The Death of Jewish Culture

Fifteen years ago this spring, I walked through the doors of a gleaming new postmodern sanctuary on New York’s Upper West Side. Known as Makor, this nightclub-cum-gallery billed itself as a secular Jewish arts-and-culture mecca for New York’s young hipsters. Its leaders promised to rebrand Judaism for the age of world music and poetry slams. If its name doesn’t ring a bell, that’s because Makor quietly shut down in 2006. Despite an infusion of cash and a friendly takeover by the 92nd Street Y, its graying great aunt, the cultural center could not survive.

Makor’s fate came to mind recently as I read of the demise of another, better known institution, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. For five decades, this grant-making entity funded all things Jewish and cultural in America—plays, films, books, museums, scholarship, even a record label. Only a few years ago, it dropped the word “national” from its name, signaling an ambitious bid to become a global network for Jewish culture. Now it, too, has collapsed.