| May 10, 2004
Dear Board Member,
Celebrating the Memorial Foundation's 40th Anniversary
The Memorial Foundation will be celebrating its 40th Anniversary
at our Biennial Meeting at the Regency Hotel in Jerusalem on July
13-15, 2004. I will describe some of the highlights of the meeting
in this report.
Jewish Culture in the Era of Globalization
Prior to the formal meeting of our Board of Trustees, we are organizing
an academic convocation on Jewish Culture in the Era of Globalization
which will take place at the Shazar Center for Jewish History
(2 Betar Street, Jerusalem) on July 12.
Much attention has been focused in recent years on the political
and economic consequences of globalization on different types
of societies worldwide. At this conference we will be dealing
exclusively with its multiple impacts on Jewish culture and the
Jewish community in the Diaspora and Israel, its differential
consequences for Jewish personal and communal identity, and its
implications for universalistic and particularistic themes in
Jewish cultural and communal life.
The full program is listed below:
Academic Convocation - Jewish Culture in the Era of Globalization
Shazar Center for Jewish History, Monday, July 12, 2004
10:00 a.m.
Globalization and the Clash Between Civilizations, Religions
and Cultures; Its Impact on the Jewish People.
Chairperson: Prof. Anita Shapira
Prof. David Cesarani
Prof. Dr. Antony Lerman
Prof. Aviezer Ravitzky
2:00 p.m.
The Impact of Globalization on Jewish Collective and Individual
Identity.
Chairperson: Prof. Joseph Hacker
Prof. Michael Brenner
Prof. Sergio Della Pergolla
4:00 p.m.
Globalization and Post Modernism: A Challenge to Jewish Religious
and Ethnic Culture
or an Opportunity for Universal and Pluralistic Enrichment.
Chairperson: Prof. Daniel Sperber
Prof. Richard Cohen
Prof. Moshe Halbertal
Prof. Eliezer Schweid
7:00 p.m.
The Impact of Globalization on the Jewish Character of the
State of Israel and the Relationship Between Israel and the Diaspora.
Chairperson: Prof. Ismar Schorsch
Prof. Ella Belfer
Prof. Arnold Eisen
Prof. Shalom Rosenberg
For those who cannot attend, the conference will be able to be
viewed in real time on the internet at a website which will be
announced in the near future.
Following the meeting, the entire proceedings will be available
on this website and on the website
of the Nahum Goldmann program.
The State of Jewish Culture Globally
Biennial Meeting, Regency Hotel (Jerusalem), July 13-15, 2004
The opening session of our Biennial meeting will take place at
the Beit Hanassi on Tuesday evening, July 13th at 5:00 p.m. Professors
Anita Shapira, our president, and Ismar Schorsch, chairman of
our executive committee, will present companion papers on The
State of Jewish Culture Globally. Following these papers there
will be remarks by the Honorable Moshe Katzav, President of the
State of Israel.
You will shortly be receiving an invitation from the Beit Hanassi.
Because of the heightened security concerns in Israel, all members
of our Board and other invited guests are requested to assemble
at the Beit Hanassi as close as possible to 3:30 p.m. A reception
will precede the opening session, which will begin promptly at
5:00 p.m.
At the behest of the staff of the Beit Hanassi, we are asking
all who plan to attend to advise us as soon as possible on the
attached form, and also provide us with their passport or Israeli
identity number. This will greatly facilitate the work of the
security staff and entry into the Beit Hanassi.
Hebrew in America
At our meeting in Jerusalem we will be announcing the launching
of a major new program, "Hebrew in America". Present
at our meeting will be Mr. Howard Charish, the Executive Vice
President of the UJA Federation of Bergen County in New Jersey,
the community in which we are organizing a pilot program to achieve
more effective propagation of the Hebrew Language in the Jewish
community in the United States. There will be a detailed report
at our meeting about this pioneering program.
To provide some background about this enterprise, we will be sending
you, under separate cover, a series of academic and programmatic
papers that we commissioned for our Committee on Hebrew in the
United States, chaired by Professor David Berger, which helped
us organize our preliminary thinking about this program. Remarkable
progress has been made since then by the Foundation, together
with our partners in this enterprise, the Jewish Agency and the
Melton Center for Education at Hebrew University.
Community, Culture and Continuity: An Evening with Nahum Goldmann
Fellows
On Wednesday evening, July 14, there will be a session devoted
to the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, the crown jewel of the Foundation's
programs, chaired by Mrs. June Jacobs. We will be hearing from
four Nahum Goldmann Fellows: Prof. Ingrid Lomfors from Goteborg,
Sweden, an alumna of our earliest Fellowship, Leszek Piszewski,
former President of the Jewish Community in Warsaw, Jeni S. Friedman,
a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary from Edmonton,
Canada, and Barak Ben-Eliezer, a former officer in the Israeli
Air Force and commander of Talpiot, a prestigious military and
academic training program, who is now director of strategic technology
for law enforcement in Israel. They will be discussing their experiences
at the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship and how they see the future of
Jewish life in their communities.
It should be a dynamite evening. We will also be hearing reports
from June Jacobs and Nina Bassat about our recent Nahum Goldmann
Fellowship programs in Sweden and Australia and our plans for
an International Latin American Nahum Goldmann Fellowship and
reunion of the South American alumni of previous Nahum Goldmann
Fellowships, which will take place in November in Uruguay.
The Modern Jewish Canon: The First Online Nahum Goldmann
Fellowship Course
Two years ago the Foundation established the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship
website as an ongoing resource for its alumni. It was initially
aimed at enabling the Fellows to maintain contact with each other
and support the network of relationships spawned by the Fellowship.
With the launching of the first online Nahum Goldmann Fellowship
course, the website will address two important needs for the Fellows.
When Fellows return to their communities, especially those from
small, dispersed communities, they sometimes fall back into the
intellectual and spiritual isolation that initially attracted
them to the Fellowship.
Furthermore, all the Fellows can benefit from continuing intellectual
and spiritual challenges. Through the introduction of moderated
academic workshops patterned after the workshops of the Fellowship,
one of the most popular and successful features of the seminar,
the Fellows have a continuing opportunity to engage in the intense
intellectual dialogue that characterizes the Fellowship program.
The online Nahum Goldmann Fellowship courses are also intended
to expand our contacts and reach out to young men and women around
the world with similar backgrounds to our Nahum Goldmann Fellows,
who either cannot attend our annual seminars, or who will be attracted
to participate in these seminars in the future.
The first online Nahum Goldmann Fellowship course, The Modern
Jewish Canon, which went online in April 2004, is being offered
by Prof. Ruth Wisse, a former Nahum Goldmann Fellowship faculty
member and Professor of Yiddish Literature and Comparative Literature
at Harvard University.
The course is based on Prof. Wisse's recently published and highly
acclaimed volume of the same name. The course consists of five
lessons, each extending over a two-week period, featuring Jewish
writers including Sholem Aleichem, Franz Kafka, Isaac Babel, S.Y.
Agnon, and Saul Bellow.
More than three hundred Nahum Goldmann Fellowship alumni have
been registered for the course, as well as over one hundred non-Nahum
Goldmann Fellowship alumni.
The online course is being presented in cooperation with the Jewish
Heritage Online Magazine, created by the Foundation several
years ago. The Nahum Goldmann Fellowship Website (www.ngfp.org)
was designed and is administered by Aron Trauring and Simcha Shtull,
alumni of the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, who also developed the
Jewish Heritage Online Magazine.
Warm regards for a joyous Shavuoth.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Jerry Hochbaum
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