The twenty-first Nahum Goldmann Fellowship took place at the Kinneret in Israel on February 16-24, 2009. Forty-two fellows from 24 countries attended — including representatives from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Croatia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Latvia, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, and Venezuela. The group was the largest and most diverse that we ever assembled.

There were numerous factors responsible for the extraordinary success we achieved at this Fellowship, including the outstanding faculty and the beautiful site of the seminar on the edge of the Kinneret against the backdrop of the stunning Golan Heights. The two major ones in my judgment were the very diverse geographic, ideological, and cultural composition of the group, and the very high quality of the Fellows. Secondly and equally important, were the components of the program, a blend of features and goals of past Fellowships with a number of recent innovations and objectives, which together generated a powerful synergy which strongly impacted on the Fellows in a manner that was visible to all present from the very start of the Fellowship.

Bonding with K'lal Yisrael

Everyone in attendance — fellows, faculty, and staff — will testify that what made this Fellowship especially unique was the incredible bonding that was created among the fellows. The connection between the Fellows has always been one of the most powerful outcomes of past Fellowships. The very first evening, after our orientation session, the fellows were already schmoozing late into the night in our improvised coffee shop. That bonding accelerated with every passing day. Most of the intense conversation dealt with their personal and communal concerns as Jews and potential leaders of their communities. However serious their discussions, the fellows also appeared to enjoy each other's company immensely. There was undoubtedly a huge "fun" component for the participants at this Fellowship.

Not surprising, during the formal sessions of the Fellowship, there was passionate and very intense discussion about the future of their communities, the State of Israel, Jewish culture, and Judaism, with real differences, politically, ideologically, religiously, passionately — very passionately argued — by the fellows. Most remarkably, these intense discussions never impeded the growing solidarity of the group.

This most extraordinary outcome of the seminar found its greatest expression on the Shabbat, which, as in the past, was the peak experience for the fellows. Friday night services were held on the rooftop terrace of the dining room facing the Kinneret and the majestic range of mountains that constitute the Golan Heights. In the twilight, we were totally enveloped spiritually by the beautiful melodies and dancing of a Carlebachian Kabbalat Shabbat, lead by Ronny Schnapp, a fellow from Camberra, Australia. In the encroaching darkness, flocks of geese and other unfamiliar birds seemed to add their songs to ours. Again at the Sabbath meal that followed, there was an abundance of religious and national Jewish melodies, interspersed with songs from the various countries represented in the Fellowship, in which all the fellows participated enthusiastically. In a prolonged Oneg Shabbat Kumsitz that followed, the conversation, now collective, not individual, continued into the wee hours of the morning.

The Sabbath ended with a moving Havdalah service, with a closed circle of fellows, faculty and staff, swaying together in unison to traditional post-Sabbath melodies. Four days earlier, the vast majority of the fellows had met for the first time. By the conclusion of the Shabbat, the bonding that emerged among the fellows had taken on a transcendental value, no less important than the values and ideologies to which they were deeply committed. One could approvingly define the bonding of the fellows at the Fellowship as a micro-macrocosm of K'lal Yisrael, no small achievement in our era of a polarized and divisive Jewish community.