Navigating in this Transformational Moment: Insights from the NGFellowship

Wherever one turns at this time there are few positive options or outcomes, as we find our community enmeshed simultaneously in five zones of conflict:

• In the fight against anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
• In the battle to defend Israel amidst the conflict that has raged for nearly two years
• In the tensions surrounding Jewish peoplehood and unity
• In the war being carried internally over definitions and understandings about Israeli society, Zionism, and so much more, and finally
• In the contest for preserving democratic values and institutions.

Having just returned from the 35^th Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, where 36 young leaders from 16 countries came together outside of Sao Paulo Brazil, the seminar mirrored all the complexities and challenges facing Jewish leaders and communities in this difficult and uncertain moment. This year’s seminar was framed around two embracing values, “Truth” and “Responsibility”, ideas that could be seen as bound together and yet might play out as being in tension with one another.

Of particular importance, the NGF is one of a number of activities and programs sponsored by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, https://mfjc.org/:

The Foundation supports and invests in Jewish leaders and scholars across the globe. Through such leadership programs, MFJC strengthens Jewish communities by nurturing bold ideas, bridging divides, and empowering people to shape vibrant Jewish futures wherever the live, learn and lead.

What was particularly impressive surrounding our one-week encounter was to observe the depth of the conversations surrounding these issues.  Framed around a culture of civil discourse and introduced by a set of extraordinary Diaspora and Israel scholars, the range of discussions, workshops, and presentations introduced the participants to the core questions and themes that today define the state of the Jewish world. As young leaders, they were asked to consider their respective responses in managing the case for Israel amidst a complex and challenging war, in unpacking how best to contain and respond to the new anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, in countering the threats to our respective democracies, and in connecting with Jews across the globe in identifying what might bind us together and permit us to build a renewed sense of peoplehood. While the themes under consideration were broad, the focus was often very personal and narrow. In some measure, all of those in attendance were asked to think collectively and globally, while embracing actions that were aligned with one’s local cultural and Jewish realities as well as individual beliefs and identities.

The Jewish world is today a wash with deepening areas of conflict and disagreements, generated from the outside in and most assuredly emerging also within Jewish communal spaces. In an earlier essay I defined this moment as a “tsunami of actions upending our basic democratic norms and political culture.”

Outside of such extraordinary settings as the NGF experience, there is an absence of these essential conversations and collaborative efforts to bridge the deep chasms that today separate us one from the other. As we know, we are experiencing, all at once, generational, religious, and political divisions. Likewise, we have come to realize that as we become increasingly siloed that the lines of communication and the chain of discourse between our respective viewpoints are all but absent.

The gathering in Brazil highlighted Jewish diversity with all of its beauty and complexity, as we have come to realize:

Jewish identity transcends contemporary elements of identity formation — religion (ironically), culture, class, race or skin color, for instance — without even getting into the differences within the Jewish community when it comes to defining ‘Jewishness’.

I suggested recently in an eJewishphilanthropy essay:

“…everyone is struggling to find a way forward in terms of how to understand what is happening, how to question…”

 Unlike other settings within the Jewish world, the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship opens the door on such candid explorations of these difficult but required discussions. Beyond such leadership experiences as the Goldmann Seminar, we are encountering a paralysis today among Jewish communal leaders and the institutions that they represent.

I wrote:

Fearing the loss of donors, should they speak out on American politics and policies. Many of our communal officials and religious leaders have simply gone silent. No doubt, some of them worry about potential external threats, possibly being targeted as “political enemies of the state”, while others fear any criticism of US-Israeli policies will mark them as ‘disloyal’.

This is a new moment for Jews, as we are living with a strikingly different and uncertain political and religious reality. How history will judge our collective responsiveness may well determine the fate not only of Israelis but the character and content of the Jewish State’s democracy. How will our community manage the threats directed against us of anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism? Can we advance Jewish interests, while also seeking to preserve and defend democratic values and our civic institutions?

 NGF represents one of those unique Jewish spaces where such robust dialogue and debate can be found, as its participants engaged in exploring the implications of these respective themes on the Jewish future, and more directly for their own lives.