The Changing Character of American Jewish Leadership: Some Policy Implications

The study of policy-making in the Jewish community is a generally neglected area in contemporary research on Jewish life. One way to begin exploration of this domain is by looking at the characteristics of Jewish communal leaders, those who play the greatest role in policy-making. Over the past few decades leadership characteristics have been changing. Research and impressionistic evidence confirm that Jewish organizational leaders are more Jewishly-oriented, more focused on "survival" issues, and more formally socialized into leadership roles than in the past. These changes have a number of implications for both the substance of communal policies and the dynamics of policy-making which bear further study.