From the Pages of Yedies

by ROBERTA NEWMAN

In 1971, YIVO’s Annual Conference had, as its focus, the past hundred years of Jewish life in the United States. This was no strictly celebratory look at American Jewish history and culture, however. On the contrary, Yedies reported that many of the papers delivered at the conference commented on a “malaise” in American Jewish communal life, supposedly resulting from the fact “that no new model for authentic Jewish identity has been created to replace the one brought over by East European Jews and discarded by later generations.”

Front page space was given to a report of one of the highlights of the conference, a student symposium on “The American Jewish Counter-Culture.” Its participants voiced pungent criticism of  the American Jewish community and a desire to turn to the East European Jewish past for inspiration on creating a more organic Jewish existence in America.