Setting Communal Priorities - Hebrew College Today

Picture these items on your to-do list:

Determine how to create a Jewish community that welcomes the unaffiliated.

Devise the parameters of Jewish identity.

Define the relationship between Jewish communities in Israel and the Diaspora.

Identify the major challenges in Jewish education and creative ways to address them.

These are among the top items on American Jewry's public agenda. In response, the National Center for Jewish Policy Studies at Hebrew College (successor to the Wilstein Institute) recently concluded a multiyear project to describe these changing priorities, assess their significance and recommend policy options.

Research included an examination of documentary evidence and a series of interviews, focus groups and miniconferences across the country involving about 200 communal professionals and lay leaders. Dr. Laurence Rubin, the project's senior scholar, worked closely with the Center's founding director, Hebrew College President David M. Gordis, and the associate director, Rabbi Zachary I. Heller.

Scheduled for publication in fall 2005 and subsequent distribution to Jewish communal leaders across the country, the report on this study, The American Jewish Agenda, aims to stimulate public discussion that will, in turn, influence how communal priorities are determined.

The American Jewish Agenda is part of the Center's ongoing effort to engage major contemporary communal issues and inform the policy-making process. In Spring 2005, the Center, in cooperation with STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal), also published Re-envisioning the Synagogue, which examines potential ways to revitalize the synagogue as the core institution of Jewish life. For copies of either publication, contact zheller@hebrewcollege.edu.