|
December 24, 2003
Dear Board Members,
THE AUSTRALASIAN NAHUM GOLDMANN FELLOWSHIP
The Australasian Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, the thirteenth in
the series of leadership training seminars organized by the Memorial
Foundation since 1987, was held in Melbourne from December 9-17,
2003. The Australasian seminar was a follow-up to the very successful
International Nahum Goldmann Fellowship organized by the Foundation
in Australia in 2002.
The Australian Fellows from the latter program decided at the
conclusion of the seminar to continue to meet, not only for maintaining
contact with their Australian peers, but even more significantly,
continuing to study together at mini-Nahum Goldmann Fellowship
weekend meetings and exploring ways through which they could impact
on Australian Jewish life.
The strong interest of the Australian alumni in expanding their
activities was largely responsible for our decision to organize
Nahum Goldmann Fellowship XIII in Melbourne.
Empowering the Fellows
The Australasian seminar was different in very significant ways
from all our previous seminars. After consultation with Prof.
Anita Shapira, the Foundation’s President, and Mrs. June Jacobs,
Chairperson of the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship Committee, we turned
over most facets of the organization of the program to the Australian
Fellows. We also created a partnership between the Memorial Foundation,
the Australian alumni of the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, chaired
by Ms. Melanie Schwartz, an aspiring human rights lawyer from
Sydney, and the Shalom Institute at the University of New South
Wales in Sydney.
Ms. Lynda Dave, who had participated in Nahum Goldmann Fellowship
X in Sweden and had subsequently served as coordinator of Nahum
Goldmann Fellowship XI and XII, was appointed to administer Nahum
Goldmann Fellowship XIII, together with Dana Dusheiko, also a
former Fellow from Australia.
It is not often that Jewish organizations assign major leadership
roles to the clients or participants in the programs in which
they are involved. We did and it worked marvelously well for us
because of Lynda Dave’s excellent administrative skills and the
sense of empowerment we had fostered in the Fellows in our earlier
programs.
Advancing the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship Model
Our greatest success in the past was energizing Jewishly the individual
Fellows who came from disparate and diverse Jewish communities
all around the world. The first Australian seminar demonstrated
that it was possible to energize a cohort of Fellows - not only
individuals - from one continent and community to both study together
and attempt to deal with the problems and challenges confronting
their community.
The second Australasian seminar validated our new approach, increasing
the critical mass of Australian Fellows who will hopefully impact
on Australian Jewish life. Following the Australasian Nahum Goldmann
Fellowship, the alumni of both the first and second Australian
seminars met to initiate their discussions about possible mutual
programs and activities. The alumni of the first Australian Nahum
Goldmann Fellowship had last year already organized two mini-Nahum
Goldmann Fellowship weekends. Another mini-Nahum Goldmann Fellowship
for both groups is planned for April 2004.
The Community Connection
The positive supporting role played in our Australian enterprise
by Australian Jewry’s central communal body, the Executive Council
of Australian Jewry, further enhanced the potency of the program.
When we initiated the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship in Western Europe
in 1987, many Jewish organizations were either uninterested or
unable to identify potential leadership or to co-opt them for
leadership roles in their community after the Fellowship. During
those early years we often reached out to young men and women
outside the framework of organized Jewish life. Over the next
decade, we became more and more effective in identifying and recruiting
young men and women that were community based.
At the two Australian seminars we were able to assemble the largest
and most promising cross-section of potential Jewish leaders from
within the organized Jewish community. They were more educated
Jewishly and more involved and committed to Jewish communal life
than all previous groups. This was the result of the heavy emphasis
placed on Jewish education in Australia, and the involvement in
our enterprise at its very outset of the leadership of the Australian
Jewish community, which helped create a favorable climate for
the program.
I should like to cite the excellent cooperation of the president
of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Jeremy Jones; and
Nina Bassat, and Diane Shteinman, former presidents. Jeremy Jones
and Nina Bassat were active participants in the Australian programs.
In this way, we have established a channel - current and future
- for our Fellows to Australia’s central communal body. Indeed,
Jeremy Jones advised us that four Australian Nahum Goldmann Fellowship
alumni are now serving as voting members of the Executive Council
of Australian Jewry. He has his eye, he also told us, on two other
Nahum Goldmann Fellows for possible appointment to that body in
the future.
