It was a shock, and a sad day, when we learned that CAJE will not meet this August in San Antonio.Through its 33 years, CAJE has been a number of things to the Jewish community. It started as a counter-cultural experience. The "A" stood not for advancement, but for alternatives. On a college campus. Living in dorms. No curricular controls. Democracy and equal access throughout. Quite an experiment, and quite a success.
As CAJE grew, and became successful, it became part of the landscape. And as it became influential, it helped to change the established order, itself becoming part of the establishment. But throughout, it preserved its identity as the leading trans-denominational gathering place for the Jewish educational community. And we all came to count on it.
Jeff Lasday, CAJE's new Executive Director, David Frank, Director of Conferences, and their colleagues, have made amazing strides over the past three years in improving CAJE's signature summer conference. Higher-level programming. More thematic programming. Outreach to great speakers. A professionally staffed operation with solid volunteer relationships. They did all the right things, and as quickly as one can within a large organization like CAJE with many, many stakeholders.But the hurdles were too high; there was too much for them to do in a world where destination conferences are threatened by the web and teleconferencing, where travel is increasingly expensive, and where time is increasingly scarce. And then the economy dealt CAJE a blow from which it could not recover.
We at Behrman House will miss CAJE, personally and professionally. We saw so many of our friends at the conference, we had fun, and we got to talk about our books. There was strength and vitality in every corner of the conference; each August we would come back energized from the experience.
So now we in the Jewish educational community face a challenge: keeping our communications going, maintaining relationships that were refreshed and renewed on a different college campus each August, keeping ourselves professionally alive and making sure we continue to grow. No one can know for sure how this will work itself out. But we can start right now. Post a comment here, or write on the Behrman House Facebook page, or write to us directly at behrmanhouse.com. Let's get the conversation going, and figure out how to preserve and nourish the community that CAJE served.
