Behind the Scenes of an American Keiruv Movement

Zev Eleff, Living from Convention to Convention: A History of the NCSY, 1954-1980, (New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 2009).

Zev Eleff's Living from Convention to Convention: A History of the NCSY, 1954-1980 is a groundbreaking book - the first scholarly work on the National Council of Synagogue Youth (NCSY), describing the founding and first few decades of the oranization. The book is meticulously researched, with information extracted from several archives and an extensive list of footnotes following every chapter. The amount of detail does not render the book boring; on the contrary, it is a refreshingly easy and interesting read for NCSYers and strangers alike. Eleff opens with the hallmark of every good historical study: relevant context. He describes the state of American Jewish youth and recounts the successes and failures of non-Orthodox youth groups. Eleff notes the relatively late advent of the various Orthodox youth groups in contrast to those of other denominations and discusses why American Jewry did not create extracurricular Jewish education opportunities until the middle of the twentieth century. Although the work is clearly intended as a historical review of NCSY, Living from Convention to Convention devotes an entire chapter to Yeshiva University's Youth Bureau, NCSY's predecessor as the first Orthodox youth group in America. Adumbrating YU's later inability to get along with other Orthodox institutions, Eleff notes that the Youth Bureau rose out of a failed partnership between Yeshiva and the Orthodox Union. The Youth Bureau's success led directly to the creation of Rabbi Morris Besdin's Jewish Studies Program at YU. This program catered to Yeshiva College students with a minimal background in Jewish Studies who wished to continue developing their Jewish knowledge, an ambition originally inspired by the Youth Bureau. Rabbi Pinchas Stolper's appointment to the role of National Director in 1958, nearly four years after the creation of NCSY, is seen as the "real" inauguration of NCSY, as all attempts to create a truly national movement failed prior to Rabbi Stolper's arrival. Rabbi Stolper's task was fraught with difficulty. Paid only a meager salary, Rabbi Stolper was expected to assume the entire burden of fundraising for all NCSY activities. According to Eleff, Rabbi Stolper deserves credit for making NCSY the thriving movement it is today as well as for remaining within the boundaries of Halakhah throughout - no mean feat in an era where mixed dancing was a standard feature at all teenage social events, Orthodox or otherwise. In his introduction to the book, Rabbi Stolper explains "that [he] quickly learned that it was unfeasible to buck local practice or the authority of the synagogue rabbi," and therefore cleverly framed all halakhic issues as "official NCSY policy" in order to meet halakhic standards (p. xii). At times, though, even Rabbi Stolper had to compromise:

I received a call from Mr. George Kussak of Schenectady in 1960. He had received my written communications concerning the recreation of NCSY and asked me if I would help form a region in upper New York State. I replied, "gladly, but first, we must agree on the ground rules." Kussak agreed to all of NCSY's standards. Soon enough, we scheduled a shabbaton event in his synagogue. The spirit of that weekend is hard to describe. We had a light program planned for Saturday night. Just as the program began, suddenly, George came to me to report that he received a phone call to the effect that a few carloads of parents were on their way. "If the parents see that there is no social dancing, we are in for significant difficulty." "You made a promise, and I expect you to keep it," I insisted. "If we don't satisfy the parents at this delicate and crucial stage, we will not be able to continue hosting NCSY events. I propose that you take a ten minute walk while I turn on the phonograph for five minutes," he implored. "When you return, it will be off. Now, I promise you that if you accept my proposal, you will never again hear the term 'social dancing' cross my lips." "George, give me a few minutes to think it over." Who could I call? To whom could I describe my predicament? Who, in those days understood what NCSY was and what was at stake for our future success or possible failure? There were clear risks, no matter what course of action I chose. I realized that I had nowhere to turn but inward. I agonized and sweated and then returned to confront George. "George, it's a deal." Not only did he keep his part of the bargain, but in the scores of events that took place in the subsequent years, halachic standards were never an issue (p.xiv - xv).

At first, Eleff appears willing to readily engage with controversy, devoting an entire chapter to the "brief and bitter" partnership between the Youth Bureau and NCSY. In April 1964, "a deal was negotiated and agreed upon. In the final formulation of the Youth Bureau-NCSY deal, Yeshiva would staff and handle those... events that were primarily educational in nature... [while] all shabbatonim and conclaves would be run primarily through NCSY and its youth directors" (p. 34). However, by December of that year, NCSY founder Harold Boxer had written a twelve-page memo listing grievances that NCSY held against Yeshiva: "The charges by NCSY included allegations that the Youth Bureau had initiated new events without first communicating them to the Joint Youth Commission, had cancelled numerous joint events in the first year of the deal, and had repeatedly excluded NCSY's name from official fliers and program guides" (p. 36). By 1966, the partnership was dissolved, leaving only broken dreams for a united Orthodox youth movement in its wake. The book ends with a description of NCSY during the 1970s, noting the decentralization of NCSY during this period. Regional Directors gained more power as the disparate regions became too big to be run by one office. Justifying ending the book at this juncture, Eleff writes: "As NCSY entered the 1980s, it was a movement with too large a network to be identified by individual personalities or its national headquarters. Accordingly, the subsequent chapters of NCSY's history lie in the annals of the independent regions, each one well deserving its own chronicled story" (p. 85). While this explanation sounds reasonable, one cannot help but wonder whether NCSY (the copyright holder of the book) is trying to avoid revisiting the Lanner scandal. In this particularly nasty affair, an NCSY Regional Director and high school principal engaged in inappropriate contact with young boys and girls alike. Sadly, after the original allegations against Rabbi Baruch Lanner were dismissed in a beit din in 1989, NCSY retained him on staff until The Jewish Week uncovered his heinous acts in 2000, starting an uproar that led to a well-publicized OU investigation and a prison sentence for Lanner. Critics might argue that Lanner's odious behaviors started in the 1970's and should be included in the book. Even without resorting to such nitpicking, however, it is disappointing to entertain the notion that politics, rather than intellectual honesty, dictated what topics NCSY allowed Eleff to write about. Without direct proof or confirmation from Eleff or NCSY, though, such speculation remains just that. As Eleff notes in his preface, it would be impossible to "depict every nuance of NCSY during the period covered" (p. xxiv). So instead of describing the programming of specific chapters, he prefers to discuss behind-the-scenes administrative issues that arose over NCSY's first few decades. Some matters mentioned are ubiquitous to large institutions - what Jewish organization hasn't had to deal with constant financial crises? - while others, like Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan's anti-missionary activity, were unique to NCSY. All in all, this official history of the founding of NSCY provides the reader with a thorough understanding of how this movement - for, as Eleff accurately reminds us, NCSY is much more than a youth group - developed, molding American Orthodoxy into what it is today. Yitzchak Ratner is a junior at YC majoring in Psychology and is a Staff Writer for Kol Hamevaser.