The Wye chromosome

There is no dearth of efforts to reimagine Jewish life for the 21st century. One high-profile initiative is the pleasingly alliterative Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, founded by the Jewish Agency for Israel in 2002. The goal of the institute is to assemble “leaders, decision makers, scientists, artists, and opinion leaders” to engage in “professional strategic thinking and planning on short- and long-term issues of primary concern to the Jewish People.”

Such an effort, however, is bound to fall short if it does not engage with the Jewish people in its entirety. And as Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt points out in an op-ed for the JTA this week, the JPPPI has given short shrift to women in its own “professional strategic thinking.” Only one American woman was in attendance at an institute conference last year, and only one woman served on the board when the institute was founded. At this year’s conference, scheduled to take place this week at the Wye Conference Center in Maryland, women are again grossly under-represented.

It is not as if there aren’t plenty of women at the center of the international dialogue on the Jewish future. Lipstadt points to Morlie Levin, CEO of Hadassah (only the world’s largest Zionist membership organization); philanthropists Lynn Schusterman and Edith Everett; and Judge Ellen Heller, president of the board of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. And that’s for starters.

Lipstadt also cites research by Steven M. Cohen, Sherry Israel, Shaul Kelner, and Didi Goldenhar demonstrating that women are under-represented in communal positions, lay and professional, especially at the highest levels of prestige and influence.

“If these men did not know about these talented women, then they’re so out of touch that their deliberations are worthless,” writes Lipstadt. “If they knew about them but chose not to invite them, then their judgment is bankrupt and their deliberations equally so.”

Lipstadt’s essay was distributed too late to be included in this week’s edition of NJJN. But her voice, like those of all the women she names and the unnamed thousands she didn’t, deserves to be heard. You can find her essay and an article on the topic on-line.