Latest update January 22nd, 2020 10:43 PM
Nov 06, 2013 Amnon Peery Judaism 0
Implications of Pew Report on American Jewry to take center stage.
PRESIDENT OF the Jewish Federation of North America Jerry Silverman speaks at the David Citadel.
Photo: Sam Sokol
As leaders of Jewish Federations from across the United States gather in Jerusalem for its annual General Assembly, the agenda is set to focus on a study that found a steep decline in endogamy and religious identification in general.
The Pew Research Center study on American Jewry was a “wake up call” for organized Jewry, Jerry Silverman, the president of the Jewish Federation of North America, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
“We’ve been studying the report in depth,” he said and stated that while nothing in the report was truly shocking, it has “shaken up the GA.”
Silverman said it has impelled him and JFNA CEO Michael Siegal to revise “significant amounts of agenda” and to focus the annual gathering squarely on holding a “deep discussion” on the issues raised therein.
Speaking with the Post at the David’s Citadel hotel in Jerusalem, Silverman reiterated a four point agenda that he formulated with Siegal, published as an op-ed in The Jewish Daily Forward almost immediately after the Pew report was released.
In that op-ed, Silverman and Siegal stated that American Judaism is at a crossroads and that non-Orthodox Jews are “facing an existential crisis.”
According to the Pew Center, Orthodoxy is the only segment of American Judaism that is growing.
In the op-ed, and in numerous discussions with the press, Silverman stated that he believes that the American Jewish establishment must invest in free Jewish preschools, increasing participation in Jewish camps, follow up with programs to capitalize on the interest in Judaism and Israel exhibited by Birthright alumni and form what he termed “Jewish development zones.” These four points, he told the Post, “can move the needle in significant ways. We’ll use the GA for dialogue, debate [and] understanding [on these issues] and when we return, we will concretize the feedback into action.”
Despite the rising costs of tuition in Jewish schools, Silverman asserted that he does not see fiscal concerns as potential roadblocks in the rollout of a nationwide free pre-school program.
“Coming from the private sector and the public sector what I have found is that it starts with ideas, then a pilot, then execution and results that drive momentum,” he said.
“I’ve never found that money is the inhibitor, never.”
Silverman agreed with Shas MK Nissim Ze’ev’s statement, made at a recent Knesset committee meeting dealing with the implications of the Pew report, that American Jewish education is a “catastrophe.”
“I would agree with his statement that there are pieces of Jewish education in the United States that we know aren’t working and have been watching it not work for many years,” Silverman admitted. “the concept of after-school or Sunday religious school hasn’t been working for 30 years but yet we have not taken the time to really say that there’s an alternative or to create some kind of new paradigm around it and so that part of it isn’t working.
“Day school education, youth groups, camps are all working,” he added.
However, he said, while it may not be possible to significantly raise the number of pupils enrolled in day schools, “we have real opportunities in Jewish camp attendance [where] right now we are only penetrating 10 percent of the marketplace.”
Expansion of the camp system, he said, can occur “without significant capital costs.”
Aside from pre-school and camping, both of which place the focus on Jewish engagement efforts on the very young, Silverman also asserted that programs must be raised to engage Birthright attendees following their return from Israel.
One of the more novel approaches that Silverman raised in his op-ed and in subsequent interviews has been the development of what he calls “Jewish Development Zones.”
Such zones, he said, are locations “where we have a concentration of Jews who are not connected at all” and where Jewish organizations should increase their activities to reach underserved demographics.
The Federations, Silverman stated, should be “encouraging varying programs or portals of entry into Jewish life” in such areas.
“If we intensify in a certain area it can hit a critical mass and be able to engage them,” he added.
In response to the rising rate of intermarriage cited by the Pew report, lawmakers called on the government to pay increased attention to Diaspora Jewry, holding a meeting of the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs earlier this month in which the JFNA was invited to testify.
Following up on this new impetus for collaboration, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs Ministry and the Jewish Agency will be holding a strategic dialogue “aimed at formulating a joint plan to strengthen the younger generation’s Jewish identity and deepen the connection between world Jewry and Israel” on Wednesday and Thursday as part of the run up to the GA.
A meeting of senior European Jewish leaders from 22 countries with their Israeli and American counterparts and organized by the Israel Jewish Congress is also being held as part of the GA.
Several meetings between MKs and European Jewish leaders have also been scheduled.
Concurrent with the gathering will be a Global Jewish Peoplehood Roundtable run by the UJA-Federation of New York.
“We are ready to set up a structure to work very closely with the agency, with the government of Israel to really help address some of these issues that have come up in the Pew Report,” Silverman said.
