Peoplehood: A Sense of Belonging

The Peoplehood Papers: a selection of essays from a diverse group of Jewish leaders and thinkers on Jewish Peoplehood including pragmatic suggestions on how organizations can create new understandings and action plans around the issue.

Created as a platform for enriching the Jewish Peoplehood conversation, The Peoplehood Papers is a collaboration of United Jewish Communities, the International School for Jewish Peoplehood Studies at Beth Hatefutsoth and KolDor. In response to great interest in the pilot issue (published for the 2007 UJC General Assembly), this resource has now become a regular publication aimed at providing a space for sharing ideas about Jewish Peoplehood, the Jewish future and related matters.

eJewish Philanthropy thanks Kol Dor for allowing us to share selections from The Peoplehood Papers with our readers.

Table of Contents

A Framework for Strategic Thinking about Jewish Peoplehood
Dr. Ezra Kopelowitz and Ari Engelberg

Spreading the Word on Jewish Peoplehood
Dr. Michael C. Kotzin

Breaking the Glass: Jewish Peoplehood and Beyond
Dr. Alisa Rubin Kurshan

Making Jewish Peoplehood Work: The Institutional Challenge
Dr. Shlomi Ravid

Israeli-Jewish Diaspora Relations
Prof. Gabriel Sheffer

Building Community and Peoplehood in a Time of Personalism
Dr. Jonathan Woocher

Also focused to the discussion on Jewish Peoplehood, the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life devoted the Spring 2008 issue of Contact to the subject. In the introduction to Jewish Peoplehood: What Does It Mean, editor Eli Valley writes:

“but what exactly is “Peoplehood”? Is it just another phrase carted out by Jewish communal professionals determined to keep Jews procreating with other Jews? Or does it have intrinsic meaning beyond catch-phrase pabulum? Where does Peoplehood end and tribalism begin? Is it possible to articulate Peoplehood in a manner that is inspiring yet not exclusionary?”

image source: The Jewish Agency