| 
|
August 30, 2004
Dear Board Member,
Celebrating the Memorial Foundation's 40th Anniversary
The Memorial Foundation this summer celebrated its 40th Anniversary
at the meeting of our Board of Trustees in Jerusalem on July 13-15,
2004. It was one of our most successful meetings, encompassing
a number of special events to mark this occasion.
- We organized a number of high-level cultural
events that preceded our business meeting.
- We reviewed the evolution of the Foundation
over the last four decades, concluding with a positive prognosis
for our continuing cultural creativity and innovation.
- We launched Hebrew in America, a new, bold
and innovative program.
Jewish Culture in the Era of Globalization
Our 40th Anniversary meeting opened on July 12,
2004 at the Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History with an Academic
Convocation, Jewish Culture in the Era of Globalization. The following
distinguished scholars – Professors David Cesarani, Antony
Lerman, Aviezer Ravitzky, Sergio DellaPergola, Richard Cohen,
Moshe Halbertal, Eliezer Schweid, Ella Belfer, Arnold Eisen, and
Shalom Rosenberg – presented thoughtful, wide-ranging, and
sometimes provocative papers about the emergence and components
of globalization and its implications for the Jewish people.
Sessions were devoted to the following themes:
Globalization and the Clash Between Civilizations, Religions and
Cultures: Its Impact on the Jewish People, The Impact of Globalization
on Jewish Collective and Individual Identity, Globalization and
Post Modernism: A Challenge to Jewish Religious and Ethnic Culture
or an Opportunity for Universal and Pluralistic Enrichment, and
The Impact of Globalization on the Jewish Character of the State
of Israel and the Relationship Between Israel and the Diaspora.
Prof. Cesarani, who opened the Convocation, asserted that there
are two conceptions of globalization -- the first conceives globalization
as an ideologically neutral revolution in communications and technology;
the second, an exercise of economic power by capitalist societies,
including the United States, and international corporations. We
plan to publish the papers presented at the Convocation as a book,
so that the Memorial Foundation and other bodies can continue
to explore the implications and consequences of both concepts
of globalization on Jewish culture and the Jewish people in the
decades ahead.
The full Convocation may
be viewed here.
Beit Hanassi
The formal opening session of our 40th Anniversary
meeting took place at the Beit Hanassi. The theme of the meeting
was The State of Jewish Culture Globally. Two marvelous papers
were given by our President, Prof. Anita Shapira, and Prof. Ismar
Schorsch, Chairman of our Executive Committee. Prof. Shapira presented
two models for the Jewish people in the era of globalization.
Prof. Schorsch effectively demonstrated the renewed interest in
Jewish texts that was occurring in the Diaspora, an important
harbinger, he thought, of Jewish cultural renewal in the Diaspora.
Attached are copies of their papers.
We were honored that the President of the State
of Israel, the Honorable Moshe Katsav, concluded the session with
his own remarks. What was remarkable was that the day after our
Academic Convocation, Jewish Culture in the Era of Globalization
– a subject not widely discussed or deeply explored heretofore
– President Katsav’s comments dealt, in considerable
part, with his view that the impact of globalization would be
more deeply felt in the Diaspora than in the State of Israel,
where Jews are more comfortable and confident about their Jewishness.
The Academic Convocation and the meeting at the
Beit Hanassi demonstrated the power and necessity of ideas for
reformulating the programmatic agenda of Jewish cultural life,
and the potential role of the Foundation as a catalyst in this
area.
A Fortieth Anniversary Overview of the Foundation’s Achievements
At the first plenary session of the meeting of
the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, I presented an overview
of several of the Foundation’s major achievements in its
40 years of existence that reflect the Foundation’s creative
and innovative character.
A. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
The first is the Foundation’s unique contribution
to Jewish communities in the former Soviet Union, pre- and post-Glasnost.
