Mission Statement

Klal Perspectives’ goal is to provide the Torah community with a forum to address and debate the major issues confronting the community today. We envision a journal in which a diverse group of rabbinic and lay leaders will share their varying perspectives on a given topic in each issue, with an eye to not only describing problems but also pointing to possible solutions. Input from the broader community will be sought and published as well, in order to broaden the discussion and enlist as many talents as possible in developing strategies for the future.

Background

Across North America today, Torah communities face a host of complex and challenging issues. Rarely are those challenges primarily local in nature; most reflect wider societal trends and attitudes. As a consequence, these issues can be fruitfully discussed on a national level, and local models for addressing the problems that have proven successful should be shared so that they can be implemented elsewhere. Many of these issues cannot be fully explored in commercial publications aimed at the entire family. Klal Perspectives seeks to provide the forum currently lacking in which these issues can be fully explored, from a wide-range of perspectives, and the merits of different approaches debated.

Proposal

We intend to produce an electronically-published journal several times per year in order to facilitate a broad-based conversation about the most pressing contemporary issues. Each issue of the journal will address a specific topic. The founders of the journal share a belief that any issue worthy of communal discussion allows of a multiplicity of perspectives, sometimes complementary, sometimes conflicting, and that potential solutions are most likely to emerge when those multiple perspectives are brought to bear on one another.

Fortunately, the Torah community is rich in human resources. Among those in positions of communal responsibility, such as rabbonim, roshei yeshiva, educators and leaders of institutions, there are many who possess the experience, perspective and the clarity of expression to make valuable contributions to the discussion. There are also many individuals without formal positions who have much to contribute and can offer different perspectives. As such, this journal will include a wide spectrum of contributors in the hope of bringing together the full range of talents and points of view with which our community is blessed.

The tone and attitude of the journal will always be one of deference to gedolei Torah, the unquestioned leaders of our community. It is our belief that constructive thought and initiative from within our communities can help shed valuable light for our decision-makers

To ensure the breadth of discussion and to discover talents not yet known to the broader public, the journal will include an expanded letters section in which authors and their critics can engage one another in dialogue.

Finally, we recognize that empirical information that would have an important bearing on the discussion is rarely available, leaving many at a loss in their efforts to pursue sorely needed solutions. It is our goal to point the direction for relevant empirical research, and hopefully at some future date to publicize the findings of such research. Though facts do not by themselves dictate solutions, and the preferred solutions will often depend on different ideological perspectives, nevertheless any discussion is furthered if the parties can at least agree on the parameters of the issue being addressed. We also hope at some future date to host communal forums on some of the topics discussed in Klal Perspectives.