U.S. Jewish Youth Criticized at American-israel Dialogue in Tel Aviv

An American lawyer who is also an ordained Orthodox rabbi today criticized American Jewish youth sharply on the grounds that most of the Jewish college men in the United States are “ignorant” of Jewish life. The speaker, Paul Vishny, of Chicago, chairman of the Commission on Jewish Affairs of the American Jewish Congress, addressed today’s session of the four-day “American-Israeli Dialogue,” which opened here last night under the auspices of the Congress.

Sharing the platform with Mr. Vishny was Aharon Yadlin, Israel’s Deputy Minister of Education. Both discussed the comments made at the opening session of the “Dialogue” last night, when a half-dozen Americans, matched by an equal number of Israelis, all averaging the age of 25, discussed mutual relations from differing points of view. Both Mr. Vishny and Mr. Yadlin characterized the present generation as “non-rebellious.” The Israeli educator said that today’s Israelis are “somewhere between the espresso generation and the pioneers.”

“Today’s American Jewish youth,” said Mr. Vishny, “is a post-rebellion generation. Institutions of adult society frankly do not seem to move them. Ignorance of Jewish life is marked.” He said a recent survey among 400 Jewish freshmen in American colleges showed that only 17 percent could name the festival Chanukah connected with the name of the Maccabbees.

“It is folly,” he said, “to expect Judaism to appear meaningful to the highly educated community of young Jews forced to compare the intellectual world of the campus with their Jewish ideas and education, arrested at the age of 13. Working out of a common destiny between American and Israeli Jewry must include a religious concord. I do not believe that secular Jewish ness, detached from religious, ritual and spiritual search, will continue to prove viable.”