Jewish Peoplehood in the Age of Pluralism: The Challenge of Measuring Success

Taylor considers challenges in measuring success of educational initiatives in the context of Peoplehood education in pluralistic settings. " When evaluating success, it is especially important to be mindful of the wide range of starting points learners might have and the wide range of changes they might undergo as a result of a particular program."…

A Less Spoken About Angle: The Threat Israel Presents to Jewish Peoplehood

As head of an organization for religious freedom and equality in Israel, Regev focuses on the threat to a sense of Peoplehood brought on by the lack of religious pluralism in Israel. He points to the conflict between Israel’s unifying role for world Jewry and its current laws that discriminate against “the overwhelming majority of…

Pluralism and Peoplehood: Jewish Education Between Protection and Exposure

Muszkat-Barkan discusses the challenge of Jewish educators to teach through a pluralistic lens by using the example of her own public Orthodox education in Israel. She sees enhancing a sense of peoplehood in a world of diverse Jewish identities as one of the greatest challenges to educators from all Jewish streams. But, she believes that,…

Jewish Pluralism Revisited: Rising Above Conflicting Truths

Moses argues that after the Holocaust there was an overarching notion of Jewish solidarity that "fueled Jewish identity and community development for generations. However, "over time, we have come to realize that our differences are profound and enduring, and that as a people we would be naïve to believe that these differences could be subservient…

The Pluralism of Pluralism in Israel:

Kelman gives a short history of the struggle surrounding Israeli religious pluralism since the mid-1980s, when the Israel Religious Action Center was founded to promote liberal Judaism in Israel and create a more level playing field for non-Orthodox Judaism. She concludes that, "pluralism has the potential to strengthen peoplehood. That is the challenge facing us.…

Sowing Diversity in Fields of Jewish Peoplehood

Gross write about her work as director of a community outreach program with participants who represent a diversity of backgrounds, opinions and ideas about how to participate Jewishly. "Our gatherings welcome this diversity and demand an openness to hear others and learn from differences in order to better understand our own beliefs and commitments." She…

New Directions in Jewish Leadership: Pluralism

Gale, co-director of the Diller Teen Fellows asks, What will be the future of the Jewish People? Having worked so hard to create communities that support different ways of Jewish life, Jewish leaders are reluctant to engage in dialogue. "The ability to engage in dialogue and respond to each other sympathetically and empathetically is critical…

Pluralism and Peoplehood

Edelsberg, Executive Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation, discusses the role of pluralism in its attempts to foster compelling, effective Jewish learning experiences for young Jews in the United States. He sees the concept of peoplehood as nebulous; no single, commonly accepted definition has gained currency. The Jewish people are still populated by homogeneous sects…

The Challenges of Building Pluralistic Jewish Peoplehood: Towards a Different Kind of Pluralism

Barber suggest that in most Jewish conversations about pluralism, the word is used to convey the thought that all Jewish narratives are true Jewish narratives and that none holds more weight than any other. However, she suggests that the community needs instead to understand pluralism as the need to learn about the multiplicity of Jewish…

Jewish Peoplehood and the Biblical Landscape

Using the language of rock music, Arnoff suggests that in order to help the individual view Jewish communities as compelling enough to join, the Jewish educator must move beyond the personal and facilitate "a community comprised of individuals with rich, meaningful experience." He notes that, "navigating peoplehood requires a multidimensional, pluralistic map to the biblical…

A Post-Modern Jewish Peoplehood for Israel

The author compares different ways that scholars, writers and activists understand the concept of Jewish peoplehood and provides an analytic framing of the concept. Overall, he sees peoplehood as a concept invented by American Jewry and discusses what happens when it is imported into the Israeli context. He believes that peoplehood has the potential to…

Rethinking Global Jewish Collectivity in a Post-Statist World

The author frames Mordechai Kaplan's thinking on the Jewish State and Jewish nation (people), using it to argue that it is time to move from priveleging state over nation and political sovereignty over global collectivity. He suggests that we need to modify the current paradigm which puts the Jewish State at the center, and consider…

Pushing Peoplehood: An Agenda that Matters

Based on the position that intellectual activity around the expression of Jewish peoplehood is aligned with a sense that the bonds of Jewish peoplehood are declining, the authors focus on the implications for Jewish communal settings, especially surrounding tzedaka and community-building – raising money and the level of consciousness around collective Jewish values. Using research…

On the Relationship Between Peoplehood and Zionism

The author questions the relationship between peoplehood and Zionism, distinguishing between dimensions of meanings of the term peoplehood, and offering four propositions that civer the different schools of thought regarding the idea/ideology of Zionism. He concludes that the idea of peoplehood is fully congruent with the basic underlying proposition of the Zionist idea. He notes…

Zionism and Peoplehood: Toward a Historical Synthesis

Religion, nationalism and peoplehood are highlighted as the anchors of Jewish identity. Historically, first religion dominated the three, and then nationalism in the form of Zionism. Changes in classical Zionism in the 21st century have made room for religion and peoplehood to be complimentary rather than contradictory to Jewish nationalism, with a move from state…

When the Jewish People and Israel Conflict

The word “Israel” has multiple meanings and associations. The author discusses the intentional ambiguity of three terms associated with Israel – am (people), eretz (land), and le’om (nation) – signifying a rootedness in a particular geographic locale and the aspiration that all Jews are part of the Jewish collective regardless of where they live. She…

Peoplehood’s Overlooked Origins as a Critique of Zionism and Nationalism

One of the underlying issues in today's conversations about the meaning of "peoplehood" is situating the term's relationship with historical expressions of Zionism. There is a lot at stake in establishing precisely where the concept falls on the spectrum between nationalism's inclination to place the state at the center of collective cohesion and a more…