Thursday 7 February 2008

What should be the priorities of the Jewish community?

Originally published 2/7/08, 6:08 PM, Eastern Daylight Time. Neither of the links work.
An interesting exchange recently took place in the pages of the National Post (Canada) on essentially what should be the priorities of a Jewish community especially within the context of the greater community
in which we live and, in fact, within the world community. Please see:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/02/06/laura-rosen-cohen-the-problem-at-the-canadian-jewish-congress.aspx

and

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/02/07/sylvain-abitbol-and-rabbi-reuven-p-bulka-what-s-right-with-canadian-jewish-congress.aspx

Within the views of both presentations are the obvious political overtones that revolve around what is actually being done -- "we are doing that!" "No, you are not!" -- but there is the greater issue of the balance of being a self-interest group serving the group, and being the bastion of Jewish ethics attempting to present Jewish values to the broader society.

Was a regular newspaper the appropriate forum for this presentation?

What's your take?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Feh.

And I repeat, for your edification: feh.

Secular Jewish groups have no idea what Jewish priorities are, they're so concerned with secular priorities which is why they have their debate in secular newspapers.

Rabbi Richard Wolpoe said...

Rabbi hecht stole my thunder. I was contemplating the next survey to evaulate [rank] the priorities of Modern Orthodoxy.

I don't know if the survey facility allows for ranking but we could figure out something to simluate that

kt
RRW

Anonymous said...

Yeah, put it in and pick the option that shows a graph of how many people chose each. It doesn't rank it in order but gives you a picture of which was most popular.

Priorities in Modern Orthodoxy? Sure, that's easy:

1) Figure out how much I can get away with without actually doing something wrong
2) Find obscure sources that might justify those leniencies in behavior
3) Practice saying "Well, I heard it was okay".

Anonymous said...

Hard to label CJC secular with Rabbi Reuven Bulka as its co-President. That noted it was Mrs. Cohen that chose the vehicle of a secular newspaper.