In the 70s and 80s, we operated on two tracks in the former Soviet
Union – the Soviet-Bloc countries in Eastern Europe, and
the Soviet Union itself. In the Soviet-Bloc countries in the late
60s and the 70s, our efforts were aimed at supporting local Jewish
communities to maintain their cultural life. In the late 70s,
we took a very important step forward, believing that we could
expand the Jewish communities’ perception of the parameters
of what was possible even in Communist countries, and indeed enlarged
their vision of what could be accomplished even under their severely
circumscribed condition.
In the Soviet Union, where we could not work directly
with the communities there, we worked with the Israeli Government
in supporting the publication of books, heavily emphasizing literature
related to Zionism and the Hebrew language, which were transferred
there through an underground network. Here, too, we became more
proactive in the late 70s and 80s and began creating a literature
to stimulate, not only Zionism, but also Jewish consciousness
among Russian Jewry. We supported the publication of more than
600 books about Jewish history and Jewish religion, the Orot library
for children, young people and families, and classic Jewish texts.
These hundreds of books that grew out of our activities
in the pre-Glasnost era are now core books in most of the libraries
now functioning in schools and synagogues in the C.I.S.
Today, of course, Jewish books are widely available
there commercially. But we were there at the very beginning, at
B’reishis, playing a critical role, not only supporting
the visionaries and activists in the movement to revive Jewish
cultural life there, but in helping to shape the literary contours
of that historic movement.
In addition to books, we played an important pioneering
role in developing Jewish leadership. Long before Glasnost when
the iron curtain seemed impenetrable, the Foundation was supporting
the training of Russian young men and women for future service
to the Russian Jewish community. In the late seventies and early
eighties, these young people were mostly Russian émigrés
who had accomplished Aliya.
We provided scholarships for them to study in
Israel. When the iron curtain finally fell, these individuals
were ready and were among the first emissaries to serve as rabbis,
educators and communal leaders. These include the two current
Chief Rabbis of Russia, Beryl Lazar and Adolf Shayevich, and many
of the rabbis, educators, communal workers and klei kodesh who
are the mainstays of Jewish religious and cultural life in the
C.I.S today.
Simultaneously, since 1990, we also helped develop
the cultural leadership of the community, the cultural elite (the
scholars, writers, intellectuals and artists) who are helping
create the cultural infrastructure, the vital pre-requisite for
a serious Jewish cultural life in the C.I.S.
Most significantly, throughout our decades-long
effort on behalf of Soviet Jewry, we worked with, consulted with
and supported all the variegated parts of the indigenous community
there, as they defined their needs. We never imposed theological,
ideological or organizational doctrines, or any preferences or
biases from the outside.
In this way, we have thus made a more than modest,
indeed a very meaningful contribution, to the miraculous revival
of Russian Jewry.
B. The Reconstruction of the Jewish Cultural
Elite After the Shoah
Let me add that the training of professional and
communal personnel for Russian Jewry was a small part, however
unique, of the Foundation’s larger mandate for the reconstruction
of Jewish cultural life after the Shoah. That mandate can be articulated
in one sentence – the replacement of the generation of Jewish
cultural and intellectual leadership that perished in the Shoah.
The men and women supported by the Foundation’s Scholarships
and Fellowships are today part of the fabulous mosaic of the new
generation of scholars, writers, academics, rabbis, researchers,
intellectuals and artists that have filled the vacuum created
by the decimation of the Jewish cultural elite in Europe during
the Holocaust.
The more than 12,000 individuals who have received Foundation
grants during the last forty years have helped to create and sustain
Jewish cultural institutions around the world. Many of these individuals
are today the intellectual movers and shakers, or should I say
shapers, of Jewish culture, the cultural elite of our people in
contemporary Jewish life.
No less important are the hundreds of young men
and women from the Diaspora who, with Foundation support, studied
to prepare for professional careers in Jewish educational and
communal work, and returned to Latin America, Western Europe,
the former Soviet Union, Africa and Australia to serve there.
