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Two weeks ago i had the priviledge of spending a bit more than two hours with twenty of so "top Jewish thinkers, activists and journalists." I'm not sure if I was there as a thinker or an activist. Maybe both? For sure I am not a journalist. Anyway, the session was part of an ambitious effort, led by The Jewish Week and JInsider.com, "to collectively design the potential of our Imagined Community." In other words, the Jewish community has problems so let's imagine our ideal community and then figure out how to get there. JInsider put together a one page summary (pdf) of our two hours together. You can see me in the picture (I'm wearing a blue shirt and sitting between Michael Jesselson and Edith Everett). There have been a good number of conversations like this in recent years. Gary Rosenblatt, the editor of The Jewish Week, has been responsible for many of them through his annual weekend of open space for Jewish leaders called The Conversation. I think what JInsider is trying to do here, while admirable, is too ambitious. And in its ambition, it is missing out on some good food for thought. The one page summary more or less acurately pulls together the various strands of thought in the room that day. But once together, they don't form a clear, unified message. Lots of big ideas, some not so big ideas; all together they form a mush. Yet with that many "top Jewish thinkers, activists and journalists" in the room, there were bound to be some provocative ideas. And there were. Exploring, probing, debating those ideas could lead to some breakthroughs. For example,
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