Koach Kallah Considers Israel at 60

by Joanne Palmer

APRIL 2008 – To begin with, this was not an ordinary group of Jewish college students.

In a survey circulated before the 2008 Koach Kallah, which met at Northwestern University in suburban Chicago at the end of February, Koach registrants were asked if they had been to Israel. (Koach is United Synagogue’s college outreach program, and the kallah drew 150 students from almost 60 campuses across North America.) Although it is hard to get firm statistics, last October the head of the Jewish Agency estimated that only 40 percent of American Jews had ever been to Israel. But 94 percent of the students who filled out the survey had visited the Jewish state, according to Koach director Richard Moline.

Each year the kallah has a different theme although it always has the same goal – to draw together the most committed Conservative Jewish students and strengthen their ties to Jewish life, to the search for both authenticity and relevance in the tradition, and not coincidentally to the Conservative movement. It attracts an unusually committed group of students and includes people to whom the movement always has been home as well as seekers looking for home.

This year, the kallah’s theme was Israel at 60. Much of the long weekend is devoted to learning – there are also social-justice activities and lots of time for talking, singing, eating, davening, meeting new people and catching up with old friends, and of course there was Shabbat, a day of both peace and intensity. There were many choices among the learning sessions – three time slots with 10 choices in each – but the central sessions, where everyone was together, were all about Israel.

“They’re all strong supporters of Israel,” Mr. Moline said. “They have disparate political beliefs, a range not dissimilar to what you’d find on most campuses – from the ones who believe that Israel should make more effort to develop conciliatory gestures toward the Palestinians to some who feel that there is no hope for any kind of co-existence, so the pragmatic discussion should take place knowing that. And then there are the ones who just love Israel and struggle with it at the same time.”

It is historically appropriate for a Conservative movement group to concentrate on Israel, Mr. Moline pointed out. “The movement was the first of the denominations to have an ideological and practical commitment to Zionism. Zionism is as much a part of Conservative Judaism as any of its other principles.”

Just below the surface, and often bubbling visibly at the top, are the students’ strong feelings about the Conservative movement. “There was an incredibly deep passion about Conservative Judaism,” Mr. Moline said, as well as a deep feeling of connection to it, feelings that the movement is not thought to evoke easily in college students. Many of the students at the kallah have grown up in the movement and are among its brightest hopes – they went through USY, Ramah, or a Schechter school, and left believing in the movement’s ideals and its promise. Others “have come to use during this exploratory phase of their lives,” Mr. Moline said. “For some we are a way station and for others we will be a permanent home. We have a disproportionate number of Jews by choice, Jews who converted during college – often their interest in Judaism developed around the time their friends were becoming b’nai mitzvah – because we present ourselves as being both authentic and open.” Gay and lesbian students also find themselves comfortable and accepted in Koach.

Still, there is a great deal of dissatisfaction with the movement among Koach members in general and kallah participants in particular. “It is no great revelation that there is a strong feeling of disconnect for these students between the communities they’ve helped create in high school and college and what they find when they are outside that bubble,” Mr. Moline said. “There are those who feel strongly that they want to stay connected to the movement because they are Conservative Jews in ideology and practice, but they feel that the movement’s institutions are not set up in a way that is welcoming to them.

“It not a problem with ideology,” continued Mr. Moline. “They share our ideology. But they want to create their Conservative Judaism just as our generation created ours. The institutions now are so firmly entrenched in our generation.

“Right now they want to stick with us. But they don’t want to be their parents’ Conservative Judaism. They want it to be theirs.

“Will they stick around? It depends. They will if we let them.”