These individuals are the “special forces”
of the Jewish people, working on the ground in dispersed Jewish
communities, serving as Conservative rabbis in South America,
Reform communal workers in the C.I.S. and Chabad emissaries and
Sephardic educators, from Cuba to Croatia, Uruguay to the Ukraine
and Guatemala to Greece.
C. The Nahum Goldmann Fellowship
The crown jewel of our effort in the rejuvenation
of Jewish culture around the world has been the Nahum Goldmann
Fellowship, aimed at the development of a deeply committed communal
and cultural leadership for world Jewry.
We have to date sponsored thirteen Nahum Goldmann
Fellowship Seminars all over the world in which almost 500 young
men and women participated. When we initiated this program in
1985, we organized one every two years, mostly in Western and
Eastern Europe. In 2003-2004, we will have held three: Nahum Goldmann
Fellowship XII in August 2003, an international Seminar in Sweden;
Nahum Goldmann XIII, a regional Australasian Seminar in December
2003, including several subsequent mini-Nahum Goldmann weekends
for Australian alumni of previous Nahum Goldmann Fellowships;
and in November of this year we will be convening Nahum Goldmann
Fellowship XIV, an international Latin American Seminar in Uruguay,
followed by the first reunion of South American alumni of previous
Nahum Goldmann Fellowships.
It is amply evident from this activity that the Nahum Goldmann
Fellowship has transformed the Memorial Foundation into an international
body, whose focus and service spans the Jewish globe – from
Melbourne to Moscow.
The major thrust of the program, as originally
conceived, was to energize the Nahum Goldmann Fellows to re-define
themselves as Jews, by exposing them to serious Jewish learning.
The cardinal axiom of the program was, and still is, that exposure
to the finest minds and teachers in Jewish life – serious
Jewish learning, not Mickey Mouse Judaism – can motivate
the Fellows to consider new options for themselves, personally
and professionally, as Jews, and hopefully trigger an internal
dynamic within them that will continue to motivate them even after
they leave the seminar.
A formal evaluation of the Fellowship several
years ago, indeed, reported more than 70% of the Fellows did feel
that the most important outcome for them of the Nahum Goldmann
Fellowship was the opportunity to re-shape themselves as Jews
– each in a manner and direction which was compatible with
their individual needs and aspirations. The Nahum Goldmann Fellows
are now serving Jewish communities on six continents.
In sum, through the Foundation’s Fellowship
and Scholarship Programs, and the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, the
Foundation is creating, in Prof. Schorsch’s felicitous phrase,
the “social capital” of the Jewish people, developing
a leadership – intellectual, religious and communal –
for all segments and strata of our community in the 21st century,
a leadership rooted within the authentic values and experience
of the magnificent cultural heritage of our people, and most impressively,
a leadership with the motivation to work harmoniously with all
the sectors of Jewish life.
D. Hebrew in America
At our meeting in Jerusalem, the Foundation’s
Board approved a major new initiative, Hebrew in America, which
the Foundation will be launching in partnership with the UJA Federation
of Northern New Jersey in the United States. It was a very auspicious
way to mark the Foundation’s Fortieth Anniversary, as this
program is one of the most innovative, challenging and bold initiatives
the Foundation has ever undertaken. It is the best demonstration
of how far the Foundation has come in the last 40 years.
We were honored by the presence at our meeting
of Mr. Howard Charish, the Executive Vice-President of the UJA
Federation of Northern New Jersey, where the pilot project will
be organized. The reasons for our undertaking the challenge are
compelling national and ideological imperatives, in light of the
radical decline of Hebrew in the United States.
Jewish peoplehood is achieved by the transmission
of our collective memory and culture, rooted in our common language,
literature and values. Lacking a common language means we also
lack a common vocabulary, not only of words, but of values, norms
and ideals. This weakens and wounds us as a people.
