Dear Broadband Readers,
The classic acceptance speech, including the person who rushed the stage toward the end of my talk and stole the show.
Enjoy!

In honor of the upcoming second Limmud NY conference, here are my remarks from the from the Closing Plenary Limmud NY 2005 5765

My name is Yossi, and wow, I feel so privileged to be part of this historic gathering.

MLK weekend was an inspired choice. And when Jews feel inspired, we should do many things, including to sing. Here’s a niggun you may recognize:

(“we shall over-come…�)

I think that there are people in this room who may know something about dreams and the fulfillment of dreams.

The opening session of Limmud NY focused on a text about acquiring and finding knowledge, friends and teachers. Read more

Israel needs a political party to champion Education and Social Justice. I am so pleased to announce that Atid Echad will be running in the upcoming Knesset elections on a platform emphasizing education, Jewish values and social justice.
Jewish Family & Life!’s unique Jewish values matrix is the party’s response to the lack of content in the Dovrat Commission’s report restructuring Israel’s educational system. A broad-based educational party headed by an Ethiopian activist is clearly a party that understands the value of Jewish peoplehood, which is the best unifying organizing principle for a strong Jewish future.
My friends Avraham Neguse and Rabbi Yechezkel Shteltzer are the #1 and #2 on the Atid Echad (One Future) ticket. The party is aiming for a realistic five seats in the upcoming elections, with the 120,000 member strong Ethiopian community mobilizing to provide half the necessary votes. Yechezkel is a member of Kol Dor and in conversations with influential Kol Dor members to join the effort; Avraham is the leader of South Wing to Zion, the key advocacy group in Israel for the aliya of the remaining Ethiopian Jews. Yechezkel launched a social movement, New Idan, through Israeli schools that has distributed 300,000 copies of its signature book, Daber Elay Yafe, Speak to Me Nicely, about teaching Jewish values and civil society with a very menchlekeit, down-to-earth tone.
Stay tuned to find out how to support the party. Meanwhile, send email requests to me at YosefA@aol.com

One of the best things about the GA is attending the Covenant Award lunch, first as a hopeful, then a winner, and then as a veteran. Here’s what I wrote for the Awards Committee:

Making a Jewish Splash

I am convinced that we can impact the destiny of the Jewish people. Through accidents of history and biography, I have been part of movements to rescue Jews from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia. Part witness, part catalyst, I felt first-hand the force of power that is generated by vision, strategy and action. I learned that reaching across organizational lines allows you to stretch the range of possibility. I have heard many choruses of nay-sayers–people and organizations who do not believe in miracles–only to experience the exuberance of unlikely collective accomplishment.
I bring the lessons learned from activism to my Jewish educational ventures.
Nachshon, who marched into the sea, serves as a role model. Did the sea split because of his faith, courage or optimism? Or was it because each step into the deeper water was a challenge to the Creator? (I often find that I am up to my neck.) It doesn’t matter, so long as the sea splits. Read more

Jewish stagnation; Analyst proposes Mormon strategy to rally the faithful.(NATION)(CULTURE, ET CETERA)

The Washington Times; 4/15/2004

Byline: Julia Duin, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Yosef I. Abramowitz, the chief executive officer of Jewish Family and Life, based in Newton, Mass., is also the president of the Union of Councils of Jews in the former Soviet Union and publisher of Sh’ma, an intellectual journal.

In an essay for this month’s Moment magazine, he suggests Jews need to emulate Mormons in terms of creating a more family-friendly culture. The Jewish community, he says, also must redirect its energy and rethink its institutions, philanthropy and ideology in order to avoid stagnation. Following are excerpts from an interview with religion writer Julia Duin. Read more

Intermarriage may stunt Jewish fund-raising in future

Northern California Jewish Bulletin; 10/13/1995; Yosef I. Abramowitz

Northern California Jewish Bulletin

10-13-1995

Intermarriage may stunt Jewish fund-raising in future.

“The organized Jewish community is in the process of self-destructing,” says Dr. Sidney Schwarz, president of the Washington Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values. “Centralized fund-raising will be a thing of the past in 50 years, probably sooner.”

