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Chicago Launch

What Do We Mean by a ‘Big Tent’?

Yehuda Kurtzer explores the challenges and opportunities of ideological pluralism, and how we might foster an ethic of inclusion in the Chicago Jewish community.

Yehuda Kurtzer

June 7, 2022

June 7, 2022

Yehuda Kurtzer

Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer is the President of the Shalom Hartman Institute and a leading thinker and author on the major challenges facing the Jewish people. He is the author of Shuva: The Future of the Jewish Past, the co-editor of The New Jewish Canon, and the host of the Identity/Crisis podcast. Under his leadership, the Shalom Hartman Institute has grown significantly as a leading think tank and educational center for the North American Jewish community,

Pluralism, Liberal Zionism, Jewish Peoplehood, Video

The American Jewish community has long used the metaphor of a ‘big tent’ to describe its aspiration, a vision that it could tolerate a broad spectrum of viewpoints on Israel. This idea may have originated as a way of being inclusive, but it often functions in the opposite: as a rigid policing of boundaries that designates some views as outside the range of acceptable communal discourse. This in turn gives rise to hostility and criticism of the Jewish community and the ideas that it built the tent around.

At the launch of our new regional offices in Chicago on June 1, 2022, Yehuda Kurtzer explored the challenges and opportunities of ideological pluralism, and how we might foster an ethic of inclusion in the Chicago Jewish community. The lecture was followed by a conversation and Q&A with Rabbis Michael Siegel, Shoshanah Conover, and David Wolkenfeld moderated by Jason Rosensweig.