[This essay is from The Peoplehood Papers, volume 8 - Nurturing Jewish Peoplehood in the 21st Century - What Should We Do Differently? - published by the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education.] by Shlomi Ravid and Lisa Grant Over the last two decades Jewish communal leadership has grown increasingly aware of the challenge of preserving and sustaining a commitment to Jewish peoplehood. This is both a contemporary and an historical challenge that in some ways dates back to the beginning of Jewish emancipation. However, conditions have ripened and converged to create a new Jewish collective paradigm that is simply impossible to further ignore. To put in a nutshell a world view that was a natural, almost organic, outcome of the unique Jewish “situation” in the world, is no longer a given … [Read more...]
Nurturing Jewish Peoplehood in the 21st Century Calls for an Educational Revolution
Klal Israel: Are we in it Together? Israelis and Jewish Peoplehood
[This essay is from The Peoplehood Papers, volume 8 - Nurturing Jewish Peoplehood in the 21st Century - What Should We Do Differently? - published by the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education.] by Elan Ezrachi and Varda Rafaeli Zionism has succeeded in establishing Jewish sovereignty, transforming Jewish life and creating a rich Jewish public space for its physical existence as well as for its cultural, spiritual and creative dimensions. Furthermore, the State of Israel is becoming the largest and fastest growing Jewish community in the world. Nevertheless the newly created Israeli-Jewish identity was based on a distinction between the Israeli narrative and the global Jewish scene. By the same token, expression of Israeli identity often transmitted a negative message to Diaspora Jewish … [Read more...]
Finding the Sacred Rituals of Jewish Peoplehood
[This essay is from The Peoplehood Papers, volume 8 - Nurturing Jewish Peoplehood in the 21st Century - What Should We Do Differently? - published by the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education.] by Bill Robinson Simply stated, Jewish Peoplehood seeks to (re)establish a sense of identity that privileges my connection to other Jews over non-Jews, within the context of our post-modern world. I assert that our biggest challenge to succeeding is a mistaken focus on education instead of religion. In most writings and conversations on Jewish Peoplehood, we tend to avoid religion or allude to it (i.e., the covenant) without providing any serious content. In some cases, an aspirational desire even seems to exist to create a sense of common identity without religion. Yet, as any student of Emile … [Read more...]
Pursuing the Pedagogy of Peoplehood: More than Mifgash
[This essay is from The Peoplehood Papers, volume 8 - Nurturing Jewish Peoplehood in the 21st Century - What Should We Do Differently? - published by the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education.] by Jon A. Levisohn “Whatever happened to the Jewish people?”, asked Steve Cohen and Jack Wertheimer in Commentary in 2006. Their article emerged from a concern that Jews do not feel as connected to or responsible for k’lal yisrael (Jewish collectivity) as they once did. The peoplehood-related attitude or disposition called ahavat yisrael (love for other Jews and for the Jewish collectivity) is not as strong as it once was. Jewish institutions and communities may be fostering commitment to Jewish learning, to service, even to religious ritual, but they are not succeeding in cultivating a sense … [Read more...]
No Pain No Gain
[This essay is from The Peoplehood Papers, volume 8 - Nurturing Jewish Peoplehood in the 21st Century - What Should We Do Differently? - published by the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education.] by Justin Korda They are the ‘golden’ demographic. The generation eagerly sought after - but not always reached - by the organized Jewish world. So how do we engage the young leaders of this generation? We do it by taking risks In the 1950’s a good Jewish boy named Harry Markowitz began to use mathematics to analyze the stock market. Markowitz was motivated by his realization that current understanding of stock pricing models did not account for the impact of the risk factor. What emerged from this effort is what is known in the financial world as Modern Portfolio Theory, and for it, … [Read more...]
A Continued Evolution in Jewish Peoplehood
[This essay is from The Peoplehood Papers, volume 8 - Nurturing Jewish Peoplehood in the 21st Century - What Should We Do Differently? - published by the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education.] by David Cygelman In thinking about Jewish peoplehood in the 21st Century and comparing it to our past, there are several trends that clearly present themselves as major shifts in our community. Globalization, and the shrinking distance between cultures and countries along with the changing demographic trends of lifespan and stages, has deeply impacted the Jewish community. Although the core values and traditions of the Jewish people have stayed fairly consistent over the past few decades, the way that we connect and relate with one another has decidedly changed. As a result of this continual … [Read more...]
