OK, so I'm not quite in Israel yet - technically I'm still in the airport in New Jersey, waiting for my El Al flight to board, but I'm already thinking about all of the great speakers, conversations and opportunities that these two conferences - the first organized by the Jewish Agency for Israel, tthe second by the Jewish Federation of North America - will offer.
One topic that seems to be at the top of the agenda for a few different sessions is the recent Pew Poll on American Jewish life, which I have written about in a previous entry. While I have taken a little time to read some of the commentary on it by other leaders in the Jewish community, I am particulalrly interested in seeking out Jews from outside the US to see if they are even aware of the poll and if so, how its conclusions track with their own communal experiences in Europe, South Africa, etc.
I am guessing that in some ways the findings of the study will be seen as uniquely reflective of American Jewry - after all, no other country (save Israel, of course) has such a large population of Jews to begin with and likely much less diversity within the communities when it comes to denominatins and modes of Jewish expression. Nonetheless, I would personally love to have an opportunity to see the results of a similar survey done in Australia, the UK and South Africa - other anglophone countries where Jewish immigrants have made homes and built communities. There is no question that this current snapshot of American Jewish life is thought-provoking and will spark debate and conversation in the years to come, but I think if we really want to have a good sense of where the Jewish people, as whole, might be heaed, then we need to widen our focus and take into acount the trends, changes and demography of Jews around the world, from New Hampshire to Israel and everywhere in between. I am hopeful that this current trip to Israel will afford me the opportunity to begin to expand the margins of this discussion, all of which I intend to write about here on the Director's Chair blog.
Copyright Daniel E. Levenson 2013.
