perspective” and not despair. “We have reached the point that our parents’ generation and so many generations before it fought tooth and nail for: the point where we can be as Jewish as we want to be,” he stressed. “The task of Jewish life today is not one to assure our presence, not to survive as Jews; it is one to make our presence felt; to live Jewishly,” he declared.