Six Young American Jews Search for Meaningful Jewish Life in Secular Society

Six young American Jews last night discussed their individual and collective searches for meaningful Jewish life in a secular society which they feel has denuded American Jewry of its Jewish identity. They called for changes in the way American Jews relate to their heritage, to each other, and to the non-Jewish world around them. The six, all involved in a variety of Jewish political, educational and religious activities, were panelists at a YIVO Institute for Jewish Research session on “The American Jewish Counter-Culture: Youth In Search of Creative Survival.” The session is part of YIVO’s 45th annual conference. It was attended by over 125 people. The session’s moderator, Dr. Judah J. Shapiro, of the School for Jewish Communal Science, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York, said that the discussion would provide adults in particular–and these were many in the small, crowded hall–the opportunity to “understand” the radicalism and revolution-which he said are signs of life in the Jewish community. Steven Cohen, an assistant professor of social psychology at Harvard and editor of Genesis II, said American Jews must unite as a people and seek success as a body, not as atomized individuals. He warned young Jewish activists not to fall into the trap of the Jewish establishment which, he said, stresses solutions for only small numbers of Jews, not for the people as a whole. The lesson of Zionism, he said, is that “great individuals can grow from the depths of the Jewish experience within the community, not only outside it.”

Robert Goldman, secretary-general of the North American Jewish Student network and an active in the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, criticized the Jewish establishment of living on “institutionalized crises. We think in terms of horrors, not peace,” and only mobilize for causes such as the plight of Soviet Jews. He emphasized the need for Jews to “recognize our inner need to be Jews, or we remain enslaved to identities that are useless.” He urged Jews to “try within themselves to find Jewish life that means something.” Rabbi Hillel Levine, a teaching fellow in sociology at Harvard and a member of Havurat Shalom in Boston, recalled that the unliberated Jews of Eastern Europe never had a problem of Jewish identity. Jews in this country have paid a “price” to become American, he said, and for all the American Jewish community’s money and institutions, there may be “no Jews left in this place.” Levine said Jews have to rediscover the terms of their participation in American society, and must contest the definition of being a Jew and the content of Jewish existence. Arthur R. Waskow, active in Jews for Urban Justice in Washington and author of the controversial Freedom Seder, said “We are not entitled to be Jewish about anything that is dangerous,” such as the Vietnam War. He spoke of the moral role Jews must play in preventing a recurrence of both the holocaust and Hiroshima. Waskow emphasized the need for a strong Jewish diaspora which actually engages in the social issues of the world at large. “There must be a diaspora as well as an Israel if there is to be a worldwide Jewish community,” Waskow said.

Dina Rosenfeld, a graduate student at Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work and a member of the New York Havura, spoke of her initial alienation, as a Jew because of her previous understanding of the womens’ role in Jewish life. But how she said, she views the role of Jewish women not as a “facility” of the Jewish male, but as the sustainer of Yiddishkeit in the home.” She said it is important that women not seek to imitate the Jewish male’s role, for example in the synagogue, but “to find something creative and unique to fulfill her spiritual needs.” Summing up, Eugene Orenstein, assistant professor of Jewish studies at Montreal’s McGill University said the other panelists, all of whom identify themselves as religious as well as somewhat radical politically, are part of a “long and noble Jewish tradition” extending back to Moses Mendelsschn, Rambam and Philo of Alexandria. They are not “new or strange,” he said, and it is a “great accomplishment” that they can clearly identify “the major problems facing the Jewish community today.” It was probably the first time that such a diverse group of young Jewish activists had been gathered on a single panel.