By COLlive reporter
Photos: Itzik Roytman/COLlive
The Pew Institute’s contested Portrait of American Jewry got a shout out at the opening of the annual gala banquet of the 5774 International Kinus Hashluchim convention.
Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky of Merkos, chair of the lavish evening and the movement’s global trotter, first questioned the accuracy of the results that showed spiking numbers of intermarriage and disinterest in religion.
“What do they know about what is happening?” he said, listing off names of large and small cities across the United States and the world where Shluchim are stationed.
Nevertheless, he agreed that more needs to be done. “The Rebbe said that if you have 1,000 Jews in your city and you only reached 999 people – you will be rewarded, but haven’t completed your mission.”
To that end, he announced the launch of the Global Jewish Youth Initiative, which he said was sponsored by an anonymous donor. Not going into specifics, he said it will nurture young children, through teenage years until past university and building a family.
Rabbi Kotlarsky said 200 new Shluchim will be sent out in the near future to focus primarily on this area.
A second announcement was the call to reach 1 million new Jewish people, within a single year, until the next Kinus Hashluchim.
“Shluchim should contact 20 additional Jews they have not been in contact with until now,” he called and continued: “Get 20 active members of your community to reach another 20 people each, and together we will reach 1 million Jews.”
Another serious flaw I picked up on with the Pew Research Poll – a survey as opposed to a proper study – is that the following interviewees were included (as directly described in the Pew Poll’s own terms): – Non-Jewish people of Jewish background – people who have a Jewish parent or were raised Jewish but who, today, either have another religion (most are Christian) or say they do not consider themselves Jewish; – Non-Jewish people with a Jewish affinity – people who identify with another religion (in most cases, Christianity) or with no religion and who neither have a… Read more »
http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/586050/jewish/The-Lawnchair-Guy.htm