Institute of Life Gets Underway

A select group of more than 20 wide-ranging proposals of projects designed to enhance the quality of Jewish life and help make it more meaningful were announced by Prof. Leon A. Jick, director of the recently created Institute of Jewish Life, in an address to the 41st General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds.

He noted that the projects, offering “diverse opportunities for significant action,” ranged from a syndicated magazine supplement for the American Jewish press to communal service for college-age youth to a national media center. The projects’ major areas include education, family life, leadership development and community organization, arts and the media, and the role of Israel as an education resource.

YOUTH PROVIDED MUCH OF THE STIMULUS

Prof. Jick said that the search for a more meaningful Jewish life “presents us with an opportunity, a challenge, a demand to restore and renew” those qualities which made Jewish survival possible. He singled out the youth “for providing much of the stimulus for a new departure in American Jewish life,” and for “rediscovering what we left behind, recycling the discards of an earlier generation.” He noted that the events of June, 1967, and what he termed the amazing resurrection of Soviet Jewry ignited the Jewish youth.

The institute was created at last year’s General Assembly in Pittsburgh on the recommendation of the CJF Task Force on Jewish Identity following two years of extensive and intensive study and community dialogue. The Institute is funded by Jewish Federations throughout North America. Pre. Jick, on leave of absence from Brandeis University, where he heads the Lown Graduate Center for Contemporary Jewish Studies was named the director of the institute last March. The Institute’s 73-member Board of Trustees is comprised of communal, religious, youth and educational leaders.