“Is it any wonder that many Jews opt out of involvement in a community that can be unwelcoming or even intimidating?”

Our Jewish community currently focuses its energies on threats: threats from anti-Semitism, threats to Israel, and the threat of Jews leaving the fold through intermarriage. Such concerns have their place; to be unmindful of threats abandons our responsibility to adopt strategies that successfully address them. However, in the pursuit of these strategies arises perhaps the greatest threat of all: discord among Jews that makes our community a dysfunctional family, driving some of its members out and causing those on the periphery to be wary, if not fearful. Is it any wonder that many Jews opt out of involvement in a community that can be unwelcoming or even intimidating?

Larry Sternberg, “Biggest Campus Threat Is Jewish Disunity, Not BDS”, The Jewish Week (4 Oct 2013), 22.

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