The new issue of the online journal Klal Perspectives on kiruv today is out. Judging by the early traffic it promises to be both widely read and likely to stir up debate especially as the contributors had widely divergent assessments of the current state of kiruv.
Though the editors posed the questions to contributors in neutral language it does not take much to read into them a certain disillusionment. Among the questions posed (I’m paraphrasing) are: 1) Has kiruv in America run its course due to a rapidly diminishing target audience? 2) Does kiruv rechokim command too much of the communal budget compared to other important needs — e.g. kiruv krovim? And 3) How can the effectiveness of various kiruv efforts be measured?
These are tough questions. If the symposium did nothing else it showed how elusive are the measures of success. The contributors did not agree on the goals of kiruv: Is increased Jewish identity (and perhaps the lessened chance of intermarriage) a desideratum? Or are only those who become fully observant “successes”? And even between those poles there is no agreement on the metrics for success. One contributor asked for instance whether it is permissible to talk of “high value” baalei teshuvah who will likely influence others.
The disillusionment is perhaps understandable. After the Six Day War dreams of a whole generation of Jews returning were rife. Rav Shlomo Wolbe spoke of mass teshuvah inIsrael and Rabbi Noach Weinberg developed plans to return the majority of the Jewish People to Hashem.
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