by Steven Windmueller
A crisis of profound proportions is confronting the American Jewish community. Facing serious economic challenges, dealing with a rising concern over the viability and vitality of significant numbers of Jewish institutions, in part brought on by rapidly changing demographic and social patterns and a national crisis in leadership, and confronting worldwide concerns over anti-Semitism and anti-Israel policies and actions, there needs to be a national conversation on the American Jewish future.
Such convocations have been previously held by Jewish leaders and allowed for creative and necessary issues to be addressed by a broad, representative segment of national leaders, rabbinic authorities, and communal experts. Such a conversation held at this time would permit a serious analysis of the “state” of American Jewry and permit the opportunity for some serious exploration of how our religious and communal system must address the array of social, economic and political concerns confronting the community.
In the context of an emerging 21st model, Jewish life will be governed and framed around several core principles. First, old notions of institutional turf no longer apply, as no one owns “the” Jewish response to our communal future. As a result of the rapidly changing picture of who American Jews are and what they represent, there will need to emerge a different type of Jewish marketplace; such an environment must be seen as transparent and committed to experimentation and innovation. What will we “brand” as Jewish and how as a community do we compete in the marketplace of ideas and causes represent the types of challenges that will need to be addressed?
When Jewish communities in the past faced such overriding issues, national and even international conferences were convened. In 1943 American Jewish leadership met to form plans to rescue European Jewry and to seek formal recognition for a Jewish State in Palestine. On other occasions, such convocations addressed specific global and local priorities. In Medieval times, for example, “synods” were regularly convened by rabbinic leaders to consider Jewish legal practices as well as to respond to external degrees imposed by European rulers and Church authorities.
Such a national dialogue is long overdue, as it would come at a time when the Jewish enterprise seems unclear with regard to its mandate, especially in light of a community divided along political and ideological lines. Adding to these challenges, there is both a national crisis of Jewish leadership and a major generational and demographic transition underway that is fundamentally reconfiguring the very composition of our community. Joining these serious and significant domestic issues is an array of global concerns that include the growth of anti-Semitism, the spread of anti-Israel activism, and the emergence of a nuclear threat to Israel and the West from Iran.
In some measure one finds at this time communal and religious leadership bereft of ideas and strategies on how best to reach significant pockets of Jews who are unaffiliated or disconnected from the organized structures of Jewish life and in mobilizing initiatives to embrace younger Jews. A conversation among leaders is needed to re-imagine and help re-direct the institutional priorities for American Judaism. The financial and organizational infra-structure of Jewish life requires a thoughtful and candid reconsideration of institutional priorities and structures. At a time of diminishing fiscal resources and competing institutional threats and opportunities, communal and religious bodies must re-think the issues of governance, leadership, and financial sustainability.
While no institutional body has the authority to legislate social or structural change, a thoughtful and essential summit of Jewish leadership would seem to be both appropriate and necessary. Participation and engagement must be seen as a responsibility that transcends institutional boundaries, ideological and religious positions, and political passions. This represents an opportunity for also engaging the academic, rabbinic and educational leadership who are core to the Jewish future in order to help create a new national Jewish agenda.
Similar convocations should also be convened within our local communities, allowing leaders to re-imagine ways in which institutions might work in collaboration, while identifying unmet needs, shared concerns, and common action.
It is not uncommon to find religious communities and ethnic constituencies, stepping back from time to time, with the intent to critically and responsibly examine their core institutions, to assess their status and impact within the larger society, and to evaluate their shared priorities and common goals. This would seem to be the moment for American Jewry to undertake such a reassessment.
Dr. Steven Windmueller is the Dean of the Los Angeles campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and holds the Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk Chair in Jewish Communal Service. This article is part of larger study undertaken by Dr. Windmueller on the economic situation and its implications for American Jewry.
The full version of the article, Dawn of a New Day in American Judaism, is available as a pdf.
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I think there should be many such conversations, linked in some way as a meta-conversation. They should not be limited to the same people who always come together. They should obviously include women in proportion to our participation in Jewish life, activists at the organizational and communal level – those who are out in the field, not simply those who fund and lead them. This meta-conversation should cover a wide range of topics – those that engage the future, those that build hope and commitment and don’t simply cultivate fear and anxiety. They should be based on appreciative inquiry, and new formats for engaging large numbers of people in generating creative ideas. They should engage matters of the spirit as well as the intellect. And they should include the Jewish responsibility for engaging in addressing the most serious issues of the day – climate change, water, war and poverty.
