One summer day some 40 years ago, Shirley and Norman Friedman of Appleton decided to go on a drive to Elkhart Lake. They stopped at a resort, and were surprised to see “all kinds of Jewish people there.”
These people were attending a session of the Wisconsin Institute of Judaism, then called the B’nai B’rith Institute of Judaism, which brought guest speakers to Wisconsin for a weekend of learning and socializing.
As Shirley explained in a telephone interview on Nov. 15, she and her husband decided to listen to one lecture. She doesn’t remember now who that speaker was, but she remembers that she and her husband decided to stay on for the rest of the session.
And they were so impressed that they went every summer thereafter. Norman became the historian for the program, in charge of recording the speakers on audio and videotapes; and she continued to go even after Norman died some 22 years ago.
“It was a very exciting time,” Shirley said. “I learned a tremendous amount. I have great memories of the people that I met and the faculty that we had.… I made many wonderful friends there.”
So did Herbert Barland of Glendale, now 92, who with his wife Florence also was a regular attendee.
He had heard about the program from members of his synagogue who had gone, but he said in a telephone interview Nov. 15 that he didn’t begin attending until after 1979, when the program, after meeting at various resorts, had established a permanent location at the kosher Perlstein Resort and Conference Center in Lake Delton, part of the Camp Chi complex.
“We had marvelous speakers” and “great camaraderie,” Barland said.
So both felt sorry to learn that the program, after 58 years, has been discontinued. According to program executive director Stuart Dolnick of Appleton, the last program was in the summer of 2007, after which “we decided we couldn’t go on.”
“I was very disappointed, because … we were like family, we looked forward to seeing each other,” said Friedman.
“It was sad when they had to dissolve it,” said Barland, but “you have to be a bit philosophical to survive…. Not even a stone lasts forever.”
Small community roots
According to Dolnick, the institute began in 1950. It has had only three directors; Abe Alk until his death in 1982, then Sy Dolnick, Stuart’s father, until 2002, when Stuart took over.
The program was started by young adults from smaller Jewish communities, particularly of the Fox River Valley and Lake Michigan shore north of Milwaukee.
Its goal was both to provide Jewish learning speakers that the communities couldn’t afford on their own and to bring people together for socializing.
Because most of these communities had B’nai B’rith lodges, the founders worked through the lodges on the project, and it was known at first as the B’nai B’rith Institute of Judaism.
However, Sy Dolnick in a telephone interview said the connection to B’nai B’rith was “loose from the beginning.” While the institute made use of members of national B’nai B’rith’s speakers bureau, one did not have to be a B’nai B’rith member to participate in the program, at least by the time Dolnick took charge, he said.
Ultimately, having B’nai B’rith in the name was “more of a hindrance” since people would think they had to be B’nai B’rith members to participate, said Sy Dolnick. So in 2001, the name was changed.
Among the speakers for the program were some of the most significant Jewish leaders, thinkers and scholars of the 20th century. They included theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Reconstructionism founder Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, historian Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, Orthodox Jewish feminist Blu Greenberg, and Jewish Renewal movement founder Rabbi Zalman Schachter.
The institutes also offered religious services, activities for children, and plenty of opportunities for socializing.
During its peak years, the program attracted some 120 participants per summer, including some from Milwaukee and Madison, and it reached a high of 149 around 1985, said Stuart Dolnick.
Ran its course
But it became difficult to attract new attendees, Dolnick said. “People would say there was no way to convey the quality of the experience to people who had not been here.”
Moreover, the same people tended to come every year, but their children usually didn’t want to participate once they were grown, with a few exceptions like Stuart Dolnick. And as the regulars began to age and die, the survivors found it difficult to attend without their spouses or their friends from past sessions, Dolnick said.
Efforts to attract college students and young families proved unavailing, he said. And as the Jewish populations of the small communities declined, there proved to be no demand for a program like this from Jews of Milwaukee or Madison, he said.
Only 39 people attended last session in 2007; and at the planning meeting in January for the 2008 session, program leaders weren’t sure that even that many would participate, said Dolnick.
However, it took some time to figure out how to shut the program down, particularly what to do with the $30,000 to $40,000 in the treasury.
Eventually, the Jewish Community Foundation, the endowment development program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, linked the institute with the Coalition for Jewish Learning, the MJF’s education program. The institute’s leaders created a fund that beginning this year will be devoted to helping support the annual Day of Discovery run by CJL.
“This is absolutely perfect” as a use for the institute’s funds, said Dolnick. The Day of Discovery is “a day devoted to learning about every possible Jewish subject, and it is available to anybody who wants to come. That’s what the institute was about.”
Still, Dolnick admitted that the program was “hard to let go… It was an incredible thing.”
And his father added, “I felt very badly” about the program’s ending, but “things run their course. This was no different.”
Formerly op-ed editor, Leon Cohen has written for The Chronicle for more than 25 years.
Loading ...