The New Jewish Leaders: Reshaping the American Jewish Landscape

3 Expressive, Progressive, and Protective

A s illustrated in the previous chapter (and others in this volume), the people linked to Jewish groups we have labeled “establishment” and “nonestablishment” differ in significant and sizable ways. Without denying all the possibilities for overlap, and all the fuzziness in the imputed boundaries between the two categories, we can discern rather striking tendencies dividing establishment and nonestablishment group members. For the most part, those who lead the establishment camp—as embodied in federations, congregations, human service agencies, Jewish Community Centers (JCCs), and defense organizations—tend to share several passions and perspectives. They are Jewish survivalists—they see the continuity of Jewish life threatened by high rates of intermarriage and low rates of communal affiliation. They are Jewish communalists—they are committed to supporting and strengthening the institutional features of American Jewish life. They are Jewish protectivists—they see great need to defend Jewish interests at home, in Israel, and around the world against threats from various antisemitic and anti-Israel forces. More than their nonestablishment counterparts , establishment Jews’ political inclinations are decidedly more centrist and may, for some, lean toward being conservative. In contrast stand the leaders of nonestablishment organizations: independent minyanim, social justice projects, cultural endeavors, learning initiatives , and the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” brand of Israel advocacy. These leaders see the establishment camp as overly concerned with threats to continuity, survival, and Jewish interests; unduly insistent upon preserving boundaries between Jews and non-Jews; disturbingly preoccupied with institutional survival rather than the achievement of higher Jewish purpose (whatever that purpose may be); and excessively defensive in its political stance. Instead, leaders of the nonestablishment sector consider it their mission to express and deliver genuine Jewish meaning—to themselves or others— steven m. cohen 3 Expressive, Progressive, and Protective Three Impulses for Nonestablishment Organizing among Young Jews Today Expressive, Progressive, and Protective 85 through enriching experience, be it in prayer, learning, culture, or social justice. They reject seeming tribalism for more fluid intergroup boundaries and greater involvement in the larger world. Their more universalist social justice interests, bound with their sense of Judaism’s particular mission in the world, lead them to value Jewish engagement in addressing society’s greater ills. For these and other reasons, they tend to be situated on the liberal-left of the political spectrum; many see themselves as socially, culturally, and politically progressive. Broadly speaking, leaders from both camps come from similar Jewish formative experiences. They report having parents who, as a group, were more engaged in Jewish life than other American Jews their age; their childhood denominational spectrum finds its center of gravity in the Conservative movement; and they benefited from more numerous and more intensive Jewish educational experiences than most Jews of their generation. That said, the two camps part company in their current identification, with many more establishment leaders retaining conventional denominational labels (even moving a bit toward Orthodoxy) while nonestablishment leaders tend to abandon the denominational affiliations of their childhood years, preferring “post-denominational” or other nondenominational labels. Moving beyond this distinction, we may extrapolate that establishment leaders prefer (and perhaps preserve) inherited categories of identity, whereas nonestablishment leaders prefer (and perhaps privilege) newly constructed and individually selected modes of identity and affiliation. Yet we should be mindful not to infer too much homogeneity within each camp. Any moderately experienced Jewish communal insider can readily speak to variations within the establishment camp. Leaders of JCCs, congregations , local federations, defense agencies, and human service providers maintain different perspectives and commitments. Likewise, diversity exists among so-called nonestablishment endeavors, whose different ultimate objectives are reflected in leaders and constituencies who exhibit different values, interests, and backgrounds. The distinction between the establishment and nonestablishment camps may thus be less sharp than we imagine. Establishment leaders, for their part, bristle at the implicit suggestion that all innovation takes place in the nonestablishment camp, in effect challenging the very nomenclature of “establishment ” and “nonestablishment.” As some establishment leaders certainly qualify as nonestablishment (either through nonestablishment behavior or sharing the worldviews of many in the nonestablishment camp), so too would we expect to find establishment-like individuals in the nonestablishment camp. The very distinction between establishment and nonestablishment is muddied further not only by the diversity within these camps or the overlap 86 steven m. cohen between them but by the lack of a clear formal definition of each camp. Not everything old in Jewish life is establishment, and not everything new...