We commend The Chronicle for its prominent coverage in the July 19 issue of the Republican and Democratic campaigns directed to American Jews living in Israel (As U.S. officials descend on Israel, Republicans rally for votes, www.jta.org). In these critical times, the survival of Israel and its friendship with America is the most critical issue facing us. What happens for Israel now will affect Judaism a thousand years from now more than any other current political matter.

The article pointed out that Jewish Americans in Israel favor the Republicans more than Jews in America. Even more in this direction, polls show that only about 24 percent of Jewish Israelis believe that Obama is more pro Israel than pro Palestinian. Thus, the closer Jews are to the real situation in Israel, the more they distrust the current administration.

This is not surprising, considering the Obama administration’s poor record on Israel. While Obama claims in front of Jewish groups to be Israel’s friend, those who know best see otherwise in his actions. The following six examples illustrate this point.

1. Obama is deliberately distancing himself from Israel to curry favor with the Arabs. Israel is the only country in the Middle East that he asks to make concessions. Obama called Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem “settlements.” This emboldened Palestinian Authority President Abbas to demand that Israel stop all building in Judea, Samaria and large parts of Jerusalem as a condition for direct talks with Israel. As a result, this administration’s “peace process” has been ineffective.

2. As Iran moved closer to making the bomb, the administration imposed economic sanctions only after Congress forced the issue. In 2009, popular protests threatened Iran’s regime, but Obama said and did nothing. During protests in Egypt, on the other hand, Obama actively encouraged the removal of President Hosni Mubarak and now the Muslim Brotherhood, much more hostile to Israel, is in charge.

3. The administration has stymied Israel’s defense by leaking details of proposed plans to attack Iran.

4. Obama insulted Prime Minister Netanyahu on his visit to the United States, forgoing the usual photo op and abandoning him in the White House to have dinner.

5. Obama has never visited Israel as president, choosing instead to go to Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

6. Recently, the State Department excluded Israel, our best ally in fighting terror, from its Global Conference on Terrorism, instead hosting questionable allies such as Algeria, Egypt and Pakistan.

On political issues other than Israel, more Jews are seeing the GOP to be better suited for them. The Democratic Party is no longer the party of “opportunity” that it was for our parents. The Republican Jewish Coalition believes that Judaism is a conservative religion, emphasizing personal freedom and responsibility, that tzedakah works best when each of us does it ourselves from our heart. While Obama panders to some Jews as members of narrow interest groups, other Jewish voters are discovering that the Republican philosophy is best for America and best for Israel.

If you want to learn more about Republican Jewish Coalition, please contact www.rjchq.org.

David Seldner is president of the Kansas-Heartland chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Margie Robinow serves as the Kansas-Heartland chapter’s vice president.

“When General Grant Expelled the Jews” by Jonathan D. Sarna (Schocken Nextbook, 2012)

There were probably no more than 150,000 Jews in the United States at the time of the Civil War. Many of them served in the armies of both the North and the South. Then, on Dec. 17, 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant issued an infamous order that expelled the Jews “as a class” from the territories over which he had military control. The supposed reason for the order was to eliminate smuggling and profiteering, which Grant, at the time, attributed to Jewish merchants. In fact one family involved in profiteering was the Macks, Jewish clothing manufacturers. The Macks were Jewish, and their partner was none other than General Grant’s father, Jesse.

In his fascinating study of Grant’s infamous General Orders Number 11, Brandeis historian Jonathan Sarna examines the fallout from exiling “Jews as a Class.” There were immediate protests. Private individuals, representatives of the Jewish community, including rabbis, the head of B’nai Brith, and others immediately protested and contacted President Abraham Lincoln, who was totally unaware of the order. They feared that an expulsion like those from Spain and Portugal was in the offing. In the end, the order was almost immediately rescinded and very few Jewish individuals actually were forced from their homes.

In the aftermath of the General Order, Grant as an individual deeply regretted his action. In his book, Sarna describes what the Order meant for Grant’s candidacy for president, and how he treated the Jewish community after his election. More Jews were appointed to public office during the Grant presidency than at any time before. The Jewish community had his ear and encouraged the President to respond to Jewish persecution throughout the world. Much of what Sarna writes about is not generally mentioned in American history classes, nor is it usually a topic in Jewish history classes. The first time I encountered the General Order was in Dara Horn’s Civil War novel “All Other Nights.”

