The Two Minis

With the organization of two Mini-Nahum Goldmann Fellowships in Ottawa, Canada and Cape Town, South Africa during the last week of March 2011, the Memorial Foundation has achieved what we can justifiably consider a milestone in our decades-long effort of developing the "social capital" of the Jewish people. The Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, the crown jewel of our programs for the development of the next generation of the cultural and communal leadership of the Jewish people, has, since 1987, organized twenty-two international fellowships on five continents; Europe — East and West, South America, Australia, Asia and South Africa. Through this program, the Foundation has provided an intense experience in Jewish living, learning and leadership for over 800 young men and women between the ages of 25-40 who have returned to their communities to assume leadership positions there.

The North American Mini-Nahum Goldmann Fellowship

The North American mini-Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, which took place in Ottawa, March 27-29, was a marvelous experience for all who participated — faculty, the Fellows — both alumni of previous Fellowships and the new Fellows who were recruited — and staff. The success of the program was due, in large part, to the extensive planning that preceded the seminar, the quality and diversity of Fellows we recruited and the program (see attached) we organized, which was uniquely shaped to their needs.

The faculty consisted of two veteran teachers at the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, Profs. Saul Berman and Jack Wertheimer. Prof. Berman gave two outstanding lectures that sought to re-configure and link the constellation of ultimate Jewish values that have guided the Jewish people historically with contemporary Jewish society in the Diaspora and the State of Israel.

Prof. Jack Wertheimer and Prof. Irving Abella, who was also invited to join us, provided the Fellows with fair, fresh and provocative perspectives of American and Canadian Jewry, concluding with the challenges that confront both the United States and Canada, the first and third largest Jewish communities in the Diaspora, in surviving in the open and democratic societies that characterize North America.

The critical core of the program, even more than the lectures, which were on the highest possible level, were the workshops and discussion groups which the Fellows ran by themselves. Despite the limited two days at our disposal, we incorporated four workshops and discussion groups into the program, which provoked very wide ranging and intense inter-action, discussion and debate among the Fellows. That interaction was not confined to the formal program. As in past Fellowships, the talkfest began prior to the opening orientation session when the Fellows met for the first time, and continued at the meals, between sessions, up to the final minutes before departure. Based on our experience in past Fellowships, the most important outcome of this one will probably be the network of Fellows that will emerge, even from this mini program.

The largest component for our success was the quality and diversity of the Fellows we assembled for the program. While they did not in any way match the huge geographic spread that characterizes our international program, they were as diverse and active as any group we assembled in the past. It consisted of both lay leaders and professionals from the United States and Canada. Most important were the representatives of the smaller provinces and cities in Canada, who participated in very visible and significant ways in all the discussions. Also represented were Fellows from the right and left political sectors in Jewish life, one of the most explosive sectors of contemporary Jewish life.

Although most of the Fellows never participated in the Fellowship process before, the quality of their comments, the depth of their passions and the intensity of their interchanges was almost a facsimile of what occurred at earlier Nahum Goldmann Fellowships. For the Fellowship veterans, that replication of their earlier Fellowship experience in this new virgin setting was almost magical. Although the program lasted for two days, the Fellows could have easily continued their discussion for three to four more days.

Most importantly, at the North American mini-Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, we demonstrated again, as we have at all our previous Fellowships, that the concept of Klal Yisrael, according to Prof. Jonathan Sarna, an endangered Jewish value, can still be made operative. It still has both validity, vitality, and profound significance for young Jews, despite the polarization and divisiveness that characterizes so many sectors of Jewish life in North America. Fellows from the most diverse educational, religious and communal backgrounds, with very sharply divergent and deeply held beliefs, were able to intensely discuss and debate those views, while simultaneously being able to acknowledge the bonds that emerged between them during the Fellowship, recognizing that these bonds have no less transcendental meaning and value than the issues about which they differed. The Nahum Goldman Fellowship for most of the Fellows who participated in Ottawa remarkably began to resemble, like past Fellowships, an authentic expression and microcosm of the concept of Klal Yisrael. We are more confident after the Ottawa Nahum Goldmann Fellowship that this dimension of the program can be replicated and expanded in the future both in North American and in other Jewish communities and the world.

Collective Wisdom

We also deeply believe that there inheres in the body of the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, both in the mini-models in South Africa and North America, and in the international ones, the collective wisdom of the next generation of young Jewish leaders regarding how they can, and should, relate to the various disparate sectors of the Jewish community, as well as the larger social context that encompasses our communities and Jewish life globally. We think that it is possible, as we have already begun to do, to successfully tap and distill the collective wisdom and make that collective wisdom available, through the international and mini-Fellowships, to the Fellows themselves, their peers, and, hopefully, the leadership of their communities. This may be one of the most important contributions of the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship to the Jewish community, especially if done in a manner that can serve both their dreams and aspirations as Jewish leaders and help them restructure and intensify Jewish life in their North American communities.

The most important accomplishment of the program in Ottawa and South Africa, the latter which I will describe briefly below, proves that we were able to adapt and expand a concept originally devised for smaller, distant, dispersed and less effectively organized Jewish communities in the Diaspora to North America in the first and third largest Diaspora Jewish communities in the world, and demonstrate the efficacy of our model for the development of the leadership in Canada and the United States. In Ottawa we successfully established a safe and secure forum where young Jewish leaders of the most diverse backgrounds — geographically, religiously, ideologically, politically and culturally — can engage in intense dialogue about their beliefs, often disparate, with great passion and civility, recognizing simultaneously, as I pointed out earlier, that these bonds that they have established within the group have transcendental value no less significant for them as Jews than the ideological and political positions they espouse. This indeed is in essence what constitutes the concept of Klal Yisrael.

We are also attaching, for your information, selected responses we received from the Fellows by email after the Fellowship and the profiles of the Fellows participated in the North American Mini-Fellowship that amply demonstrate both the considerable diversity of the Fellows and the incipient community that became evident and plausible there after only two days of the meeting.

Read More: Report on Mini Nahum Goldmann, Cape Town