In January 2008, Jewish Action invited seven prominent veteran rabbis, with a combined 350 years of leadership in the Orthodox community, to reflect on the unpredictable growth and remarkable evolution of American Jewry. The following are excerpts from the wide-ranging discussion.
Today’s Torah leadership is facing almost exactly the same challenges that confronted Western European Jewry 200 years ago. The crumbling of the ghetto walls confronted the Torah leadership with two options—to attempt to create a “virtual” wall or to beef up the stunted “immune system.” Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch saw the removal of the ghetto as a God-given opportunity to restore Jewish life to its original vigor.
Serena is the very first one to step into the auditorium, her steps timed to the beat of “Pomp and Circumstance” banged out on the old piano. She is the shortest by a hair of the twelfth-grade graduating class, not quite four feet eleven inches, with shiny black hair; a very starched white shirt peeks above her satin graduation gown. She sits in the first row.
If keeping mitzvot in a small Jewish community is a challenge today, imagine how much more of a struggle it would be if you had to paper the walls of your wood cabin with newspapers to keep out the cold and carry water home from the creek for cooking and washing.
5769 is a “shanah peshutah,” a “regular” year of twelve months (only one Adar)...
Special Section: Addiction in Our Midst
It’s Motzei Shabbat in Israel. Among the families across the country gathering to hear Havdalah, a number are dreading the coming of night, knowing their sons and daughters will soon join the hundreds at Kikar Zion in downtown Jerusalem, partaking in drugs, alcohol and promiscuity. But thanks to The Zula,* a drop-in center and program for teens at risk run by the Seymour J. Abrams Orthodox Union Jerusalem World Center, more and more parents are sleeping better at night, knowing their children have found a safe haven from the dark life of the streets.
Our children know that treif foods are forbidden because they see us checking food packages for a hechsher and discussing what is kosher and what is not. But how will our children learn about the evils of drug use if we don’t talk to them about it?
I was an extremely creative child. I was a big reader. I would paint, draw pictures, write short stories and poems. My first experience drinking was with a bottle of vodka. I was thirteen or fourteen.
This list of resources, while far from comprehensive, includes some of the major US-based organizations dedicated to assisting at-risk youth and their families.
Does the Torah take more of a socialist or a capitalist approach to society? In fact, it embraces aspects of both socialism and capitalism.
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