As usual, Schocken Publisher’s Nextbook Jewish Encounters Series has recovered a bit of Jewish culture and history that many individuals never before may have encountered. In this volume, the author’s erudition coupled with his approachable writing style and a subject of compelling interest to all Jewish Americans, places this volume among the best in the series.

Andrea Kempf is a retired librarian who speaks throughout the community on various topics related to books and reading. She is professor/librarian emeritus at Johnson County Community College.

For more than 200 years the Missouri Constitution has protected the religious liberty of all Missourians whether in the majority or minority. It already provides all Missourians with the right to privately and voluntarily prayer in public schools, workplaces and other government settings. But in 2011 our legislature recklessly decided to play with these fundamental rights by passing Constitutional Amendment 2 which will appear on the Aug. 7  ballot innocuously called “Freedom to Pray in Public Places.” This misguided amendment should be rejected. It would undermine religious freedom by putting government in the business of religion and allowing majority faiths to impose their religious beliefs on the minority.

HJR 2 requires government to enter the market place to, in its words “ensure” the ability of persons to practice their religion. This is not government preventing discrimination, but promoting prayer. What is wrong with that? It encourages the very entanglement of government in religion that the First Amendment was enacted to prohibit. It deceptively gives the religion practiced by a majority the ability to have government assist them in practicing their religion. At first blush this seems attractive, unless the religion you practice represents a minority of people in your community. Then the “protections” allegedly afforded by the language of Amendment 2 will not likely extend to you.

Missouri residents who see Amendment 2 on August 7 should vote with a resounding “No.”  Any other response would take Missouri back to a time and a place we rejected more than 200 years ago. It is strikingly difficult to confront this head-on. For years, religious minorities have been challenged again and again as Christian proponents seek to impose their religious views. When we push back, we fear being perceived as anti-faith, anti-Christian. We are not. Missourians are a diverse religious people because we have constitutional protections that allow us to practice many different faiths, and for those who choose not to follow faith at all, they have the same freedom to do so.

Religious tension in this country has never been so high. Political leaders are tested on how they engage politically as a matter of faith, rather than as a matter of good public policy.  It feels as if public policy in Missouri has become faith policy. We are certain Missouri legislators believe sincerely that they are serving their constituencies by serving their faith. They are not doing right by the people of Missouri when they choose to use legislation to promote a particular religious perspective, crossing that remarkable line blazed by the US Constitution, embodied in the First Amendment, that government “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…..”  The sponsors of this measure are fueled by religious mission to share their faith with others by legislative mandate; while the First Amendment is a tough barrier, they have worked stealthily to find ways around it.

Amendment 2 will encourage students to challenge school curricula, arguing that discussion of evolution violates their religious beliefs, that creationism and intelligent design should be reasonably presented as religious alternatives to scientific understanding, that they don’t have to do a particular assignment because it offends them religiously.

Amendment 2 will authorize and encourage clergy to pray before public and governing bodies when the Courts have repeatedly ruled this activity unconstitutional.  This will result in the religion of the majority being favored for these tasks, thus providing the very advantage which the Founding Fathers recognized as dangerous to the creation and maintenance of a diverse society.
Ironically the amendment requires public posting of the Bill of Rights in public schools while, at the same time, promoting religious policies that are, in light of those very rights, unconstitutional.

The measure provides no legitimate religious protection or expansion that doesn’t already exist, and will do nothing except rally those who wish to fight the reality of the First Amendment and impose a majority religion on Missourians of different faiths. What that “majority religion” is you can discern merely by looking at census data. If you vote “no,” are you anti-faith or anti-Christian? Not in the least. By voting “No,” you protect religious liberty for all.

Karen J. Aroesty is regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, Missouri/Southern Illinois, as well as eastern Kansas, and is based in St. Louis.

Beware of Obama campaign

This presidential campaign has already featured an attack by the president on any self-credit that entrepreneurs hold for the success of their businesses based on their willingness to take risks, their hard work and their genius. They have been told in a scolding manner that the roads and bridges that were built by the government were equally significant keys to their business successes. Nazi Germany publications and speeches are documented to have included heated anti-capitalist (especially anti-finance capitalist) rhetoric. Adolf Hitler attacked what he called “pluto-democracy,” which he claimed to be conspiracy by the Jews to favor democratic parties in order to keep evil capitalism intact. The “corporation” was attacked by the Nazis as being the leading instrument of finance capitalism, always with the role of Jews emphasized. (‘Hitler: Profile of a Dictator,’ by David Welch, 2001. p. 16.)

