Congregations Urged to Solicit Participation of Youth to Replace Tired Leadership

The new president of the National Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs chastised yesterday those who seek “to achieve peace of mind and stability by the practice of unusual cultures such as psychedelic sight and sound, eccentric modes of dress, radical or bizarre religious orientations, drug involvement and other balms.” Jewish youths today, said Max M. Goldberg, a Washington, D.C. lawyer, are asking: “Why should I be a Jew? What does it mean?” The answer to these youths “many of them deeply idealistic, groping for a new and better way of life” — must be answered “in an affirmative and vital way by our active participation in a program of Jewish content that can be an integral part of our way of life as Jews,” Goldberg declared. “This is the challenge that Judaism faces today,” he said. “It is a challenge that we should all accept.”

The Federation president called on congregations to actively solicit the participation of youth, and to let “young and vibrant members replace tired and dedicated leadership, for the alternative is perpetuation, and is likened to a field of corn which is constant–planted but never rotated, its impotence being assured.” Goldberg succeeds Morton R. Tabas of Elkins Park, Pa., as the head of the organization of 375 men’s clubs aligned with Conservative Judaism. Also yesterday, the convention was told by Rabbi Mordecai L. Brill, family life counselor at the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry, New York, that the future of Judaism depended on convincing alienated Jewish youth “that the blueprint is to be found in Judaism.” He said of them: “Youth is constantly searching for a way to relate to their world. Our future hangs on the answer to that.” Parents, Rabbi Brill said, “haven’t done such a bad job when we consider the ever-growing complexity of modern life,” but they are “often guilty of indifference and a lack of sensitivity.” He called on them to demonstrate, by actions as well as words, that “a meaningful philosophy of life… is possible within Judaism.”