New Approaches Held Vital to Holding ‘alienated’ Jewish Students

An official of the American Jewish Committee has said here that the so-called “alienated” Jewish youth on American campuses are not trying to escape from Jewishness but are “concerned that Jews in America are becoming less Jewish and more indivisible from the Protestant establishment.” Yehuda Rosenman, director of the AJCommittee’s Jewish communal affairs department, reported on a recent conference in Tarrytown, N.Y. in which 33 college students from all over the country “probed their innermost feelings on Jewishness and Jewish life.” Mr. Rosenman addressed the Detroit chapter of the AJ Committee.

He said that in the area of religion and the synagogue, these students “want exciting, meaningful changes; they want to be inspired. The sophisticated ones said the synagogue reflects the values you find in suburban homes. They want simpler services, perhaps with group study–not a country club atmosphere but a ‘Jewish happening,’ ” Mr. Rosenman said. He said the Tarrytown students wanted to create a “free synagogue,” meaning free from the denominational divisions of Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform.

Mr. Rosenman thought it was “a waste of time” to try to reach the “way out leftist students.” “We’ve got to reach not the radicals but those who have some ties, the liberals, who are miserable on campus.” He said they needed not control but “guidance and help from any group that doesn’t seek to promote the students for its own propaganda purposes.” He said Jewish organizations must help finance campus groups “without any kind of implied control over young people seeking to do their own thing as Jews.”