The Structure of Continuity

There is no single way of securing Jewish continuity. That fact lies at the heart of our organisation. Let us think of our own Jewish life and ask what has contributed to its Jewishness. There were the formal experiences of the synagogue and Jewish instruction. There were informal encounters that were sometimes no less potent: friends, youth groups, student societies or a visit to Israel. There may have been negative moments, experiences of antisemitism, which made us suddenly conscious of who we are. Above all, there was the formative influence of childhood and of growing up in a Jewish home. Each of these factors plays its part in shaping how we see ourselves as Jews and contributes to those ultimate decisions which determine whether or not we will hand on a Jewish identity to the next generation.

Can there be, therefore, an overall strategy for continuity and an organisation capable of implementing it? The answer is yes. It involves promoting those activities which lead to positive, knowledgeable and transmissible Jewish identity. Which activities are effective and which are not can be tested and evaluated by research. Clarity of vision must be accompanied by flexibility of method and an understanding of the multi-faceted nature of Jewish experience. Jonathan Woocher put it best when he wrote:

What should we actually do to promote Jewish continuity? In principle we should do everything. Our best strategy would be to build a massive array of opportunities for Jews to be Jewish.… We know that Jewishness is a cumulative experience. The more one is involved in one aspect of being Jewish the more likely one will be involved in others.… The key is not to focus on any one experience, to seek the one decisive moment or programme, but to lay the broad pavement along which the Jewish journey can proceed.

Hence it is imperative for there to be an organisational framework spanning the entire range of Jewish activity. The strength of Jewish life is to be found at the grass roots: in individual communities, synagogues, schools and pioneering initiatives. These form our multiple centres of Jewish excellence. Yet, unless there are connections between them, they are capable of subverting one another.

Unless parents grow Jewishly along with their children, the home can frustrate the efforts of the school. Unless synagogues are open, warm and welcoming, they can sabotage the best endeavours of outreach programmes. Unless a community pays attention to the needs of Jews between leaving school and getting married, the arduous process of Jewish education can come to grief as children emerge into adulthood and find themselves unsupported at a decisive period of transition.

So we must create an organisation that will strengthen individual institutions while at the same time shaping and implementing an all- embracing strategy. The key decisions which we have taken are these:

Jewish Continuity should be a lean and enabling organisation. It will empower the people and organisations in the field. It will not engage directly in education and outreach. It will resource those who are. It will give them the help they need to do their work better.

Jewish Continuity will implement strategy by “steering, not rowing.” It will shape policy by the decisions it takes to fund this project rather than that one. It will make its funding conditional on objectives, whether these concern quality control, or networking, or success in reaching target populations. Where it identifies a gap in communal provision, it will contract it out to organisations with the most appropriate record of achievement. It will encourage educators, rabbis, youth workers, student leaders and outreach practitioners to engage in problem solving, lateral thinking, integration and innovation. It will work through, not over the heads of, local organisations.

Jewish Continuity will be a national, community-wide, overarching body involving schools, synagogues, youth groups, student societies, university chaplaincy, informal, family and adult education. It will attempt to enlist Israel and welfare organisations as well. It will be broadly based, so that every Jewish community in Britain will have its own Jewish Continuity committee, its local leaders and its own development plan.

Jewish Continuity will be a task-oriented organisation. Its aim is not to achieve a consensus on what constitutes Jewish identity, literacy or commitment. No such consensus is currently available. The Jewish community is fragmented. It contains a host of institutions whose visions and interests conflict. Were we to aim for agreement on matters which have divided Jews for the past two centuries, we would invite a decade of sterile debate. Instead, Jewish Continuity will recognise the diversity of ways in which Jews arrive at Jewish commitment. It will encourage those activities which make a positive difference to Jewish lives, and to the Judaic strength of the next generation. It will set a priority on creativity, excellence and innovation rather than on a common-denominator approach to Jewish life.

What then are our objectives?

