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December 6, 2002/Tevet 1 5763, Vol. 55, No. 15
Pursuit of justice drives national agenda
VICKI CABOT
Contributing Editor
A resounding call for justice was the theme when 4,000 Jewish lay leaders and professionals, including seven from Phoenix, flocked to Philadelphia in late November for the General Assembly, an annual three-day meeting of North American Jewish leaders sponsored by United Jewish Communities.
The whirlwind of workshops and plenary sessions imbued the teaching from Isaiah - "Justice, justice, shall ye pursue" - with fresh meaning and immediacy, crisscrossing geographic boundaries as participants wrestled with a raft of issues at home and in Israel.
A veritable pantheon of Jewish intellectual and cultural leaders focused the discussion, while volunteers and community professionals guided sessions on the nuts and bolts of Jewish communal life.
Participants registered for specific tracks that included campaign and endowment leadership institutes, or partook in the plethora of seminars from "A Whole New World: Aging in the 21st Century" to "Facing Tough Choices: Jewish Values and Organizational Decision-Making."
Elaine Schreiber, past president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix, co-chaired a pre-GA session on Jewish renaissance and renewal that engaged more than 250 educators, scholars and lay and professional leaders in discussion on ways to animate Jewish life.
Keynoters Rabbi Saul Berman, a noted Orthodox teacher and thinker, and Leonard Fein, an author and social activist, exhorted participants to define the pursuit of justice within their own lives.
"We are the bearers of responsibility for the lives of others," Berman told the gathering.
Federation board memeber Randy Warner was a presenter in a workshop dedicated to innovative methods for day-school funding. Warner is immediate past chairman of the federation's Jewish Community Day School Scholarship Fund, which gathers funds through Arizona's tuition tax credit for grants to local Jewish schools.
Another Phoenix participant was former Jewish News Managing Editor Leni Reiss, who spearheads Do the Write Thing, a program for college journalism students. Some 50 students at the Philadelphia symposium participated in hands-on sessions on reporting on the Jewish world.
Particularly now, when turmoil in the Middle East is inciting angry discourse on college campuses, Jewish students are in need of information and strategies for response, she said.
"These kids are out there on the front lines," said Reiss, "and many feel unprepared to counter (the anti-Israel rhetoric)."
Grant Silverstein, a Valley resident and Yeshiva University sophomore, said the gathering enhanced his understanding of the organized Jewish community and the role each member can play.
"It made me really proud of being a Jew and seeing how much we do for our family across the world," he said.
A different take on justice was the focus of meetings dealing with how the Jewish community spends its money and who it serves.
Local Jewish Community Foundation Chairman Mark Sklar, who participated in an Endowment Leadership Institute, termed the sessions "relevant and meaningful."
The subject of Israel dominated, with the theme of justice influencing discussions of American Jewish responsibility to the Jewish state and a vision for Israel's future.
In a program titled "The Day After: Judaism, Democracy and the Israel/Diaspora Connection," speakers, including Stan-ford Professor Arnold Eisen and Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, chief rabbi of Ephrat, Israel, argued about how American Jews interface with Israel and how to preserve Israel's democratic character.
"American Jews have not caught up with Zionist responsibility," said Eisen. "We worry about others, but we are not responsible for others."
Contributing Editor Vicki Cabot is president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix. Attending the GA from Phoenix were Cabot, Mark Sklar, Marcia Weisberg, Sandra Shein-bein, Elaine Schreiber, Randy Warner, Leni Reiss and Grant Silverstein.
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