Articles

As we move well into the 21st century, American society, as has been documented, is rapidly changing, as has this nation’s politics. In response to these challenges, the Jewish community relations field is also shifting its focus. In December, Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) released a major policy statement in connection with its work, “The New Jewish Council for Public Affairs: A Changing Political Environment Brings a Strategic Reset.” The document has drawn minimal response, with only few publications reporting on this transformational change.

We have identified twelve organizing ideas that define 21st Century American Jewish communal behaviors and outcomes:

Jewish history is constantly informing and reshaping contemporary Jewry. The American Jewish experience, however, must be understood to represent a distinctive cultural and operational phenomenon. Since the end of the Second World War, the Jewish communal system was successful in both managing external challenges and internal expectations, today we are experiencing a new normal, driven by a series of internal “revolutions” upending the existing communal order and an array of external “threats”.

Homeland and transnational politics represent an interesting subcategory of international relations studies and most certainly represents a central feature within Jewish history.

This is the second essay in a two-part series.

This is the first essay in a two-part series.

During my 50-year career framed around Jewish communal practice and teaching, I have developed lifelong friendships and met and engaged with an assortment of impressively dedicated leaders, while mastering new skills and accruing a lifetime of memories. I have also learned a lot about the nature of leadership.

Community is a central tenet in the shaping of Jewish history! So, what might happen if such a core element is no longer central to the Jewish story? We explore the many factors that are contributing to the undoing of this sacred principle. Moving beyond our work on these pages in August, in this essay we want to understand the implications of such downsizing and transformational change.

This past Tuesday, November 8th, was seen by many to likely be a transformative moment in American politics. Regardless of the specific results, the election process itself is providing us with some important learning outcomes and is introducing us to certain new realities about our nation and our society. As we knew, while we remain a divided polity, a degree of political balance appears to be one of the core outcomes of this contest.

If the earlier article, published on these pages several days ago, focused on methods of treatment of antisemitism employed by the Jewish community in the early decades of the last century and what we might take away from this encounter,[1] here attention is being given to dealing with the realities of experiencing hate, managing and defining such behaviors and expressions, both on a personal and communal basis.

The “treatment” of anti-Semitism was one of the original terms employed by the “defense agencies” when dealing with hatred and prejudice in the 1930’s. Ideas such as “containment” entered the vocabulary of that era, as such negative behaviors as anti-Semitism were handled as if they were diseases, to be “eradicated”.