Hitler said, “I want everyone to keep what he has earned subject to the principle that the good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State… The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners.” Party spokesman Joseph Goebbels claimed in 1932 that the Nazi Party was a “workers’ party” and “on the side of labor and against finance”.

Regarding religion, the tenets of Catholicism and evangelical Christianity have been attacked in recent months by this administration. None of these issues had been before the electorate before being ordered by the administration. There have been activists on the American left who have been successful in putting issues on ballots to make any underage male circumcision illegal in some communities in California. Fortunately, none of these efforts have passed the electorate. The Free Exercise Clause will be debated over and over, but this administration is likely to lose most of the more than 40 recent suits against it regarding this clause.

This campaign has already clearly demonstrated which candidate is the best for our future. Watch, listen, and keep it all in a historical context. Demagoguery is colorless.

Leonard M. Moss, MD
Scottsdale, Ariz.

AJSS returns to Kansas City, Ohev Sholom

In the last four years, American Jewish Society for Service has learned one inescapable fact: There is no place like home. It is for this reason that AJSS keeps returning to Kansas City to provide help when and where help is needed. Each summer AJSS gives Jewish teens from across the United States and Canada the chance to help communities and put their Jewish values into action. We can’t do this without the help and generosity of community leaders in this case, the members and staff of Congregation Ohev Sholom. They have opened their home, their shul  and their community to us. And we are grateful for their continued support.

On June 27, 12 young people and four leaders moved into Ohev and got to work. The participants come from New York, New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan and Ontario, Canada. We will be working closely with Mark Naster, resource development coordinator of Heartland Habitat for Humanity. Mark has been a great friend and ally of AJSS and even came to New York to help us celebrate our 60th anniversary. We are in the process of setting up work with other agencies so that along with working on housing, our teens can help on issues related to food, health, the environment and education.

In addition, we look forward to our interactions with the larger Jewish community of Kansas City, especially the Jewish Community Center, which has generously offered us showers and access to their services and doing our part to help the faith-based communities of Kansas City work and learn together. We look forward to spending our summer at Ohev Sholom and know that this community will make a lasting and meaningful impression on us. When we say good-bye on Aug. 6, we will again be reminded that there was no place like home.

See y’all soon!

Rafi Glazer
Program Associate
AJSS
Bethesda, Md.

Thanks Flo Harris

SAFEHOME would like to publicly thank the Flo Harris Foundation for renewing SAFHEOME’s Jewish Outreach Program Grant for this grant cycle. By now you received your copy of The Guide to Jewish Life (published June 14). At the time of the editor’s deadline, SAFEHOME did not know who the funder of the program would be. Under the explanation of SAFEHOME’s Jewish Outreach Program, it gives credit to another grantor for funding. Please know that the Flo Harris Foundation deserves all the k’vod (honor) for enabling SAFEHOME to continue its outreach in the Jewish Community.

If you have a question about SAFEHOME’s Jewish Outreach Program, or materials and services that SAFEHOME provides, please call me.

Susan Lebovitz
SAFEHOME Jewish Outreach Program coordinator
913-378-1518

“Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me,” by Sarah Leavitt. (Skyhorse Publishing 2012)

Graphic novels are not always novels and certainly no longer comic books. The authors/illustrators deal with serious questions and in the case of “Tangles” the issue is the tragedy of dementia in a mother who is not that old. Midge Leavitt was only 52 when she began forgetting. Two years later, Midge and her family received the diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. In this moving memoir of her own mother’s life and particularly her last six years, Sarah Leavitt literally draws a picture of a happy family whose life becomes tangled up in the care of a woman who is no longer the person she used to be.

The Leavitts lived in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, while Sarah had settled in Vancouver. On a visit home, Sarah realized that something was terribly wrong. Midge left an iron burning and went out into the garden. Her mother couldn’t remember directions to places she had regularly visited. With all these signs, Sarah, her sister Hannah and the rest of the family finally convinced her father and mother to see a neurologist. The results were shattering.

Leavitt kept a journal during her mother’s illness. In the resulting book she draws each step of her mother’s mental disintegration with unsettling clarity. The initially serene Midge, a formerly award-winning kindergarten teacher, takes on the face of a worried woman, then an angry one and then a puzzled one. Sarah portrays herself as a daughter trying to be a caregiver, but desperately wanting her own caregiver back. There’s a scene in which Sarah, in Vancouver, tries to have a conversation with her mother. Midge is complaining that people are treating her like a child. They talk for a while, Sarah tries to comfort her mother, Midge hangs up, and Sarah throws herself on the floor screaming, “I want my Mommy.” Leavitt has perfectly captured the pain of being the caregiver for a parent who was only recently herself the caregiver.