Vision The first task of Jewish Continuity is to create a vision and a sense of urgency. The future of Anglo-Jewry, indeed of the diaspora as a whole, is at risk. I have tried to show why it is at risk. For generations we have concentrated on social integration and physical survival. In the process, we have neglected the continuity of Jewish identity. Until recently we could take it for granted. We can do so no longer.

We will have succeeded if, and only if, Anglo-Jewry places identity-formation at the top of its communal agenda. For this to happen, there must be more than a sense of crisis. There must be genuine conviction that Jewishness and Judaism matter, that they are precious, and that they must be handed on to the next generation.

I have concentrated in this book on the crisis. I have said less – and much more needs to be said – about the conviction. As Jacob Neusner puts it, “When we know why we want to survive, what difference it makes for us to continue as a distinctive group, we shall have no problem finding out how.”

Continuity depends on confidence, which depends in turn on content. For centuries Jews passed on their faith and way of life to their children, not because they had no alternative, nor because of unquestioning loyalty to the past, but because they believed in Judaism’s dedication to the family, the community, education, philanthropy, social justice and individual righteousness. They believed that being Jewish was the best way for a Jew to be a human being.

A century of trauma, antisemitism and anti-Zionism has left its mark on the Jewish soul. It has left us defensive and insecure. But we must eventually awake from the nightmare and recover our self-respect. If not, we will continue to be ambivalent about our Jewishness and we will convey mixed messages to our children.

Jewish Continuity rests on a vision which it must communicate: that to be a Jew is to be an heir to one of the greatest traditions of faith, morality, community and individual living the world has ever known.

Leadership Continuity needs “champions,” individuals who will turn vision into reality. Jewish Continuity will recruit lay leaders and undertake not merely to energise them but also to educate them in what Anglo-Jewry does and what it might do – focusing on models of best practice both here and abroad. It will concentrate on new leadership, young leadership and recruiting excellence. It will also aim to match leaders to tasks, and to encourage movement in communal leadership so that people are regularly faced with fresh challenges, and challenges are met by new faces.

Resources Jewish Continuity will aim to generate resources for education and outreach in all its forms. Because it will aim to secure not only funds but also commitment and involvement, it will be judged not only by the sums it raises but by the number of donors it secures.

It will raise funds for three purposes. First, it will resource Jewish Continuity itself, with the proviso that it must remain a lean, enabling organisation with the minimum budget necessary to achieve its ends. The principles are that it will not do anything done by any other organisation, that it will not engage in education at the point of delivery but instead work through organisations in the field, that it will not do anything that could be done effectively at the local level, and that it will employ a minimum of paid staff.

Second and more importantly, it will support existing bodies through project-based funding, and direct this support in such a way as to influence the development of education in line with its overall strategy. Third, it will help existing bodies to fundraise for themselves. One way in which it will do so will be by creating a national campaign in which money is returned directly to the localities where, and the bodies for whom, it was raised.

A communal strategy Jewish Continuity will develop a community-wide strategy for Jewish learning, experiencing and doing in all forms and contexts and for all ages and groups. It will implement this strategy by the way it allocates funds and resources.

Within the context of an overall, long-term vision, it will develop a five-year plan, to be reviewed annually. It will develop broad criteria of success, together with quantifiable targets for specific tasks. It will develop structures of accountability for the achievement of its targets. At its core will be the perception best expressed by Jonathan Woocher: “The new Jewish mosaic we envision will have to be built one tile at a time. The challenge is to remember the grand design as we put each piece into place.”

An integrated strategy The greatest weakness of Jewish education throughout the diaspora is its fragmentation. Jewish Continuity will address this problem directly. As an overarching, enabling body it will not own schools or programmes, but it will help to resource them in a structured way, so as to advance an overall plan. Where cooperation or rationalisation are necessary, these will be promoted and made a condition of support. In cases where gaps exist, Jewish Continuity will ensure that they are filled by the organisations with the most appropriate available skills.

