RABBI WEIN ON MORE SOULFUL

The organizations that claim to represent American Jewry meet this week in their annual General Assembly gathering. Once every five years this meeting takes place in Jerusalem, while rotating around American cities the other four years of the cycle. Surveying the wreckage of much of current American Jewish society, there is now a call for a much more soulful approach to Judaism and Jewish life to help reverse current trends and demographic and social realities. For decades, official American Jewry has been trapped by its own public relations sloganeering. No one can be against a more soulful Jewish public. But what exactly does the word soulful mean? In what context is the word to be translated into deed and attitude? In short, what and where is the key to reaching and opening the shriveled soul of American Jewish society?