After her mother’s death, Sarah, a non-observant Jew from a left-leaning non-observant Jewish family, regains her clarity by writing and drawing the story of her mother’s illness. She also finds herself by saying Kaddish for the entire proscribed 11 months in order to remain close to Midge and to remember all the wonderful things about her.

“Tangles” may be the first graphic novel to explore the tragedy of a family dealing with Alzheimer’s disease. Its impact on the reader is intense, unsettling and in the end beautiful. This work is moving, sad and yet celebratory of Midge’s life. Anyone who has undertaken the care of a family member with dementia will relate to Sarah’s anguish and love. People who, fortunately, have not dealt with these issues will learn a great deal. Sarah Leavitt is following in the footsteps of Art Spiegelman, addressing the issues of our times in graphic literature.

Andrea Kempf is a retired librarian who speaks throughout the community on various topics related to books and reading.

“Holy Wars” by Gary L. Rashba, Casemate Publishers, 288 pp., August 2011

I recently heard a speech given by author Gary Rashba about the book he wrote about 3,000 years of Israel’s wars, “Holy Wars.” It was sponsored by Media Central, an independent media-liaison organization and support service for foreign journalists.

Rashba is the first to admit he is a storyteller not a military historian. But with no shortage of material, he started writing military history as a hobby. He has written more than 30 articles on defense, aerospace and international issues.

He has lived in Israel 18 years and served in the Israel Defense Forces in a special unit for “older” immigrants. Thirteen years ago, he started writing articles for military magazines. “From these articles, the book came together like a puzzle,” he commented.

He decided to write “an overview of the Holy Land’s profound military history — a history which teaches many lessons, including the importance of timing, speed, stealth, good intelligence, and the danger of complacency or letting down one’s guard — issues as relevant today as they have been throughout the history of warfare.”

The book begins with the capture of Jericho and ends with the 1982 Lebanon War. An epilogue is added at the end that includes Operation Defensive Shield (the large-scale military operation in 2002); the Second Lebanon War (in 2006 in Lebanon, northern Israel and the Golan Heights); and Operation Cast Lead (winter 2008-2009 in Gaza).

The book focuses on 17 pivotal campaigns in the Holy Land. Each chapter is self-contained and focuses on the climax with tactics, motivations and capabilities described. Twelve maps are also included in the book.

The author also makes observations in the book about biblical events and heroes such as Jericho, Deborah and Barak. He questions whether Gideon was a great hero. “His motivation was revenge. He was a great military leader but had questionable dogma.”

He remarks: “When David and Goliath fought, there were two champions instead of two armies….The Maccabees were a rebel army taking on a modern army of its day….The true miracle of Chanukah was the guerilla army’s campaign.”

Rashba said at Massada and the siege by the Romans, “no battle was fought there; it represents steadfastness ... The focus at Gamla was a very real battle. …”

Continuing the wars through the ages, he observes: “The power of Islam penetrated and defeated the Byzantines. … At the time of the Crusaders, the infidel Muslims overtook the Christian sites…. For the Monguls, it was a new direction for them and the first real defeat here and they ruled for 150 years.

“One of the first defeats was Napoleon in Acre. … At the time of World War I, the British came through Palestine and pushed the Turkish out.”

In the book, Rashba included such modern events as the battle at Yad Mordechai in the War of Independence; and points on several other wars: “In the Sinai campaign, Israel made a deliberate act of war against Egypt in cahoots with the British and French…. In the Six-Day War, the capture of the Golan Heights was where a very real war was being fought …

“In the ’73 war, the focus was on the southern Golan Heights. … In the 1982 invasion of Lebanon the Syrian defense network was knocked out.”

There are notes at the end of each chapter as well as a chapter by chapter bibliography at the end.

To Rashba’s credit, he did not feel he had to be even handed by telling the “Arab’s side,” in modern-day conflicts.

Rashba is a story teller and I believe this book is very readable not only for military history buffs but for those who have a keen interest in the ongoing Arab-Israel conflict.

