Assuring a Jewish future.

• Position: Jewish continuity agenda

Jews face serious issues in the years ahead to ensure that future generations will be Jewish, warns Steven Bayme, director of Jewish communal affairs for the American Jewish Committee. The ongoing debate over the Jewish continuity agenda--who controls it and what major areas need to be addressed--revolves around five critical questions:

* Who is the target for continuity initiatives? Should outreach focus on the larger number of unaffiliated Jews under the presumption that they are waiting for a message or would it be better to work with the moderately or under-affiliated who have signaled an interest in leading a Jewish life?

* If new priorities of Jewish continuity and education are set, what then will be deemed less important? It is a far more challenging task, and one that is politically charged, to be able to underscore what is of lower priority to the Jewish community than it is to underscore what is a major one.

* What mechanisms will exist for evaluating which programs work and which do not? Every program will have eloquent advocates and defenders, and it is necessary to be able to experiment with innovative ideas in the hope of reaching new and larger numbers of Jews. Those that are truly successful must be sought out, and those that turn into programs of self-congratulation and deception have to be eliminated.

* How will it be possible to distinguish between respect for personal choice and autonomy and the articulation of communal norms and values in addressing mixed marrieds and Jewish homosexuals and lesbians?

"All of these questions have specific implications in terms of the Orthodox rabbinate," Bayme stresses. "Orthodoxy has much to teach in terms of the continuity agenda. Orthodoxy has produced models of successful Jewish families; families that have...