Seeking clues into the mind of the next JTS Chief, Sam Freedman looks at Eisen’s Sh’ma essay for insights.

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Jewish Reading, Then and Now

(click here for the original interview from JBooks.com, published several years ago but very instructive and interesting)

In the weeks leading up to the presentation of the 5^th annual Koret Jewish Book Awards and the re-launch of JBooks.com, Steven Zipperstein, Chair of the Koret Book Awards Committee, and Yosef I. Abramowitz, CEO of Jewish Family & Life! and publisher of JBooks.com, got together for a conversation about the awards and the future of Jewish reading. The following is an excerpt of their conversation.

Yossi Abramowitz: Let’s start with your reading as a child. What did you read? What stuck, both in general and then Jewishly?

Steven Zipperstein: Well, first, my dad was a book collector. The idea of spending four, five, eventually ten dollars, God knows twenty dollars, on a book–it just seemed inconceivable to him. He would buy duplicates by the pound. When I cleaned out his library after his stroke a few years ago, I counted 34 copies of Alan Dershowitz’s Chutzpah. And he wasn’t even all that much of a fan of Alan Dershowitz.

He had this large collection of guidebooks, Ann Landers-type books about sex, which he bought by the pound and intermixed with extraordinarily rare early 19^th century missionary tracts from Poland and the Middle East that he had also bought for 75 cents a piece. He had a sense of the value of books. He was particularly interested in rabbinic sermons and amassed this extraordinary collection, about a thousand of them, mostly American rabbinic sermons dating back in some cases to the early 19^th century. One of the most impressive collections I’ve seen. We donated his library to Arizona State just a few months ago. So, books were from the outset a way for me to connect with him and probably at the same time a portal to look beyond him.

When I was a senior in high school, I wrote a play–probably dreadful but it was well received–and my father came to see it. My father was one of these massively busy businessmen who rarely, if ever, came to school events. I stopped by his office after school and while he couldn’t register approval visibly, all he said was, “Let’s go to Pickwick’s.” Now, Pickwick’s was a retail bookstore and in our house, the notion of buying retail was comparable to moon travel. We got in his car, drove to Hollywood Boulevard, and went into Pickwick’s. He looked at me and all he said was, “Buy whatever you want.” That was his way of saying he liked the play. It was communication through books. Everything was book based, in a sense, word based. It was books, the printed word, that mediated our relationship and that was the most important relationship I had as a child.

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Visitors to Jewish Family & Life! Headquarters know that the best time to meet is on a Friday, late morning or early afternoon, since we bake and sample a JFL-Abramowitz tradition, Milky Way Challah. MyJewishLearning.com has published the secret to its success; you can view it by clicking here.

The Hadassah Brandeis Institute also produced a video on challah and there’s a segment on our Milky Way Challah. We’ll try to get it up on the web for you soon. Included never before released footage and explanation of the symbolic meaning of this challah.

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Ken Gordon, the rising star of the Jewish literary world, not only edits JBooks.com, but also just launched a cool site that got page one of the NYT Arts section. Click here to find out about QuickMuse.com.

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Tonight in Springfield, MA, there was a wonderful dinner honoring Harold Grinspoon. Got to do my traditional bantering with Michael Steinhardt and came home to this editorial in the SF JWeekly. There are two differences, however, between Michael and me. Yes, he has money. And no, he doesn’t have a comprehensive strategy for the educational transformation of Jewry. I’m just a regular guy but know how to make it all happen. Hmmmm. Enjoy the editorial.

Clarification: Michael gave a speech the GA in Jerusalem in 2003. Nowhere does he propose giving every Jewish child a free Jewish education. At one point he talks about creating the fund for Our Jewish Future with at least 100 million dollars which would be a challenge fund for a range of educational initiatives. At another point he talks about Newborn gift which would be a gift available to every Jewish newborn and could include a voucher towards Jewish preschool or a later trip to Israel. The Jewish press often erroneously conflates the two claiming that he proposed a 100 million dollar fund to give every newborn free tuition.

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From our Kol Dor friend Paul Thomas:

Global Jewish Social Action Month 2006 has its first media coverage. — Paul

http://www.somethingjewish.co.uk/articles/1901_jews_work_together.htm

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Become a ‘kingdom of priests’ by improving Jewish education

By Yosef I. Abramowitz

NEWTON, Mass., May 22 (JTA) — Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people, the entire Jewish people in all generations. While there are clearly many educational successes in Jewish life that should be celebrated and supported, we must also acknowledge that there is room for improvement in both quality and reach.

American Jewry, even with an estimated $30 billion infrastructure — all the buildings, land, budgets, staff, endowments, foundations and other assets — still has the highest attrition rate of any religious group in the United States.

Most educational leaders and philanthropists who have focused on Jewish education are only planning for modest, incremental improvements rather than developing sweeping, national strategies. This is for three reasons: First, there is no national vision of Jewish education to rally around. Second, there is a lack of confidence in the ability of the educational systems to really change because of entrenched cultures. Third, there is a large and growing gap between the understanding of the philanthropists and planners and the actual, evolving market itself, meaning the million Jewish kids and their households.

Achieving universal, lifelong Jewish education is attainable in a decade. Pursuing this vision is in alignment with what Shavuot is supposed to inspire us to achieve. As we stood at Sinai, God tells Moses that we are to become “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.�? The term “kingdom of priests�? is revolutionary both for its time and in our day as well. Read more

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I am a big fan of multi-generational philanthropy, as it brings together different sensibilities and styles that, if done well, can be very effective at impacting Jewish life.

The Posens are a father-son team with a passion for secular Judaism, the diverse, cultural intellectual tradition that has the greatest potential for growth among Jewry. The age of denominationalism is eroding, say the surveys, with most Jews feeling connected through the ethical and cultural heritage of our people. To read JTA’s story of how the Posens have effectively targetted university students outside of the Hillel gateway, click here.

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The greatest public policy failure in Jewish life of the past decade has been toward the remaining Jews in Ethiopia. United Jewish Communities is actually out ahead of the State of Israel on this one and has a mission right now, as part of Operation Promise. (The Israeli government has voted to bring everyone home but is not implementing the decision)

It’s time to bring the rest of the community home and so we must increase the pressure on the State of Israel to keep its commitments and increase the Aliya. In the meantime, UJC is offering a blog of its current mission. Click here. There are also links to more information about Ethiopian Jewry and the campaign.

Question: Where’s Olmert on this? Sharon was clear. Olmert needs to step up quickly.

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Four student winners in the BabagaNewz “Design A Stamp For Israel�? contest (held in 2005), will see the results of their efforts as 4 new stamps are revealed by the Israel Post Ltd. (formerly the Israel Postal Authority) at the Washington World Philatelic Exhibition:

Sunday, May 28, 2006 2 p.m.
Room 150A
Washington Convention Center
801 Mount Vernon Place NW
Washington, DC 20001

This contest was a collaboration between the Israel Post Ltd. and BabagaNewz, the Jewish values-based classroom magazine. (BabagaNewz is a project of The AVI CHAI Foundation and Jewish Family & Life!, Newton, MA and Wheaton, MD.) The purpose was intended to help students in Grades 1 through 8 creatively explore ways to “stick with Israel.�? More than 1,700 entries from across the United States and Canada were received.
Read more

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