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Menachem Begin in December 1942 wearing the Polish Army uniform of Gen. Anders’ forces with his wife Aliza and David Yutan; (back row) Moshe Stein and Israel Epstein
(photo credit: JABOTINSKY ARCHIVES)
During the inauguration of a memorial to the victims of the Siege of Leningrad in Jerusalem’s Sacher Park on January 24, 2020, before the climax of Holocaust remembrance events at which Russian President Vladimir Putin was given a central platform, we were stunned to hear a rendition of The Blue Kerchief (Siniy
Giant figures are seen during the 87th carnival parade of Aalst February 15, 2015
The annual carnival in Aalst, Belgium, is expected to take place on Sunday with even more antisemitic elements than in previous years.
Aalst’s organizers have sold hundreds of “rabbi kits” for revelers to dress as hassidic Jews in the carnival’s parade. The kit includes oversized noses, sidelocks (peyot) and black hats. The organizers plan to bring back floats similar to the one displayed in 2019 featuring oversized dolls of Jews, with rats on their shoulders, holding banknotes.
Pope Francis waves as he arrives at the Basilica of Saint Nicholas in the southern Italian coastal city of Bari, Italy February 23, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Remo Casilli.
Pope Francis on Sunday warned against “inequitable solutions” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying they would only be a prelude to new crises, in an apparent reference to US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace proposal.
Francis made his comments in the southern Italian port city of Bari, where he traveled to conclude a meeting of bishops from all countries in the Mediterranean basin.
Palestinians walk past a shop selling fruits in Ramallah, Feb. 20, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Mohamad Torokman.
Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have reached an agreement to end a five-month long trade dispute, officials said on Thursday.
The dispute, which opened a new front in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, began in September when the PA announced a boycott of Israel calves. The PA exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank under interim peace deals.
Antisemitic caricatures on display at the annual carnival in Aalst, Belgium. Photo: Raphael Ahren via Twitter.
Disturbing images emerged on Sunday of the annual carnival at Aalst, Belgium, showing an astounding number of antisemitic themes, costumes, displays and statements.
Israeli journalist Raphael Ahren documented people dressed as caricatures of Orthodox Jews, a fake “wailing wall” attacking critics of the parade, blatantly antisemitic characters and puppets wearing traditional Jewish clothes and sporting huge noses.
The stench of anti-Semitism always hovers over Switzerland’s Lake Geneva when the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is meeting there. The foul emanations reached a new nadir last week with UNHRC’s publication of a “database” of companies doing business in the disputed territories in Israel.
Following the publication of the list, Bruno Stagno Ugarte, deputy director for advocacy of NGO Human Rights Watch, stated, “The long-awaited release of the U.N. settlement business database should put all companies on notice: To do business with illegal settlements [sic] is to aid in the commission of war crimes.”
One of the many things that annoys me about politicians is how sure they are of themselves. Everything is black and white. Every idea is good or bad. Take globalism, for example. You either love it or hate it. It works or it doesn’t.
Another thing that annoys me is how so much of a politician’s life revolves around power: Do everything you can to get it, and everything you can to keep it.
Why am I ranting? Because, while our politicians have been consumed with power and the media with the fights over power, a threat to our nation has been virtually ignored.
Blue and White Party leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid are establishing their diplomatic credentials in the immediate run-up to Israel’s March 2 election with an insult to a U.S. administration that has arguably provided Israel with more diplomatic gains than any previous administration.
The Times of Israel reported that at a campaign stop in front of English-speaking Israelis, Gantz accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “of neglecting bipartisan ties in favor of exclusive support from U.S. President Donald Trump’s Republican Party,” under the headline “Gantz pledges to mend ties with U.S. Democrats if elected.”
Bipartisanship was in short supply at the State of the Union address earlier this month—with one notable exception.
Nancy Pelosi had been looking dyspeptic, shuffling the papers she would later rip to shreds, when President Donald Trump reminded his audience that “the United States is leading a 59-nation diplomatic coalition against the socialist dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.”
Suddenly, the House Speaker applauded. Trump then introduced “the true and legitimate president of Venezuela: Juan Guaidó.”
The law professor Alan Dershowitz has thrown a legal hand-grenade into America’s political civil war by claiming to have evidence that former President Barack Obama “personally asked” the FBI to investigate someone “on behalf” of Obama’s “close ally,” billionaire financier George Soros.
He made his cryptic remark in an interview defending U.S. President Donald Trump against claims he interfered in the prosecution of his former adviser, Roger Stone.