The
Memorial Foundation organized an Academic Convocation on "Culture,
Community and Continuity" just prior to the Foundation's
Biennial Meeting in Jerusalem, in cooperation with the Zalman
Shazar Center for Jewish History. The convocation opened on
the evening of July 1, 2002 at the Beit Hanasi in the presence
of the President of the State of Israel, Moshe Katsav and
continued the next day at the Israel Academy of Sciences and
Humanities. Ten distinguished academics and scholars gave
papers relating to the Jewish Community's historic responsibility
for the creation and dissemination of Jewish culture, the
ideological and philosophic perspectives that influence this
obligation, and the challenges we face in fulfilling this
responsibility in the 21st century.
Our purpose in organizing this seminar was to assist the Foundation
and other bodies like ours in developing conceptual frameworks
to guide our cultural programs in the future. It was the unanimous
judgment of all those who attended and participated that the
convocation was an outstanding success.
I should like in this report to briefly
present here one of the many highlights of each session
of the convocation (see attached program). All the papers
given at the convocation can be audited at the Memorial
Foundation's website mfjc.org. It is hoped that a book
containing the papers will be published in the future.
A Common Language and Literature
Professor Eliezer Schweid, Professor of Jewish
Philosophy at Hebrew University, opened the convocation
with a provocative thesis which provided the framework for
the fruitful discussion which followed. The Jewish people
has successfully reconstructed itself since the Holocaust
through the establishment of the State of Israel and our
effective integration into our host societies in the Western
Diaspora. These material accomplishments, Professor Schweid
suggested, raised serious cultural challenges for our people.
Peoplehood, Am, according
to Professor Schweid, is achieved by the transmission of
our collective memory and culture, rooted in our common
language, literature and values. The more shared memory
exists in our language, literature and values, the deeper
our attachment to our people and the recognition of our
responsibilities to it.
Professor Schweid pointed out that the Jewish people today
no longer share our common language, Hebrew. Nor do we posses
a full commitment and understanding of our traditional canonical
texts, including the Bible, and our classical national literature.
Where there is even agreement about the public preservation
of aspects of our collective culture like the cycle of Jewish
Holidays, there is a considerable chasm between their public
acceptance and its incorporation and integration into Jewish
family and communal life in the Diaspora.
Lacking a common language
and literature weakens the Jewish people, Schweid called
for strengthening family and community — in addition
to schools— as agencies for the transmission of our
collective memory and culture as K'lal Yisroel.
The lively, intense discussion that followed, including
an intervention by President Katsav, demonstrated that the
theme of the convocation had struck a deep nerve in the
diverse group of Jewish leaders assembled at the Beit Hanassi
both from the Foundation and the cross-section of Israeli
cultural personalities present.
Emancipation and Zionism
The next day, Professor Arnold Eisen, Professor
of Religion at Stanford University, stated that we have
two main tasks today in Israel and the Diaspora. The first
is building communities which can prove adequate to the
ever-changing conditions in which we find ourselves. The
second entails transmitting and interpreting an authentic
Jewish tradition able to secure and retain the allegiance
of Jews exposed to other powerful cultural forces.
We also have two available options, in his view. The first,
emancipation, gives Jews and Judaism an opportunity to compete
in the Diaspora for the allegiance of Jews against the powerful
social and political forces that influence them. This option
necessarily entails an ongoing calculation of how much distinctiveness
our host societies in the Diaspora are prepared to tolerate.
We can point to much success achieved within this option,
but with huge costs and casualties as well.
Zionism, the second
option, has abundant advantages, but risks as well, Despite
its enormous advantages, the security Israel requires has
not yet been achieved.
Our task today is to locate a place where Jews can stand
in the new political, social and cultural order of modernity
and develop forms of Judaism that can thrive in this new
communal framework. In this regard, it is vital to recognize
that the basic rule in the modern world as far as Judaism
is concerned is volunteerism. Jews possess choice regarding
all their Jewish commitments. Furthermore, no one Jewish
group can monopolize the sentiments of all its members and
certainly not those of the larger community.
But today's Jews have the advantage of having both Israel
and the Diaspora. Israel is a cultural resource for the
Diaspora, with the Diaspora also possessing important resources
for Israel. Our situation is complicated by the fact that
all of us are hyphenated Jews, not immune to outside powerful
cultural forces. In addition, the Jewish community is no
longer built on the global notion of Jewish peoplehood,
but is based on face to face encounters with other Jews.
Professor Eisen concluded that without many sources of transcendental
values in secular culture and no opportunities for real
community, the Jewish community needs to involve Jews in
conversation with our master narrative, the Torah, and to
do so in a way that we can co-exist with each other and
with the larger society.
Historical Overview
Professor David Berger, Professor of Jewish History
at Brooklyn College, noted that for many pre-modern and
modern Jews, the concepts of community, culture and continuity
are problematic.