‘Shabbat Live’ incredible experience

I wanted to share with you an incredible event that my wife and I were fortunate to experience on Friday night, June 8. We agreed to host the Community Kollel’s “Shabbat Live” dinner for young professionals. Rabbi Davis had mentioned that there would probably be around 50 young professionals, and we were amazed as more than 75 young people packed our back yard. I met so many Jews in their 20s and 30s from all different segments of the Jewish community, many of whom are not affiliated with any congregation. Their Jewish backgrounds were all vastly different, and yet it seemed as though they were all so comfortable coming together to experience a meaningful Shabbat dinner together.

The Kollel rabbis and their families were so excited to engage with each of the participants, and it really made all of the young professionals seem very at home celebrating Shabbat. I was shocked that they were able to feed so many people on such a low budget, and was impressed to see the rabbis rolling up their sleeves to BBQ Friday afternoon to keep the costs of the event free to the participants.

Shabbat Live and the Kollel’s work with young professionals is especially vital to the K.C. community, because as we all know the national and local statistics of young Jewish involvement is frighteningly low. We should all take notice of the Kollel’s great work, and I feel fortunate to live in a city with an organization like the Kollel, dedicated to Jewish education, outreach and community especially among young professionals, which will undoubtedly ensure a Jewish future here.

This program is singular in Kansas City in its ability to attract so many young Jews of all denominations to engage in a meaningful Jewish experience. As a friend of the Kollel I feel proud of their talents and success and want to congratulate the Kollel and its supporters for not only creating a gem of a program but maintaining high interest and attendance after so many years.

Wishing the Kollel and the young professional community in K.C. continued vibrance, growth and success!

Drs. Adam and Alison Kaye
Overland Park, Kan.

Gifted songwriter

Thank you for the note about B’nai Jehudah confirmands who took part in Hava Nashira in the June 14 issue of The Chronicle. I want to be sure to set the record straight. I have always been a participant at this workshop, which I have greatly enjoyed. Rabbi Ken Chasen, senior rabbi of Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles, has been a faculty member at Hava Nashira for several years. Ken is a gifted songwriter and teacher that I am glad to have known in the late 1970s (when I was a rabbinic intern at B’nai Jehudah) and that I am privileged to know now and have as a rabbinic colleague.

Rabbi Larry Karol
Las Cruces, N.M.

My uncle, Rabbi Stanley Rabinowitz, who for 26 years guided Washington, D.C.’s largest and oldest conservative synagogue, passed away on Friday, June 8. It was his 95th birthday.

During his nearly three decades as the spiritual leader of Adas Israel Congregation, guests in his synagogue included presidents, Israeli prime ministers, Supreme Court justices, countless members of Congress, government officials and journalists. 
Most of Israel’s ambassadors attended his services, as did Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin. Rabin and Ambassador Simcha Dinitz celebrated their sons’ Bar Mitzvahs at Adas Israel with Rabbi Rabinowitz.

His obituary was in the Washington Post, the New York Times, The Forward, Israeli newspapers and carried by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. So I was quite surprised not to see a mention of the death of this prominent man of the Jewish world in The Chronicle.

Perhaps his most notable accomplishment, Rabbi Rabinowitz served two terms as president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international organization of Conservative rabbis.

He was especially concerned with Zionism and Israel, and their relation to Conservative Jewry.

Together with representatives of the Reform movement, in 1977 he successfully negotiated with Israel’s then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin, the indefinite postponement of a bill to change Israel’s Law of Return and Israeli definition of Jewish identity.  The projected changes, if adopted, would have compromised the role of Conservative and Reform rabbis and challenged the status of their converts. The changes were not implemented.

As RA president, he traveled to Egypt to meet with religious and political leaders. He was a guest in Anwar Sadat’s home.
President Carter subsequently invited Rabbi Rabinowitz to deliver the invocation prayer at a service at The Lincoln Memorial celebrating the signing of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. He attended the signing itself, and then dined on the White House lawn with the dignitaries at a large formal kosher dinner.

Rabbi Rabinowitz led his congregation and Washington’s Jewry through much of the turbulent times of race relations in the ‘60s.  The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King spoke at a city meeting my uncle hosted in 1963.

In 1964, immediately after the assassination of President Kennedy, Rabbi Rabinowitz was invited to give the sermon at Mount Vernon Place Baptist Church, which was attended by President and Lady Bird Johnson. Upon returning home, my uncle received a personal call from the first lady asking him for a copy of his speech. That night, in his televised Thanksgiving address to the nation, President Johnson included the theme of my uncle’s sermon, and quoted from it.

