This commentary appears, in part, in the November 20, 2009 issue of the Cleveland Jewish News.

There is nothing like being with 3000 other Jews as their voices flow together singing; “HaTikvah”, “The Star Spangled Banner” and “Oh Canada”. So it was, in a uniquely American (the continent) and, singularly Jewish moment, that the Jewish Federations of North America opened its annual General Assembly (GA) in Washington DC for 2009/5770. For your writer this, my first GA, was a two-fold homecoming. One, because our own Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland saw fit to honor a relative newcomer with an invitation to represent his adopted hometown and, two, the Associated YM-YWHA’s (“New Yorkese” for JCC) and its camps were important places of my youth and of my first employment in the service of the Jewish People. But, in coming back, one never finds ‘home,’ however defined, to be the same as it was or as it was remembered – even the name can change. Just as we were getting used to the “UJC” (United Jewish Communities) moniker for our Federation’s umbrella organization, it has been rebranded as the “Jewish Federations of North America”. To date, the new acronym has not been selected. My preference is “JeFNA” or “J’FedNA” (but certainly not something cumbersome like JewFedNorA). Alas, the marketers are right; the new name is more descriptive although, after going through UJA and UJC perhaps we should be cautioned, by the loss of the word “United”?

With lay and professional leaders coming together for one of the important fora of Jewish life,the GA is a great place to ‘take the Jewish pulse’. Here, problems are discussed, solutions proposed, best practices displayed and ideas exchanged. As at any large convention, choices between competing sessions and exhaustion prevent any individual from taking in 100% of the offerings. Full disclosure: yours truly attended the plenary sessions and generally chose discussions related to Jewish Peoplehood presented in cooperation with the Jewish People’s Policy Planning Institute. President Obama was, understandably, called away to lead the mourning for the murder victims at Ft. Hood leaving the address by Prime Minister Netanyahu as the high point of the program. This is to take nothing away from the visionary lay and professional leaders of our communities. The overall theme, in English – “Anything is Possible” and in Hebrew – HaShamayim HaGvul (the Sky’s the Limit), reflected the challenges of a recessed economy along with the more endemic issues engendered by a rapidly changing Jewish landscape, particularly our sense of Peoplehood.

It was wise for the GA to highlight this broad and important issue because, without a sense of Peoplehood, belonging and Jewish attachment in current and upcoming generations, it will be increasingly difficult to maintain our communal and religious institutions. Social scientists like Professor Steven M. Cohen and others have well documented the challenges of assimilation, intermarriage, Jewish education and waning attachment to Israel. The thoughtful among them point out that while each stream of Jewish religious life, including the non-denominational expressions of Judaism, has its shortcomings; each brings to the table its own unique set of contributions and strengths. Cohen points out that the Federation based agencies such as the JCCs are also a movement within Jewish life, one whose impact is both broad and deep. Each of our streams and individual institutions struggle to find ‘the answer’ but meanwhile, the sociological dispersion of the Jews continues. In an article about the apparent reduction in Mayor Bloomberg’s voter support in the historically bloc voting Hasidic community (NY Times, Nov 16, 2009 pg A18), a 59 year old Satmar is quoted as saying, “The younger generation doesn’t rely on their leaders to guide them.” If the Jewish frame of reference is changing in our most insular of streams then, how much the more so does it apply to the rest of the community and how great is the challenge of maintaining Jewish Peoplehood when the ties that bind our generations are growing more diverse and difficult to define? Nevertheless, the message is: “Anything is Possible” and we have faced far worse.

Like all good learning experiences a GA raises many more questions than answers, including the most important question: What did you take home?

This GA reaffirmed the centrality of Jewish Peoplehood even as we may come to re-define “peoplehood” for a community whose fabric is stretched sociologically further and thinner than ever before. Even though Cleveland Jewry has pioneered new relationships between Federation, synagogues and schools – especially in the field of Jewish education - we have to ask ourselves the frightening question of whether our current institutional boundaries are leaving too many outside of the fold? Can the definitions and boundries with which we have become comfortable withstand a rigorous evaluation of their efficacy? Or can we, by taking a more communal based approach, create new streams of belonging that will actively expand our Peoplehood, including more and excluding less while preserving the integrity of our institutions and passing our united heritage to new generations?