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Professor
Berger asserted there has always been a tension between the
broad communal responsibility for transmitting Jewish culture
and the reality that communities were more stimulated to action
by their narrow objectives than universal Jewish values. Furthermore,
when Jewish communities issued enactments, they were not always
intended to preserve Jewish culture or continuity but to address
their particular needs.
On occasion, Jewish communities produced cultural institutions
that transcended national boundaries, as in the case of the
Babylonian Talmud. But Jewish communities also guarded their
own traditions with tenacious zeal. Large communities in the
middle ages even evolved cultural patterns that set them apart
from one another. When the two great medieval cultures —
Ashkenazic and Sephardic — met in the twelfth century,
each side pursued a policy of cultural imperialism.
Professor Berger believed that there exists a passionate effort
by some communities to disseminate their own vision of culture
— witness the Sabbatean, Chasidic, Zionist and Chabad
movements of modern times. That passion is not generated by
"Culture" or concern for continuity. It is generated
by narrower, more focused ideologies that usually cannot command
assent across the entire communal spectrum. Indeed, the more
focused the ideal, the more likely it is to be divisive.
Professor Berger concluded that in pre-modern Jewish communities
— for all their divisions — there was a vision of
what Jewish "culture" meant. This is no longer the
case; Jewish communities in the contemporary world contain
dramatically different sub-cultures. If such communities are
to function as cultural forces, judgments must be made by
them about achieving a necessary balance between the need
for Jewish unity and continuity and the ideological reservations
that their leaders harbor about other ideologies.
An Omniterritorial People?
Professor Jonathan Sarna, Professor of Jewish
History at Brandeis University, focused on a central transformation
that is reshaping world Jewry and two cultural implications
of this change. The central transformation is that the Diaspora
is shrinking, while Israel's population is continuing to
grow. While it is true that the vast majority of Diaspora
Jews have moved to economically affluent, politically stable
and socially attractive environments, Professor Sarna suggests
that when faith communities decline both in absolute and
relative terms, they lose their vitality and spiritual freshness.
While most of the world's
great religions are expanding globally, Judaism is contracting.
But we still think that we form part of an Am Olam,
a global people that is "omniterritorial".
The second and more
deeply troubling issue that commands attention is the issue
of K'lal Yisroel. In Sarna's view, K'lal Yisroel
today is nothing less than an endangered Jewish value. A
recent study found that only a bare majority of American
Jews even recognized the ideal of K'lal Yisroel. The fact
of the matter is that both in Israel and the Diaspora the
deep feelings of kinship with all Jews is less and less
taught, less and less lived and less and less celebrated.
Sarna stated that the Memorial Foundation represents a model
of what K'lal Yisroel is all about. But just modeling K'lal
Yisroel may not be enough in a world where the value itself
is endangered. He hoped that the Foundation would more and
more promote, as it has been doing in some of its programs
(e.g. the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship), the value of K'lal
Yisroel.
While the Foundation has become concerned, as have others,
about Diaspora losing its relationship to the State of Israel,
the real problem, according to Sarna, is that Diaspora Jews
and Israeli Jews are losing their connection to K'lal
Yisroel.
The Synagogue and Social Capital
Professor Joseph Hacker, Professor of Jewish
History at Hebrew University, demonstrated in his paper
the crucial role of the synagogue historically in the cultural
and communal life of the Jewish people. Professor Schorsch,
Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, in closing
the convocation, strongly supported this view. He especially
emphasized the central role the synagogue was playing in
America in producing the "social capital" for
the Jewish community. From the ranks of American synagogues
— Orthodox, Conservative and Reform — were emerging
the key communal, philanthropic and professional leaders
of Jewish life in America. The future of American Jewry
was heavily dependent on the quality and quantity of this
"social capital".
* * * * * * * *
It was serendipitous
that Professor Anita Shapira in her first presidential report
at the opening meeting of the Foundation's Board of Trustees
also expressed deep concern about the decline of Hebrew
in the Diaspora. She had raised this issue earlier this
year at a meeting of the Foundation's Administrative Committee.
The Board unanimously and enthusiastically approved her
request for a consultation to be held on this issue next
year in New York, based on a paper by Professor Alan Mintz
on "Hebrew in America" that the Foundation commissioned
and distributed at the meeting.
The felicitous formulation
of Professor Schorsch about the crucial need to produce
"social capital" for the Jewish people has been
one of the major objectives of the Memorial Foundation.
In the 36th Anniversary Report issued by the Foundation
prior to our Board meeting, we documented the 11,895 grants
awarded to men and women who have subsequently served as
communal and professional leaders in Jewish communities
all around the world. We plan to continue to give highest
priority in the future to this area — the training
and developing of young men and women who will provide the
leadership — intellectual, religious and communal —
for all the segments and strata of our community to deal
with the challenges raised at the convocation, especially
for the revival of the concept and value of K'lal Yisroel.
Warm wishes for a New
Year of peace and good health.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Jerry Hochbaum
Executive Vice President
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