There is no doubt that Australia has pointed us to the direction
in which we should be moving in the future in our relationship
with the host communities where regional Nahum Goldmann Fellowships
take place.
Beyond Australia’s Borders
A crucial element in the success of the Australasian Nahum Goldmann
Fellowship was the participation of ten Fellows, more than 1/3
of the group, from South East Asia. These included six Fellows
from India, three from Singapore and one from New Zealand. At
the first Australian seminar, there was only one individual from
India representing South East Asia
All the South East Asia Fellows were deeply involved in their
communities. Heidi Miller Meyerson from Auckland is a contributing
writer for a book on New Zealand Jewry and is currently helping
to establish Auckland's first Jewish Multimedia Resource Centre.
The three Singapore Fellows, Michelle Elias, a member of the local
Iraqi Jewish community and a lawyer by profession; Naomi Pfau,
an Australian expatriate who works as an executive at Hewlett
Packard there; and Rachel Safman, an American academic who teaches
sociology at the University of Singapore, are members of Gesher,
a local group trying to bridge the gap between the local Orthodox,
Reform and expatriate groups in Singapore.
The six Indian delegates, Saul Aptekar, Rephael Emmanuel, Annie
Jacob, Meyer Moses, Levi Satamker, Shulamith Solomon and Elan
Reuben, were deeply desirous to become more connected with world
Jewry, expand and enhance their cultural contacts and resources
and maintain their Jewish Indian heritage.
In the eyes of the Australian Fellows, Australian Jewry has not
done its rightful share in supporting the neighboring Jewish communities
in their part of the world. Two important resolutions were taken
the last day by the Australian and South East Asian Caucuses.
The Indian, Singapore and New Zealand Fellows agreed to organize
a mini-Nahum Goldmann Fellowship weekend for their group and recruit
other potential Fellows from their communities and others in South
East Asia.
The Australian Caucus resolved to support the efforts of their
South East Asian peers. Indeed, the Australian Fellows even raised
funds from their Caucus for a welfare drive being organized in
India, and presented their donations to their Indian peers at
the concluding session of the seminar.
At that session, the Indian delegates took leave from us with
a traditional Indian song of farewell, gifts for the staff and
hugs and kisses all around. The connection established between
the young leadership of the Indian Jewish community and their
peers in Australia and South East Asia was one of the major accomplishments
and moving highlights of the seminar. ۫۫۫۫
* * * * * * *
The highlight of the seminar for me was not the various elements
of the seminar about which I have written in the past, the lectures
by outstanding academics, which, like in the past, were of the
highest order; the workshops on Jewish texts, Jewish identity,
Jewish culture, and the mid-East, which were the most successful
ever; the beautifully moving Shabbat experience; and the ceremony
giving one of the women Fellows a Hebrew name on the last day
of the seminar, which has traditionally been one of the emotional
highlights of the program.
On Sunday afternoon, after five days of serious dialogue and debate
about the themes of the lectures and workshops, we organized a
picnic for the Fellows in Hanging Rock Park, a beautiful site
several kilometers from the seminar. The Fellows, faculty and
staff, “hanging out” in the American idiom, munched sandwiches,
schmoozed, played cricket, or just lazed around on blankets, taking
a break from the very intensive schedule and program of the seminar
that usually characterizes the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship.
The group that afternoon looked to me like one extended family,
similar to others picnicking in the area. Most remarkable, I thought,
because the group had just met five days earlier, and most of
the Fellows had not known each other before the seminar.
More than that, they were having “fun”, a word usually not applicable
to weighty Jewish endeavors like the serious learning in which
we were involved, which, we are told, turns young Jews off. But
not the Nahum Goldmann Fellows, while engaged in a deeply transformative
experience, redefining themselves as Jews, they were also having
“fun”. Unbelievable! Perhaps this is the secret of the success
of the remarkable Nahum Goldmann Fellowship enterprise.
Not so the Nahum Goldmann Fellows. While engaged in a deeply transformative
and “re-Jew-venating” experience, redefining themselves as Jews,
they were also having “fun” together. Unbelievable! Perhaps this
is the secret of the success of the remarkable Nahum Goldmann
Fellowship enterprise.
Warm regards.
Dr. Jerry Hochbaum
Executive Vice President
|
