Report to NAHUM GOLDMANN FELLOWS by MFJC Executive Vice President DR. JERRY HOCHBAUM
Dear Nahum Goldmann Fellowship Alumni:
Last year was an exceedingly productive one for the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship
program. I should like to share with you some of those developments:
In December we held a mini-Nahum Goldmann fellowship in Melbourne.
What was unique about this seminar was that it was planned to overlap
with the annual meeting of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry,
the roof organization of the Australian Jewish community. The Australian
fellows not only participated in all facets of that meeting, but also
were incorporated into a special session dealing with making Australian
Jewry more inclusive. The leadership of Australian Jewry and the fellows
were mixed in small working groups, with the fellows chairing many of
those groups. Thus, the fellows were able to share with the senior leadership
of Australian Jewry their views and visions of the future of Australian
Jewry. The articulation and dissemination of these “new voices”
will become an increasingly important facet of our future work in the
Nahum Goldmann Fellowship.
The fourth Nahum Goldmann Fellowship Internet course, Between
Tradition and Modernity; Can Jews Live in Two Worlds and Still be Distinctive?
led by Prof. Michael Rosenak, Mandel Professor of Jewish Education at
the Hebrew University, took place in February and March of this year.
The previous courses were: The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey Through
Language and Literature, taught by Prof. Ruth Wisse, Professor of Yiddish
Literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, which took
place in the spring of 2004; The Bible as It Was, by Prof. James Kugel,
Bar-Ilan University and formerly Harry Starr Professor of Classical
and Modern Jewish and Hebrew Literature, organized in the spring of
2005; and The Haggadah, led by Prof. Avigdor Shinan, Department of Hebrew
Literature, Hebrew University, held in the spring of 2006.
What was astounding about all the courses, especially the last one,
was the very high level of the deliberation and discussion. Prof. Michael
Rosenak who organized the last course, and served on the faculty in
several Nahum Goldmann fellowships, believes, as do the staff of the
Foundation who helped develop the program, that we have been able to
successfully reproduce the same quality of discourse that we have achieved
at the regular Nahum Goldmann fellowship seminars, no small achievement
that.
Equally dramatic, was that the courses have increasingly become global
conversations, including fellows and other participants from Jewish
communities in six continents all around the globe.
What to me was most surprising and impressive was the virtual fellowship
that began to emerge toward the end of the last course, the same type
of quasi-community that has resulted from all our regular Nahum Goldmann
fellowships.
I believe the Foundation and the Fellowship now possess the potential
capacity to seriously consider, after some additional study, a year-round
internet program comparable to the regular Nahum Goldmann Fellowship,
in which fellows can participate during the course of the entire year
and from all over the world.
We are organizing the 19th Nahum Goldmnann Fellowship in Israel
this June, the first time that this program will be held there.
The program will also serve as the first international reunion for outstanding
former alumni who participated during the last two decades in our seminars
all around the world.
I will be writing to the Foundation’s Board of Trustees in greater
detail about all these developments and share that report with you.
Hoping that in the future your participation and involvement in all
the new phases of this marvelous Fellowship will grow in depth and commitment.
Best wishes to you and your families for a joyous Passover.
Sincerely,
Dr. Jerry Hochbaum
Executive Vice President
Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture