Unusual prize to reignite Jewishness involves Brandeis, teaching, and money

Posted on October 9, 2007 • By Rebecca Markowitz
Category: Social 2 Comments

Too bad Charles Bronfman already thought of birthright israel, or I would’ve entered it in Bronfman’s competition to “find a new idea which can transform the way the Jewish community thinks about itself“. Let’s say I enter a great new idea and win. Would I want to leave Israel and move to Boston to write about my idea and teach at Brandeis for 2 years? Well, that’s exactly the prize that Mr. Bronfman is offering the winner.Even with a six-digit salary thrown in to make things interesting, I’m not sure the incentive has been properly thought out, leaving many people hesitant about submitting their thoughts.

The prize reminds me of meetings I’ve attended where I’m eager to suggest a good idea only to avoid saying anything so I don’t have to take on extra responsibility since I know how it works – whoever suggests it, does it. Maybe there could be a second prize like 1000 bucks, a mention of your name on the Brandeis campus, and explain your idea in further detail over the phone. I’d submit 20 ideas right now.

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http://www.JoyousJudaism.wordpress.com Ian Pear

My feelings exactly. If one could pursue this competition and remain in Israel, then it would be far more attractive. But it’s more than just a matter of convenience – or even ideology. The competition notes that this is based on a similar competition decades ago. The result was Mordecai Kaplan’s Reconstructionism, which as we all know, has not transformed the Jewish people. And thus there are two problems with this very well-intentioned idea: 1) By repeating a decades old framework, including even the same place, does not indicate a genuine willingness to try new ideas. 2) The new ideas that such a competition might produce may be flashy but probably won’t produce the transformative effect hoped for. That comes from ‘old’ ideas — Torah Values, Israel, Jewish Unity — packaged in a modern way. That’s why Birthright is such a great program; it takes the power of an old idea – Israel – and repackages it for the modern world. And that’s why Reconstructionism was a bad idea; it took a new way of thinking about Judaism, a clear break with 1000′s of years of our heritage, and packaged it in the garb of an old tradition.

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