Say you blundered one wet and dreary evening into a town hall meeting in downtown Manhattan and sought to take its measure by listening attentively to the words bandied about by those in the know, words such as ‘ebb and flow,’ ‘cycle,’ ‘crisis,’ and ‘ecosystem.’ You might easily have come away thinking that the matter at hand had to do with stewarding the environment.
You wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but in this instance the environment in question was not Mother Nature’s but rather, the American Jewish community or, more to the point, its relationship to Jewish forms of cultural expression.
Some of the culture mavens at the town hall meeting that evening – a glittering array of talent representative of the “new Jewish culture” - believed that the relationship between the two was enfeebled, perhaps even on “life support.” Others thought it healthy and vital.
Some placed a premium on the kind of affirmation that comes from a strong sense of self, insisting fervently on the integrity of the idiosyncratic. Others underscored the primacy of Jewish cultural literacy, claiming equally as fervently that contemporary American Jews would be well served were they to “connect to something larger than themselves.”
Some of the presenters argued for nurturing and strengthening cultural ties with Israel. Others wouldn’t hear of it, preferring that the limited available resources go exclusively toward the cultivation of American Jewish expression.
And round and round it went: a chorus of voices in which the sensible and the sensational each sought a place at the table. Literally. I’m not sure anything was resolved or that those members of the audience who came in with one way of thinking left with another.
Still, there’s no doubt in my mind and those who packed the house that rainy night, that culture, as Ari Roth, the artistic director of Theatre J, so eloquently put it, makes the American Jewish community “more soulful.”
There’s no arguing with that.