A research-based strategy The Jewish community has finite resources but potentially infinite demands. Too often in the past, spending decisions have been made on the basis of institutional interests, special pleading, even personal whim. Prestige projects of limited impact have sometimes gained at the expense of essential services, such as teacher training and curriculum development. Jewish Continuity will commission research and independent evaluation so that the effectiveness of different forms and institutions can be monitored and assessed.

Promoting people Creating continuity depends almost entirely on people. A school or an adult education programme can be housed in poor buildings, but they can transform the lives of those they touch. Identity and commitment are shaped not by buildings but by relationships between people. While not excluding capital projects from its remit, Jewish Continuity will concentrate on the “people dimension” of education.

Jewish Continuity will therefore develop a strategy for recruiting and training educators, pre- and in-service. It will aim to raise standards not only of teachers in schools but also of youth and community workers, outreach workers and adult educators. In doing so, it will work in conjunction with teachers, head-teachers and governors so that they share ownership in and responsibility for the process. It will enlist the best available expertise, not only within Anglo-Jewry, but drawing also on the resources of secular institutions in Britain and Jewish institutions elsewhere, especially in Israel.

Making connections Jewish Continuity takes as a well-documented premise that moments of Jewish learning, experiencing and living are most effective when they are reinforced. It will therefore encourage a holistic approach to continuity, bringing together schools, youth groups, the synagogue, informal, family and adult education, Israel experiences and forms of community service. It will do this in a variety of ways: through lead communities which become pilot projects for an integrated strategy in a particular locality, networking of lay leaders and professionals, and community-wide projects which involve bringing different agencies, leaders and professionals together.

A bias towards outreach and innovation Jewish Continuity cannot, by itself, meet all the needs of the Anglo-Jewish future, nor would it be desirable for it to do so. It must aim to empower and facilitate the localities and organisations directly involved. Even so, it must establish priorities. Therefore, though it will be supportive of all ventures that create continuity, it will embody a bias towards those institutions and projects which most affect Jews whose involvement in Jewish life is marginal.

It will, as part of its strategy, identify constituencies for which little or nothing exists in the form of contexts for learning about or experiencing Jewish life or forming Jewish relationships. It will also focus on key moments of affiliation and disaffiliation, such as leaving home for university or work, leaving university, getting married, having children and arranging for their education.

Once it has identified gaps in communal provision, Jewish Continuity will encourage and resource individuals or organisations to develop creative projects that speak to the needs of such groups or moments. It will work through those closest to the problem, and will facilitate contact between those who know the constituency and those who have the requisite skills. In short, Jewish Continuity will have a bias towards outreach and innovation.

A learning community At the core of Jewish Continuity is the realisation that Jewish identity in the diaspora is not something that happens of its own accord. It must be learned and lived, acted out and constantly reinforced. In this process, much depends on our choices as individuals. Much, too, depends on our decisions as a community. Does Anglo-Jewry care about itself as much as it cares about communities elsewhere? Does it care about its junior as well as its senior citizens? Does it care about its future as much as about its past? Is continuity fully equal, in our communal priorities, to Israel and welfare?

We must aim at a community in which, in Alvin Schiff’s words, “Jewish youth are exposed to and involved in a confluence of cognitive-affective Jewish experiences in a Jewish school (preferably elementary and secondary day school), synagogue, youth group, summer camp and home (via Jewish family education, where appropriate). And all this capped by an Israel experience during the teen years, especially a post-high school year of study in Israel.” We must take collective delight in learning and growing as Jews.

Jewish Continuity is not, in itself, a complete answer to the complex problem of safeguarding the Jewish future. Nevertheless, it will provide Anglo-Jewry with a disciplined structure from within which answers will emerge. Its task is to provide vision, leadership, strategy, resources and research. It is not too much to say that on its success the future of Anglo-Jewry depends.