He danced with Betty Ford at the White House, and received a personal letter from President Reagan upon his retirement.
Rabbi Stanley Rabinowitz was born in Duluth, Minn., and raised in Des Moines, Iowa. He was the son of Jacob and Rose Zeichik Rabinovitz. He was the oldest of three sons including my father, the late Ronald Rabinovitz. He was the grandson of Rabbi Naphtali Hertz Zeichik, noted Talmudic scholar and “Chief Rabbi of Iowa,” and the nephew of Faye Zeichik Schenk, international president of Hadassah and president of the World Zionist Organization.

He was a graduate of the University of Iowa, Yale University and the Jewish Theological Seminary. He was an honorary fellow of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He was predeceased by his wife Anita (Lifson) in 2008, his son Nathaniel in 2007 and his brother Ronald (my father) in 2006. He is survived by two daughters, four grandchildren, a great grandson, a brother and many nieces and nephews (including myself).

In 1947, one of his earliest professional duties as a rabbi was officiating at the marriage of my parents in Monterrey, Mexico, my mother’s hometown.  The ceremony was in Yiddish, Hebrew, Spanish and English.

In his younger days, Rabbi Rabinowitz was one of the original founders of AZA (Kansas City, Omaha and Lincoln, Neb., and Des Moines were the first four chapters in the country), and served as one of the earliest international presidents. Rabbi Rabinowitz was vice chairman of the B’nai B’rith Youth Commission and chairman of its Judaica publishing committee, which published a series of pamphlets for young people, many of which he authored. He was also chairman of the editorial board of the National Jewish Monthly. While he was president of the Rabbinical Association, he helped edit the new Haggadah issued by the Conservative movement. It is still in wide use today.

Rabbi Rabinowitz was very active in Jewish community affairs as well. He served as Chairman of the Rabbinic Cabinets of UJA and of AIPAC. He was the also the founding president of Mercaz, the Movement for the Reaffirmation of Conservative Judaism.

He was a scholar, a historian a profound thinker and an author. He was a powerful rabbi, poised and polished. He was eloquent and elegant. Our family was always so proud. But despite the many accomplishments of this great man, to me and all the cousins from Des Moines he was still just our Uncle Stanley.

David Rabinovitz moved to Kansas City in 1978 to serve as youth director of the Jewish Community Center. He co-owned Metropolis Restaurant from 1989 until 2003 and now manages Chaz, the restaurant at the Raphael Hotel.

Federation supports all forms of learning

I couldn’t agree with Marla Brockman more, in her letter to the editor published in the June 7 edition of The Chronicle. Brockman expresses her concern about the value, quality, and need for the continuation of formal Jewish education. I and the Jewish Federation believe in formal Jewish education as well. However, my blog and article only referred to one piece of the Jewish Federation’s involvement in Jewish education. My focus on informal education was used as a basis to point out how important collaboration is as a result of scarce resources, rather than an endorsement of one format of Jewish education over another.

The Federation is the largest funder of Jewish education — both formal and informal — in the community. We believe that both are necessary for a well rounded Jewish community. We support the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy extensively. We created and helped fund the Teacher Education Initiative, to improve the quality of Jewish education in our supplementary synagogue schools. We are integral to the Day of Discovery program and helped the Rabbinical Association with funding to start the Shavuot and Selichot programs of learning that they run. We have also been there to assist the Kollel, which provides serious study opportunities throughout the community. CAJE, the Federations’ Jewish education department, also sponsors ongoing learning for education directors and youth group directors. We annually recognize a Teacher of the Year at our annual meeting. It was our study of Jewish education in the mid-‘90s that led to the Melton program. Our efforts to assist and fund areas of formal Jewish education couldn’t be broader.

Yet we also take great pride in the fact that we help Jews — both young and old — to experience their Judaism through less formal academic settings, such as camping, cultural arts experiences and trips to Israel. Studies show that cultural arts are very important to contemporary Jews in experiencing their Judaism, and our collaborative efforts with the Jewish Community Center speak to that. In addition, we take great pride in the fact that we helped bring the PJ Library program to the young families in our Jewish community where so much of Jewish learning and identity building takes place.

We are in a world of constant change; programs may come and go in both the formal and informal realms. This Federation however is steadfast in its commitment to the community: to continue to make Jewish education and identity a strong priority for years to come. More collaboration and better use of resources will be necessary to make this vision possible. It is this aspect that I addressed in my article. Kol Hakavod to Marla and to all those who believe in, support and teach Judaism and bring the “joy” into Jewish learning — whatever the format may be.

Todd Stettner
Executive Vice President and CEO
Jewish Federation of Greater Kansas City