Big Tent Judaism

More Great Conference Coverage!

An article in today’s Washington Jewish Week, “Building the Jewish Big Top: Parley Focuses on the Art, Science of Outreach,” by Associate Editor Richard Greenberg, does a great job capturing the vision and optimism of JOI’s Third Annual Conference, held earlier this week (and already blogged about here):

The conference agenda included everything from nuts-and-bolts discussions of successful outreach initiatives to a presentation on “the outreach potential of popular entertainment” to personal vignettes from those who have lived life on the outskirts of American Judaism….

Keynote speaker Adam Bronfman, conference co-chair, has experienced life on both sides of the inclusion divide. Raised in a completely secular household, Bronfman married his high school sweetheart, who was not Jewish at the time, but later converted after raising their four children as Jews.

“My kids live in an identified Jewish home, yet when they go out, sometimes they’re told they’re not Jewish,” Bronfman, managing director of The Samuel Bronfman Foundation, said in his Sunday night talk. “My story is not unique.” In fact, he said the “issue of outsiders and insiders” is mulled over each day at his foundation.

“Rejection has unintended consequences,” he added. “I think anyone who identifies as a Jew is a Jew; I don’t have a threshold.” Bronfman, however, conceded that perhaps because of his high-profile name, he and his wife have encountered fewer obstacles than other intermarried couples. “I want that for everyone,” he added.

A few more photos of the conference after the jump… (more…)

“WOW” what a conference!

As one attendee of JOI’s just-concluded conference wrote on her evaluation form: “Wow.” Another told me that he’d been attending Jewish conferences for over 20 years and that Sunday’s program was the single-best day of any conference he’d ever been to.

After almost ten months of preparation, and weeks of non-stop work leading up to these past three days in Washington DC, the JOI staff is extremely gratified at the positive feedback we’ve received and thankful to the hundreds of Jewish communal professionals and lay leaders who traveled from as far as Australia to join us. And we’re ready to recommit ourselves to the promise we made to them: this is just the beginning.

Sue Fishkoff writes in her JTA article about the conference, “Outreach advocates unveil coalition at confab, set to launch new initiatives“:

Rabbi Kerry Olitzky has been urging the Jewish community to be more welcoming to intermarried and unaffiliated families for the past 20 years. Now the executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute and his New York-based organization seem poised for a major breakthrough….

The institute has made a big push in the past two years to get outreach on top of the Jewish agenda….

These projects require funders who believe in outreach, Olitzky noted, as well as communal organizations willing to give up their private fiefdoms and work together. More and more Jewish communities have bought into the outreach agenda.

Have we reached the “tipping point”? Still too early to tell, but as the article mentions, a highlight of the conference was the launch of BigTentJudaism.org, which we hope to build as the venue for communal professionals and lay leaders to come together around welcoming newcomers, as well as linking up newcomers to the organizations that will be welcoming to them. It’s just a skeleton site right now, but with the conference over we will be able to dedicate more of our time and resources to make that vision a reality.

Here are some photos from the conference… (more…)

JOI Op-Ed: Let’s Create a Big Tent Judaism

In anticipation of the Jewish Outreach Institute’s Third Annual Conference beginning this coming Sunday October 14, 2007—and the launch during its opening session of our Big Tent Judaism Coalition—JOI’s executive director Rabbi Kerry Olitzky has co-authored along with Rabbi Elliot Dorff of the American Jewish University an opinion piece carried in today’s Jewish Telegraphic Agency dispatch called “Like Abraham and Sarah, Jewish World Should Welcome All into a ‘Big Tent’.” Here is the original full text:

All are Welcome into a “Big Tent Judaism”
By Rabbi Elliot Dorff and Rabbi Kerry M. Olitzky

Imagine you are trekking through town on a scorching hot summer day when you pass by a man sitting at the entrance to his home, which happens to have all of its doors open. The man and his wife, whom you have never met, invite you into their home, provide you with water to drink, food to eat, a refreshing cool shower, and even rest in their den or guest room.

While this may not seem plausible to most of us—city dweller or suburbanite—it is familiar to readers of the Bible. This is an updated version of the well-known story of Abraham and Sarah, Jewish ancestors who modeled a variety of important values and behaviors for us. Long before the Rabbis began to codify actions in Jewish law, Abraham and Sarah innocently modeled simple welcoming Jewish behavior. They did not just invite guests into their home; they served them. They offered them water with which to wash. And they provided them with physical and spiritual sustenance. Their actions actively communicated one message to their guests: All are welcome in our tent.

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