Suburban comfort and complacency threaten to sap the vitality of Jewish life in America, it was asserted today at a conference on Jewish values sponsored by the American Jewish Congress.
Speakers at an all-day meeting of 150 Jewish educators, rabbis and communal leaders called for stronger cultural and spiritual links between American Jews and Israel as an antidote to the “conformity and lack of purpose of life in suburbia.” They urged expanded programs of Jewish education to foster a spirit of idealism among the young Jewish generation–including service as pioneers in Israel–that would result in a more meaningful Jewish life and a more vibrant Jewish community.
Professor Sol Liptzin of City College, chairman of the AJCongress Commission on Jewish Affairs, presided at the meeting. Dr. Judah Pilch, director of the National Curriculum Research Institute of the American Association for Jewish Education, told the meeting that the “restless spirit” which characterized Jewish life in the small Jewish town of Eastern Europe before World War I was “out of tune” with the materialistic environment of suburbia. “In an atmosphere of ‘all is well,’ there can be little Jewish creativity,” he said.
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