Articles

As I travel this country, lecturing on the “state” of American Jewry and the Jewish political condition, I am often invited to meet privately with Jewish professionals, including our rabbis, educators, communal leaders and agency executives. In almost every instance, as a prelude to their questions, the conversation begins with “well you know, our community is different.” Indeed, communities exhibit certain distinctive characteristics, in part driven by their respective histories and the imprint of their leadership, but there remains an overarching degree of commonality that the bridges Jewish communal order.

What are Jewish leaders, both volunteers and professionals, asking these days?

You are here: Home / The American Jewish Scene / Fifty Years After: Reflections on the Zionist Dream and Israel’s Story June 1967
Fifty Years After: Reflections on the Zionist Dream and Israel’s Story June 1967
May 23, 2017 By eJP


Photo credit Elad Saporta via the PikiWiki – Israel free image collection project
By Steven Windmueller Ph. D.

As Israel prepares to observe the fiftieth anniversary of the Sixth Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem, this moment offers us a unique point of reflection. Over the course of this year, the Jewish world will observe the 120th celebration of the birth of the Zionist Movement, 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, and the 70th observance of the UN Partition Plan. These interlocking events have ultimately enabled us to rewrite the modern Jewish story.

Yet, just as the saga of Jewish nation-building evolves over the course of the last century, correspondingly the Western world would begin to move beyond its historic commitment to the nation-state system in order to construct regional systems of trade and governance, in part leaving the Zionist experiment as an isolated and vulnerable remnant of a different moment in history.

The coordinated “ransomeware attacks” involving “malicious software that infects a computer and restricts users’ access” that occurred over the past few days impacting 99 countries should remind us of the power of technology.

Within the next quarter century, as a result of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, our lives will be fundamentally transformed by technology. What are the operational implications for the Jewish community? What will it mean in terms of the ethical underpinnings of the relationship between human understanding and the place of technology?

A new social order is evolving within the American Jewish eco-system. The older framework of a fixed set of cultural norms and social queues is being challenged by a new regime of communal practice. Elsewhere, I have written about “legacy” and “boutique” organizations, describing many of the characteristics of these distinctive types of institutions. But unlike that “divide,” this conversation centers today on asking the following question: How effectively are organizations engaging with their supporters, members and clients? Indeed, certain legacy and boutique groups score very high when employing these new measures of personal impact, while others from both categories are seen as deficient in connection with this emerging model.

“Being Jewish in Los Angeles” reflects a constantly changing landscape of choices, experiences, and encounters as the institutions of the community are consistently reframing their messages and orchestrating new modes of communal participation.

Often I am asked about the distinguishing features of the Los Angeles Jewish community. I have written several articles and monographs, a number of them have appeared on this site. Yet, this is the first occasion to examine many of these themes in a more comprehensive format.

The civil unrest in Los Angeles 25 years ago, sparked by the beating of Rodney King, represented a landmark moment not only for the city as a whole but also for the Jewish community. The riots that followed reshaped the city’s political discourse, shifting the traditional focus from a Black-white (Jewish) conversation to multiracial and culturally diverse discussions. The Jewish community was centrally involved in these conversations and the actions that would follow.

Influenced by the ideas of American progressivism and reflective of historic Jewish political practice, the discipline of community relations was established around the following principle:

To protect the welfare and safety of Jews residing in the United States and elsewhere; and to advance those causes that contributes to the general enrichment and well being of American society.

The “field” of Jewish community relations established a set of best practices focusing on the collective interests of the society and specific Jewish concerns. The goals, outlined below, defined a segment of the public policy agenda:

What will be the likely impact on the Jewish community of the proposed 2018 Federal Budget, officially known as the “America First: A Budget Blueprint To Make America Great Again“?

Budgets, we are told, reflect the values and priorities of its architects. The America First Budget reflects a fundamental reconstruction of this nation’s economic, cultural and political priorities. What are the implications of these financial proposals for America’s Jews, our communal institutions, and the broader American social order?

You are here: Home / The American Jewish Scene / The Millennial Revolution: Career, Community and Culture | Introducing the New American Jew
The Millennial Revolution: Career, Community and Culture | Introducing the New American Jew
April 4, 2017 By eJP

By Steven Windmueller, Ph.D.

Fourth and fifth generation Jews are making critically different career and occupational choices, just as they are articulating distinctive views on community and social activism. If their grandparent’s generation (1957) were comprised of self-employed businessmen (55.6%) and managers (14.9%), their fathers and mothers (1970) pursued careers as professionals (27.2%), including lawyers, doctors, accountants and university professors, in addition to expanding their roles as corporate managers (26.5%), Jewish Gen X’ers and Millennials are exhibiting a dramatic transition in career preferences.

As extremists on the political right seek to discredit American Jews, the BDS Movement and its allies on the left are committed to undermining Israel. For the first time in American history, Jews are contending with actual threats from both political extremes.

There is a new wave of anti-Semitism in America driven by a number of factors as referenced in an earlier piece (February 28, 2017) found on this site.

Beyond the headlines in the media over bomb threats, cemetery desecrations, and acts of individual harassment, all directed against Jewish Americans and their institutions, the latest report issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center spells out an even more disturbing picture of “Hate and Extremism: The Radical Right Enters the Mainstream” (Intelligence Report: Spring 2017, Issue 162).