Jccs Are Seen As Playing a Special Role in Ensuring Jewish Continuity

The role of the Jewish Community Center (JCC) as the instrument in fostering and intensifying Jewish identity and continuity was the theme of a special JWB convention here this weekend of 260 JCC leaders from 90 communities across the United States and Canada.

The gathering, the first special convention in the history of the JWB, the continental association of the JCCs, took place against a backdrop of growing concern among Center leaders that an erosion of Jewish consciousness and values is continuing unabated in the open and free American society.

Speakers at various sessions stressed this concern, and warned that the viability of the American Jewish community will continue to diminish unless the JCCs begin at once an intense systematic and sustained effort to maximize Jewish education, not merely in the form of adding a program to those already in existence at the Centers but by making Jewish education an integral part of Center planning.

The consensus was that Centers must develop comprehensive and integrated educational systems which would provide a total Jewish life-style, not just incidental and disparate pieces of information about things Jewish. But all the speakers underlined the point that the imperative requirement is to maximize Jewish education, not that the wheel has to be reinvented.

SHARED PURPOSE OF BUILDING A PEOPLE

The underlying immediate task of the weekend convention was to “clarify the sense that Centers are a ‘movement’ — an entity of entities with the shared purpose of building a people — where Jews of all persuasions, and some with none, can come together not merely to be together, but to enter the body of Klal Yisrael,” as Esther Leah Ritz, JWB president, told the opening session.

This requires, she said, the understanding and recognition that the JCC “can only be the home of a pluralistic, diversified Jewish community if it is to be more than a ‘receiving station’. It must process Jews into a diverse but unified people by debate of and interaction around all issues affecting Jewish life.”

Ritz observed that the JCCs have been and are now involved in multiform activities, and doing them well — serving all ages, especially in early childhood and late adulthood, operating fine camps, providing socialization and recreational opportunities for Jews and others.

But, she said, “In making Jewish education our top priority — in asserting the role of Centers in the purposeful survival of the Jewish people, we are moving to uncharted areas — and without guarantees of success. It is a test of the vibrancy and vitality of the Center movement that it is willing to explore that unmapped desert” of new challenges and opportunities.

‘IF NOT NOW, WHEN?’

The special convention for Center leaders, whose guideline was “If Not Now … When?” — based on Hillel’s famous dictum: “If I am not for myself, who will be? If I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?” — was the culmination of two years of study of the imperative role JCCs can and should play as pivotal Jewish educational arenas. The blue-ribbon panel which conducted the study, the JWB Commission on Maximizing Jewish Educational Effectiveness of Jewish Community Centers, was chaired by Morton Mandel, who is now chairman of the Jewish Education Committee of the Jewish Education Committee of the Jewish Agency.

The mandate of this Commission was to clarify the function of the JCC as a Jewish communal instrumentality for contributing to the assurance of vital Jewish continuity and to determine ways for the Center to maximize its Jewish educational effectiveness.

THE JCC AS A CENTRAL JEWISH INSTITUTION

Lester Pollack, chairman of the JWB Committee on Implementation, told the opening convention session that the study “produced a fine report, reflecting concerns, views and attitudes of over 2,000 lay and professional leaders from across North America: that the vitalization of Jewish education in order to meet the challenges confronting Jewish life today is the domain of the Jewish Community Center, along with the synagogue, the home and the school.”

He pointed out that “We learned through our meetings with more than 2,000 community leaders in 32 cities that the JCC has progressively matured as a central Jewish institution and address in the community sustaining a strong sense of Jewish continuity.”

This convention, Pollack added, “is a testament to this reality. Our task (at the weekend convention) is formidable and challenges us to lay the groundwork for the implementation of the recommendations of the JWB Commission on Maximizing Jewish Educational Effectiveness of Jewish Community Centers.”

The responsibility of Pollack’s committee, following the weekend deliberations will be to develop strategies for implementing the report and to begin building “the foundation for a strong Jewish Community Center for the ’80s and ’90s, and beyond,” he said.

CITES SHARED RESPONSIBILITY

Dr. Alvin Schiff, executive vice president of the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York, who was the scholar-in-residence at the convention, told the opening session that in Jewish tradition, “Jewish education is not relegated to the classroom — to the school or to the synagogue” but that it belongs in the home, in the synagogue “and Jewish education belongs in the Jewish Community Center. It belongs wherever Jews are. And there are about 800,000 Jews in the JCCs in America. For many of them this is their only or primary Jewish affiliation.”

Jewish education, Schiff continued, “must take place in multiple settings, and one of the settings and environments is the JCC. The JCCs, he noted, “have all the needed attributes: human resources — close to one million members; facilities; dedicated communal lay leadership; commitment to Jewish continuity; and a clear philosophy and approach regarding Jewish education.”

In addition, the JCCs offer easy access to religious Jews, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Reconstructionist, as well as to non-observant Jews; to committed Jews as well as to marginal Jews, he pointed out. In the final analysis, the JCC should not be viewed as a competitor of schools and synagogues; rather, all reinforce each other “as Jewish socializing agents,” Schiff said. What is required “is appreciation for the respective roles for each type of institution and a climate for partnership.”