Billed as \”Jewish Literacy: A Learned Community and a Community of Learners,\” CAJE 31 was a raw, messy, creative affair, with 20 sessions held every hour for five days on such wide-reaching topics as \”God Shopping,\” \”The Jews of Sing-Sing,\” \”Assessing Our Relationship to Israel\” and \”Jews as Global Citizens.\”
Attending the North American Association of Jewish High Schools\’ (NAAJHS) leadership conference last year awakened me to the great possibilities of Jewish pluralism. NAAJHS was founded as a forum for Jewish community high schools to exchange ideas and work toward the betterment of Jewish education.
Everybody talks about Israel, but, surprisingly, there is no teaching, research and community program at an American university that focuses solely on the Jewish state in all its multiple facets.
Limmud, which means learning in Hebrew, is a name that for many in the Jewish and non-Jewish educational world has become synonymous with an inclusive, bottom-up approach to education.
Like college graduates looking to make career contacts, many of the professional and lay day school leaders, major philanthropists, Jewish Federation leaders and Jewish endowment fund representatives attending the PEJE Leadership Assembly portion, the first of its kind in the United States, took time out to network.
Financial wizard Michael Steinhardt is blunt in assessing the future of North American Jewry.
The next generation is \”mostly Jewish ignoramuses,\” Steinhardt said. \”We haven\’t convinced the general Jewish population of the value of a Jewish education.\”
Building Jewish unity in one afternoon is a tall order. And the organizers of Teen Clal\’s \”One People\” conference knew better than to expect miracles.
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