Our focus programmatically will be primarily on
Hebrew as a portal to Jewish culture, literacy and Jewish text,
not on spoken fluency. We will be emphasizing Hebrew as a national
value, aimed at achieving K’lal Yisrael objectives, and
nourishing the common vocabulary of our people, not simply acquisition
of Hebrew as a language.
The major concept in the implementation of this
pilot program will be attempting to change the culture regarding
Hebrew in Northern New Jersey – in the first instance, the
culture about Hebrew in Jewish schools. The program will not confine
itself to the traditional concerns of curriculum, teacher training
and related “standard” issues. The first phase of
the program will entail working in close contact and cooperation
with the principals, to first ascertain their perception of the
role of Hebrew in their schools and then, hopefully, assisting
them in enlarging their perception of the possibilities for expanding
and intensifying the propagation of Hebrew in their schools.
Should we succeed in changing the culture about
Hebrew in the schools, we will have taken a major step for helping
trigger change on the communal level as well.
The Foundation’s Vision: Old and
New
Dr. Nahum Goldmann, who established the Memorial
Foundation, was a cultural seer, who understood the vital role
that Jewish culture can, and should play, in the reconstruction
of the Jewish people in the aftermath of the Shoah. It is undoubtedly
true that the Jewish people have accomplished much toward the
restoration of Jewish cultural life and the regeneration of the
new Jewish cultural elite in the post-Holocaust era, which Nahum
Goldmann envisioned as the role and mandate of the Memorial Foundation.
But his larger vision about culture in the reconstruction
of Jewish cultural life is equally true today, more than 50 years
later, in the post-Holocaust era. The emphasis for Jews today
in the West has shifted from the preservation of our cultural
distinctiveness to our integration within the larger societies
in which we live. This cultural normalization of the Jewish people
poses both major challenges and opportunities to the cultural
vitality of the Jewish people.
In this respect, we in the Foundation have tried
to stand on Nahum Goldmann’s shoulders, to help Jewish culture
again become the core around which Jewish life is organized, intensified
and rejuvenated.
The Memorial Foundation has, and can continue to play, an important
role here in the future – to help formulate the issues,
shape the philosophical and programmatic responses and develop
and test pilot programs in this critical enterprise, like Hebrew
in America.
In fulfilling our revised Foundation mandate, we did not and will
not simply replicate or reproduce the Jewish world that was holocausted.
We tried and will continue to attempt to shape the Jewish world
that emerged from the ashes of Auschwitz within a radically different
Diaspora setting in a manner that can joyously celebrate Jewish
distinctiveness in the new contemporary setting in which Jews
find themselves.
At the Foundation we have, therefore, re-invented ourselves, broadening
our focus beyond Eastern Europe -- our major concern in the early
years -- and transformed ourselves into an international body
with a global range and focus to deal with the new global Jewish
realities. We focused primarily, but not exclusively, on creating
the social capital for the Jewish people, a new generation –
cultural and communal – of leadership, what we believe is
our most pressing priority.
What of the future? On what can we base our endeavors
in the next forty years? Firstly, the marvelous track record of
creative and innovative programmatics of our first four decades.
And, secondly, on one other very vital ingredient.
Unlike many other Jewish communal organizations, regional, national
and international, our recent leadership is composed of Anshei
Ruach, men and women of the spirit, people like Professors Anita
Shapira and Ismar Schorsch, deeply rooted in the Jewish heritage,
Jewish thought, Jewish history, Jewish culture. From our multi-faceted
heritage, they have, and can help us draw the lessons, inspiration,
directions, experience, the risks to, and not to, be taken, to
move our Jewish cultural agenda forward, to deal competently and
courageously with the incipient Jewish realities that I have described.
With these components in hand, the Memorial Foundation
can hopefully continue its role as conceiver for Jewish cultural
renewal and catalyst for its revitalization in the decades ahead.
Warm regards and best wishes for a New Year of
peace and good health.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Jerry Hochbaum Executive Vice-President |