Many Jews see another threat, from the current 50 percent intermarriage rate and its impact on the population’s size: Jewish fund-raising for community needs and Israel could dry up.

According to most predictions, the majority of American Jewish households will, in 50 years, be interfaith homes. If the giving trends for those households keep pace with those of today’s intermarried, then Jewish institutions and causes won’t raise much money, Read more

From fantasy to reality: Women to grab bigger role in Judaism

Northern California Jewish Bulletin; 10/27/1995; Yosef I. Abramowitz

Northern California Jewish Bulletin

10-27-1995

From fantasy to reality: Women to grab bigger role in Judaism. “We are either the last, the dying Jews or else we are those who will give new life to our tradition. Rarely in our history has so much been dependent upon one generation. We will either forfeit or enrich the legacy of the ages.” - Abraham Joshua Heschel

Walking into a Jewish gift shop or a virtual-reality cybershop in the spring of 2045, the future Jew sill come across a wide selection of Passover haggadot and seder plates.

“Which one would you like to look at?” inquires a friendly salesperson. “With or without a place for an orange? The ones that accommodate on orange are by far the most popular.”

Along with bitter herbs, charoset, greens, shankbone (or its vegetarian alternative) and egg, most 21st century American seder plates will likely have a place for an orange. Many will say that it, like the egg, symbolizes life and at its seeds symbolize the hope for redemption.

Some will insist that the orange should come from Israel, as a testament to our spiritual bond with the world’s largest Jewish community. Read more

In year 2045 - A Jewish president, but apathetic Jews

Northern California Jewish Bulletin; 10/20/1995; Yosef I. Abramowitz

Northern California Jewish Bulletin

10-20-1995

In year 2045 - A Jewish president, but apathetic Jews.

When President Dan Goldwin, a Democrat, announced he was not going to seek a second term in 2045, he didn’t expect the national reaction he received.

Millions of signatures on petitions to draft the nation’s first Jewish president for a second term came flooding in from around the country. Behind the effort was a coalition of African American, Asian American and Latino organizations, representing half of the nation’s 380 million citizens.

Goldwin, like many of the 50 Jewish members of Congress, got his political feet wet in the late 20th century with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in college and through the Panim el Panim High School in Washington program. Read more

Last week, I had the honor to participate in the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture Advisory Board meeting. Tad Taube is an unusual philanthropist and leader who likes out-of-the-box thinking and believes that businesses and organizations that stagnate will die. So the role of new ideas and new visions is critical. The agenda is half about Poland, half about Jewish life in the U.S. On the surface, it frankly doesn’t make any sense. But in reality, in the intensity of the room and stories of communal rebirth in Poland, Poland is the perfect backdrop for a discussion on the future of the American Jewish community.
With few Jews and few Jewish institutions, it is experiencing a revival of life. We, however, have so many Jewish institutions and so many Jews, but lack generally for vision. One of the most beautiful parts of the meetings is to experience the combined intellectual power of such a diverse gathering, which feels like the best of the Sh’ma Salons.

Most philanthropists act as if program alone will change the course of American Jewry. Yet without the power of new ideas, the programs will do nice work but are unlikely to be transformative. Therefore, honoring new voices and coming to new understandings of the Jewish condition are necessary prerequisites to revival. If it can be done in Poland, it can eventually be done here.

This week I had the pleasure to address in New York the American Jewish Committee’s Board of Governors Education Committee. It was a two-hour discussion with a group that has staked out a position on the question of outreach different than my own. Yet they were remarkably interested and animated by many of the new ideas and we found many points of agreement on peoplehood and Jewish literacy and the place of Shoah education. Dr. Steven Bayme, its prolific director, served on the judging panel fifteen years ago that awarded me a Wexner Graduate Fellowship for my study of Jewish journalism at Columbia. Billie Gold, one of my first advisory board members for JFL, and Lynn Korda Kroll, a leader I have admired mostly from afar but gave me early encouragement, both were in attendance. It is a remarkable feeling to be able to come and essentially gift back ideas and energy to people who helped me early in my career.