I agree with Rachel. I think the time when large conferences of “leaders” could set directions for a diverse and dynamic community is past. We are living in an increasingly “open source” world, and our focus should be on expanding participation in the many conversations and initiatives that are already shaping the Jewish present and future. Large gatherings have their place, but Jewish vitality is more than ever the product of grass-roots activity and the networks of communication and connection that are emerging across the Jewish landscape. It’s a messy way to operate, perhaps less sastisfying in the short term than the “agendas” that emerge from large conferences. But, it’s the way real change gets done.
from Marker’s Musings, posted with permission of the author:
In this morning’s “eJewishPhilanthropy”, a widely respected and much read collection of opinion pieces, there was a thought piece by Stephen Windmueller. He correctly identifies the profound and long-term changes underway in Jewish life today. And he correctly identifies that without some serious visioning and looking in the mirror, the community, as he defines it, may be coming to a crisis.
However, I believe that he is asking some of the right questions, but his solution is tautologically self-limiting. In it, he calls for the institutions of Jewish life to meet to converse. But in so doing, he overlooks a few key components of the era in which we now live:
• There have been conversations along the lines he mentioned occurring for several years. It is intriguing to look at which one’s have been fruitful and productive, and which ones haven’t. For but one example, Gary Rosenblatt has convened “conversations” for several years, purposely and proactively trying to bridge as many formal and informal boundaries as possible. These low-keyed, closed door sessions have led to many productive networks independent of organizational limitations. However, when some of the local and national Jewish organizations themselves have tried to convene such conferences, they have often bumped against organizational defensiveness or blindness. [E.g., I was recently contacted by the web developer of a very prominent Jewish organization asking my advice on how they should make their website more likely to attract younger donors. My response was that this was not a matter of technology; it was a matter of credibility; until that organization is perceived to actually incorporate the aspirations and styles of younger people, it could hardly expect that their website would attract younger donors.]
• Moreover, if the analysis of 21st Century life is correct, traditional organizational structures, based on their models of financial support and long term loyalty, are a very successful 20th Century model – in other words, yesterday’s news. When the question is how do we preserve ourselves, as opposed to how do we reinvent ourselves, the conversation is a non-starter.
• We already have the outlines of what the new models of institutional life will look like. I say outlines since we are only at the earliest stages of confronting the challenges of scale, funding, and impact, but the abundance of viable alternative models of Jewish life in the US and elsewhere are clear indicators. [Full disclosure: my service on the board of Bikkurim and as an informal advisor to many of the innovative groups has informed my perspective.]
• I believe that the most profound changes are those that take place outside the mainstream. Let them be the “risk capital” and the “test labs”. But also let them help formulate what a coherent response to 21st Century identity should look like. I have occasion to sometimes speak to the best of the organizational thinkers, and on other occasions with the best of the new. They are profoundly different conversations, with differing assumptions, vocabulary, and visions of the future. Are we better off encouraging a parallel universe or trying too hard to make square boxes and round holes align themselves?
• Is it so terrible if some institutions fail? Jewish history is marked by changes. The post WWII Jewish community would be unrecognizable to those who lived only 100 years earlier; that in turn would have been incomprehensible to those who lived only 100 years before that. We are constantly reinventing, reimagining, and relegating to footnote or lesser status institutions that were dominant in the past. It is not the death knell of American Jewry if the same thing happens now. [I am not trivializing the consequences on many levels.]
Does all of this obviate Steve’s heartfelt plea? No, of course not. But if what takes place is a collection of organizations wondering how to co-opt the best and brightest of the innovators, it will not achieve the re-visioning he envisions. Rather, what needs to take place is for the organizations to educate themselves first: to understand that the world has changed and it isn’t going back. Only then will a productive reinvention take place, modeled not on how to bring the outliers back but how to bring the “in-liers” out.
A few years ago, I suggested that those of us above a certain age are guests in this century. [It is a phrase that has been quoted quite a lot.] I profoundly believe that and have done everything I know to learn how to be an educated and sensitive guest and participant in a world radically different than the one which defined us in the last. When the history of this century is written, I suspect that what we will see is that it will not prove to be the demise of history’s largest and most successful Diaspora community, but a time when that community has simply redefined its categories, vocabulary, what identity is, and how that identity becomes manifest. It excites me to be here.
I welcome the comments of Rachel, Jonathan, and Richard to my article on a National Jewish Conversation. Indeed, each of them adds important dimensions to what should these conversations consist of and who ought to be included in such dialogues. Rachel offers the notion of “many conversations” both about the spiritual and the intellectual, while Jonathan speaks of “networks of communications” that need to take place at the grass roots level. Richard shares his perception that our traditional organizations need to ask different questions than they are currently posing. He sees, as I do, many innovative institutions already moving beyond the core community, creating alternative models of engagement. Indeed, as he also notes, this is an extraordinary moment to be in the mix as we enter upon a 21st century conversation on American Judaism. Steven Windmueller