The Emergent Community

RECENTLY there was held in Chicago the first annual assembly of the National Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds. From the published reports of its sessions it appears that an unusual amount of discussion centered around the question: Should the Federation broaden its scope beyond its traditional philanthropic program so as to embrace also the social and cultural needs of the Jewish community, and whether it should proceed to reorganize itself in such a way as to become the reorganized and authoritative spokesman of the community in all matters which affect it.

This is significant for more than one reason. It may mark the end of the predominantly philanthropic epoch in organized Jewish effort in America. It may usher in a new era when Jewish life in America will be envisaged in its totality, when the primary concern will be to preserve, strengthen and enrich Jewish community life as a whole and when charity will come to occupy a position of secondary importance in the total program.

The leaders of Federations in this country have come to their new orientation through the realization that the specific Jewish character of many of their activities has been largely attenuated in recent years. Fund raising for philanthropic purposes has in many cities become a joint civic enterprise in which Jews figure as citizens and not as Jews. There is a tendency to bring Jewish agencies which are the beneficiaries of these joint funds into a general city-wide scheme of operation and management. Organized charity in general is slowly but steadily moving from the realm of private philanthropy to that of state responsibility. The practical stoppage of immigration and the steady disappearance of a large unadjusted Jewish immigration group which required special group treatment has removed one of the most cogent reasons for the separatist activities of our Federations.

It is gratifying to see the leaders of Federations frankly taking stock and carefully considering their future course. The ultimate objective is clearly indicated-a united Jewish community with an authoritative central agency to speak and act for it in all matters pertaining to its social, economic and cultural life. Whether the Federation can reorganize itself so as to function as this central agency, whether it can become truly democratic and representative, and whether the masses of our people would be willing to follow the leadership of an agency which through the years has been identified in their minds with bureaucracy, bourgeois ideology and capitalistic leanings remains to be seen.

This is clear, however. The need for strengthening our communal life is becoming more and more urgent from day to day. We need stronger community organization, both for the sake of enriching the inner content of our Jewish lives, as well as for the sake of presenting a more united and imposing front to the world without. The days ahead for the Jewish people in America will be trying days. One need not be a prophet of evil to foresee a sharp increase in anti-Semitism. Contact with the Old World has made America old. The spring and life of the early American idealism, tolerance and good will are fast disappearing in the chaos of economic disaster, political unrest and an embittered struggle for existence. We shall need much more unity of plan and action than we now possess to defend our political and economic positions in this country.

Is it not possible to organize the various elements in our communities for some minimum program of common planning and action on the basis of a common loyalty to the Jewish community?

It is clear that we shall have to be satisfried with a minimum program. It is extremely naive to expect organic unity or solidarity in Israel. There are those who persistently complain that there is no unity in Jewish life in this country. What they actually mean is that everybody is not ready to conform to their conception of what Jewish life in this country ought to be and to their program for realizing it.

There are people who blandly assume that complete unity is possible, that the differences which exist within a Jewish community are slight, and that they could be easily composed if only some greate Jewish slogan were discovered or some great leader would arise who, by the wave of his magic wand of truth or personality, would reintegrate the scattered life of our people. This is romancing and day-dreaming. There is much less unity in the great, old centers of Jewish life in Poland and in the other countries of Eastern Europe that there is in the United States. The Jewish communities there are split most decisively along numerous nationalistic, economic and religious lines. At times the political emergencies of a minority group will welcome them together into a temporary truce, but they possess neither a central authority, nor an acknowledgede leadership, nor a common, comprehensive program. This is true also of the Jewries of Western Europe Everywhere Jewry has its nationalists and its assimilationists, its Yiddishists and its Hebraists, its modernists and its fundamentalists, pietists and it atheists, its radicals and its bourgeoisie, its bolsheviks and its bankers; and as the process of secularization on the one hand and religious individualization on the other continues, there will be still greater differentiation among the groups in Jewry. This is true of al peoples. It is also true of the Jewish people. A religious sect may have a leader and a program. A people has leaders with various and opposing program in all the departments of its national life and though-except, of course, in those countries where part dictatorship has stamped out all opposition.

Nevertheless, some pooling of common interest and resources beyond the philanthropic can take place and should take place even where a thoroughgoing unity is not to be had. Jewish communal leaders social workers, rabbis and educators can render the cause of American Jewry a distinet service if they will set about discovering how far such communal organization is feasible at this time, whether the time is ripe for such an experiment and what type of organization will best fit into our American setting.