JERUSALEM — Intermarriage, assimilation, education, aging, and community building were the issues that dominated a three-day conference of Jewish communal professionals in Jerusalem June 24-26. From the opening keynote address focusing on contemporary challenges to Jewish identity, participants from all over the world discovered they have more in common than they realized.

"Some countries have more resources than others, and we are all approaching the problems differently," said Diane Klein, assistant director of planning and allocations for United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey, one of 15 local Jewish professionals to attend the 11th Quadrennial Conference of the World Council of Jewish Communal Service. The event attracted over 700 participants from 33 countries. "But we're all dealing with the same issues," Klein concluded.

During the initial plenary session of the conference, Dan Maimon, a fellow at the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute in Israel, addressed the international scope of the challenges to the Jewish community. "Today, we live in a world where being Jewish is not only a matter of birth, but a matter of choice," he said. "We have to find new ways to be Jewish." His talk followed on the heels of remarks from Stephen M. Cohen, Jewish social policy research professor at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, who offered a stark profile of a new generation of Jews alienated from the Jewish establishment. "Their reactions to the organized world can be summarized by the letters A, B, C, D, E. A stands for alienated; we find your ways of being Jewish alien, strange to us. B: You are bland and boring, you are all the same; we like difference, we like diversity. C: You're coercive. You're trying to get us to marry Jews, make Jewish babies, and support Israel."

After a brief digression about Israel among younger Jews, Cohen continued: "D stands for divisive. You want to divide Jews from non-Jews, and Jews of one sort from Jews of another sort. We want to overcome these divisions."

Young Jews' response to alienation, said Cohen, "is an efflorescence of self-organized Jewish activity in the area of spiritual communities, in the area of culture, in the area of social justice, and in the area of the Web."

These comments set the stage for the breakout sessions and several other large plenary sessions. In a session on Jewish education, Daniel Gordis, vice president of the Mandel Foundation in Israel, focused on the question of young Jews studying in religious schools. "What do we want Jewish education to provide for a person?" he asked. The answer came in three parts: "Serious Jewish education ought to enable a Jewish person to grapple with life's most important questions through the prism of Jewish education," he said. "Jewish education ought to enable a person to engage in a richer search for the transcendent."

And, Gordis continued, "Jewish education should enable people to engage in an ongoing relationship with the State of Israel." These factors, he suggested, would help create a generation more attached to Judaism. "If very little of what they learn in religious school enables them to say they can grapple with life's most important questions," if instead they find the answers through high school or college classes, but not in Jewish education, he said, "Then, they have the right to walk away."

The three-day international conference included large contingents from France, former Soviet Union countries, Israel, and the United States. The 15 professionals from local Jewish agencies attended in part through the generosity of the Alan Lowenstein Fellowship Program. Named for Lowenstein, a prominent NJ attorney who recently passed away, the program provided grants amounting to an average of $2,000 per person.

The conference focused on several main tracks: aging, family and children, Jewish education, and community building.

At the end of the conference, the WCJCS board passed a resolution protesting the proposed boycott of Israeli academics by British universities.

Council president Max Kleinman said the presence of so many people from around the world reflects an intense need for networking among colleagues globally. To that end, the council plans to add an extra day for networking and continuing education to its 2008 General Assembly and hold regional conferences in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe in between quadrennials.

If the conference reflected the unity of the global Jewish community and its issues, it also revealed gaps, particularly in sessions with panels of speakers from different countries. In a workshop on weaving together social action and Jewish education, American presenter Robert Sherman, executive director of the Bureau of Jewish Education in San Francisco, offered a sophisticated model involving coordination with a local university. French presenter Michel Elbaz, director of the Leon Askenazi Institute, however, pointed out the inherent difficulty in adapting such a model, if only because finding texts in translation is not so easy in France.

Toward the end of the conference, Diaspora Jews expressed frustration with Israeli presentations that neglected to tie their work to religious values or texts. After the social action session, Keren, an Israeli who declined to give her last name, criticized the Israeli presenter who "talked about volunteerism with young adults, but there were no Jewish values expressed, while the other two speakers had meaningful, rooted connections between Jewish values and their striving for social justice."

Early formal evaluations of the conference reflected appreciation for the level of the presenters, among them Jonathan Woocher of Maplewood, chief ideas officer for the Jewish Education Service of North America.

For Kleinman, who is also executive vice president of UJC MetroWest NJ, participating in the WCJCS goes hand in hand with his federation work. "I believe strongly in klal Yisrael, the idea that we Jews are responsible for each other wherever we live. As a professional, I've been involved in helping develop professionals at the federations I've worked at, but I also feel a responsibility to help develop professionals all over the world and develop links among Jews who have similar professions wherever they live."

Local participants came home with expanded Rolodexes and new ideas. Lauren Klein, coordinator of rehabilitation services for Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest, made contacts with people in Namibia and Colombia. Karen Alexander, director of eldercare services for UJC MetroWest NJ, found new ways to approach the spiritual needs of older adults and gained insight into community planning for them.

For Kim Hirsh, development officer for the Jewish Community Foundation of MetroWest, what happened outside the conference room was as important as what happened inside. She pointed out that what she learned on a field trip, "I couldn't learn in a conference room." Location was also critical for Hirsh. "Sharing issues and concerns and values and thoughts and dreams with colleagues while you're in the middle of Jerusalem was an incredible experience in and of itself."

The conference bore other unanticipated fruit. During one education track session, Ruth Messinger, founder of American Jewish World Service, agreed to have her agency serve as a clearinghouse for curriculum development linking Jewish values to the Third World. In initial steps toward that process, cards were exchanged that crossed cultures, languages, and continents, much like the Jerusalem outside the conference doors.