A Quick Response To Shai (Part One)

My proposal has already received some attention on Maya Norton’s “The New Jew” blog.  (Maya’s example, along with her words of encouragement, inspired me to create my own blog here.  Thanks, Maya!)  In particular, I received an excellent critique of my proposal from Shai.  You can read his comments, along with other comments, here.

Shai’s reply was lengthy, and contained several points worth further review.  I think that it makes the most sense for me to review all of them upfront (i.e. the points that I wanted to respond to), and then tackle them individually in separate, smaller posts.

Hebrew as an “organizing force”.  Shai writes: “I don’t share your optimism that affiliation with Israel and its national language is, or for the time being can be, the powerful catalyst to community building your proposal asserts it to be.”  I would agree with Shai’s assertion that the “Hebrew Nation” proposal would likely be only one of several solutions to the problem of assimilation in the diaspora.  Only when several different strategies are applied concurrently would we be able to produce a truly significant impact.

However, I view the “Hebrew Nation” strategy as a highly promising strategy (and perhaps the most promising single approach)  for a few separate reasons.  First, it raises the profile of a Jewish sub-community that many other Jews lack extended exposure to.  In this context, I think a lot about Chabad, which at one time was a relatively small charedi sub-community, practically unknown to the larger Jewish community.  By continually “raising its profile”, it has been able to make Orthodoxy in general (and Chabad’s brand of hassidut, in particular) attractive, if not truly compelling, for a broad range of American Jewry.

Second, I think that Hebrew language institutions (ranging from mini-malls to language centers) would have a wide range of interactions with other Jewish institutions.  Sometimes they could be seen as “competition” (for funding and participants), while at other times they might serve as partners or resource vendors.  The impact of “Hebrew Nation” institutions would certainly extend beyond the range of the Israeli expat community (although I do agree that the intensity of that impact is speculative, and highly debatable).

A third point – one that I make in my proposal – is that I am trying to copy what appear to be successful models used by other ethnic groups.  In future posts, I would like to write much more about two specific institutions that impress me: the Mitsuwa mall chain for Japanese expats (I first stumbled into one store by accident in the mid-nineties, and was awestruck!), and the French Alliance Francaise.  I am not really sure  how much impact these kinds of institutions have on their diasporas, but if they have been able to thrive for an extended period then I would hope these models would help us build sustainable counterparts in the Jewish diaspora.

Israel as a model.  Shai writes: “Israel is not a model or solution for what ails America’s Jewish communities.”  I would politely disagree.  I am not sure, but I think that the source of our disagreement derives from what we consider to be a suitable “model”.  I would not suggest that Israel today consitututes a “model Jewish community”, if we are talking about ethics, broader commitment to Jewish learning, etc.  However, as a nation-state, Israel currently fulfills a specific structural model – “the nation-state model”.  Of course, many other nations – France, Germany, Japan, Iran, Brazil, etc. – implement this model as well.  Practically every nation-state has its own diaspora, and seeks (in one way or another, and for various purposes) to maintain a connection with its expatriates.

When I think about what diaspora Jewry could be, I often think about the North American French – for instance, the Quebecois (whose strong linguistic identity helps preserve the notion of an international francophone community), or even the Cajuns in Louisiana (whose connection to modern French culture is probably seen as much more detached).  While American Jews may indeed face issues greater than those I write about (such as lack of spirituality, materialism, etc.), I would still assert that “finding ourselves” as a diaspora community remains a major, ongoing concern.

 Organizations as actors.  Shai writes: “it seems to me that you speak of (organizational models) as though the organizations were what drives the system, rather than them being an interface between the system and the uses, rather than the confluence of individuals that share values that build the organizations.”  I will have to write more about this in a later post, but your observation is true – I have a fairly unconventional perspective on organizations.  I basically adhere to a biological metaphor – organizations tend to act like living beings, separate in many ways from the people who maintain them and participate in them.

While there are many explanations that I could give to justify this (ranging from human tendancies to groupthink, and the sense of inertia that often results), I think that the best explanation comes from an “adaptation model”.  Organizations maintain a “collective intelligence”, and the core of that intelligence comes from learning how to survive.  As successful organizations grow and expand, they tend to rely on strategies that worked out well for them in the past.  This implies that larger, long-lasting organizations (think about the Federations, for example) will tend to be innately conservative; they will avoid questions key components of their model that have served them so successfully in their past.  Of course, they will be eager to do “outreach” (i.e. attract new participants to existing institutions), but larger reforms will usually be triggered more by threats than by opportunities.

Organizational reform.  Shai notes, as my comments would suggest, that “our organizations are more concerned with our organizations than the people served by those organizations“.  He then writes, “I would think that Job One woud not be to have a different type of organization, but to change our organizations“.  As my previous comments indicate, I am generally skeptical about organizational reform – not because it is not worth persuing (of course it is), but because it is so difficult to achieve.  Trying to change long-standing organizations (especially those with long standing track records of success) is a slow process, even when the environment around those organizations is changing rapidly.  Ironically, one of the best ways to “support” organization change may be to create new, separate organizations that are more in tune with certain environmental niches.  If the start-up organization thrives, it can demonstrate new forms of behavior that might not have been imaginable before.

That’s it for now; I promise to write at least a little more about this stuff in the days to come.