September 10, 2003

The OU’s Initial Five- Part Response to the Jewish Population Survey:

Confronting Assimilation Crisis, Orthodox Union Calls for Community-Wide Programs Emphasizing Education and Outreach, with National Conference of Synagogue Youth as a Model

Emphasizing Jewish education in all of its forms, outreach programs to the unaffiliated, and the strengthening of the Jewish family, the leadership of the Orthodox Union today announced a five-part plan for confronting the continuing crisis of assimilation and intermarriage as spelled out by the United Jewish Community’s just-released National Jewish Population Survey.

“We owe a debt of thanks to the UJC for conducting this survey and for making clear to all of us the demographic situation we confront in each of its aspects,” declared OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb. “The UJC has shown us the problems facing the American Jewish community; the community itself must devise appropriate responses.”

The OU’s responses to the assimilation and intermarriage findings of the Population Survey are as follows:

• Community Cooperation: “This is not a problem any one of us on our own can solve. The community must combine its resources and work closely together to have an impact,” declared OU President Harvey Blitz. “We pledge to do our part to forge cooperative working relationships throughout the organized Jewish world.”
   
• Jewish Education: Terming Jewish education “the number one priority,” Rabbi Weinreb made clear that education should be emphasized in all of its forms, both formal education in Jewish schools, and informal programs such as camping and Israel trips. The OU’s highly successful National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) for years has emphasized these informal approaches, directed both at Orthodox teenagers and non-observant or unaffiliated young men and women. These programs work; the intermarriage rate of involved NCSY members is close to zero, Rabbi Weinreb and Mr. Blitz said.
  
  The two leaders declared that the emphasis on Jewish education must include not only its quality and expansion but its funding as well, as tuition costs continue to climb, making formal Jewish education unattainable for many families and causing severe economic consequences for others.
   
• Strengthening of Synagogues. “Synagogues have to determine how best to relate to their communities, how to build their congregations, how to improve programming for all levels of observance, and how to be friendly and welcoming places,” said Mr. Blitz. “Our Department of Community and Synagogue services will redouble its efforts with our synagogues on these approaches, providing advice and programming; working with them on building leadership; creating more opportunities for positive growth both individually and communally; and ultimately bringing them closer to our Torah and Jews worldwide,” Mr. Blitz said.
   
• Strengthening and Encouraging the Jewish Family: “Assimilation and intermarriage don’t happen overnight. The Jewish family is the first defense against these threats to the community,” said Rabbi Weinreb. Besides strengthening Jewish education, he called for programs “to help singles marry, to help families flourish, to help them cope with their challenges, to give them resources to turn to.” He noted that for the past several years the OU has presented highly successful programs nationally in positive parenting; this summer, a successful pilot program was held for strengthening healthy marriages.
  
  “If a Jewish family is strong, if it emphasizes Jewish traditions and values, the chances that young people in that family will seek to leave the Jewish community diminish,” Rabbi Weinreb said.
   
• Outreach Programs Must Reach Out Further: “Even as we serve Orthodox youth through NCSY, we will increase our emphasis on outreach. Jewish young men and women who know little or nothing of their heritage, who treated their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs – if they even had one – as their farewell to Jewish life – have little incentive to continue as part of the Jewish community,” Mr. Blitz said. “The purpose of NCSY outreach efforts is to make these young people aware of the beauties of Jewish life and observance, of the richness of their traditions, of the importance of Israel in the life of the Jewish people, of the delight of the Sabbath and the holidays, and of the way they can live as committed Jews and still be modern young adults. NCSY makes it clear that you can be young, cool, aware, and a devoted Jew.”

It is no surprise, therefore, that Zale Newman of Toronto, hired in July to be the new National Director of NCSY, intends to build what he terms “an NCSY for the MTV generation,” and over the next three years to substantially increase NCSY membership in its 14 regions across the United States and Canada.

Mr. Newman calls assimilation and intermarriage the greatest threats facing the Jewish community today. “Through our programs of kiruv (outreach) we must interest these young men and women in feeling that they are a critical part of the Jewish people. We must get to them before we lose them,” he declares.

According to Rabbi Weinreb, NCSY’s emphasis on informal Jewish education will be at the heart of Mr. Newman’s efforts. “For our observant NCSYers, there are programs of Torah study to accompany their learning in school, but in our outreach efforts Jewish education is more informal, discussions rather than classes, learning by doing rather than learning by spending hours in front of texts,” Rabbi Weinreb says. He notes the success of NCSY summer programs for non-Orthodox teens, such as the highly successful “Caravan West” offering for public school youngsters, which features a bus tour throughout Los Angeles and California and on to the Grand Canyon, while including daily informal sessions on Jewish topics and joyful observance of Shabbat.

Another key OU program is its new and rapidly expanding Jewish Learning Initiative (JLI), in which a young rabbi and his wife serve as role models of Jewish family life and provide a atmosphere of learning and modesty on seven campuses (Brandeis, Brooklyn College, Cornell, UCLA, University of Pennsylvania, Yale, and beginning this school year, Princeton).

“Even as JLI serves Orthodox college students and makes them comfortable in a campus atmosphere which often rejects and denigrates religious values, JLI services non-Orthodox students as well who want to pray, learn, eat, meet and socialize with other Jews in a traditional atmosphere. We are there for them as well and to help bring our college students closer to their Jewish heritage,” Mr. Blitz declared.

According to Mr. Blitz, “The OU intends to review with care all the findings of the population survey and to respond with creative and appropriate programming.”

The Orthodox Union, now in its second century of service to the Jewish community of North America and beyond, is a world leader in community and synagogue services, adult education, youth work through NCSY, political action through the IPA, and advocacy for persons with disabilities through Yachad and Our Way. Its kosher supervision label, the , is the world’s most recognized kosher symbol and can be found on over 275,000 products manufactured in 68 countries around the globe.

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