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JAMES D. BESSER

WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT

To begin with, it was a strange
weekend to hold a big meeting
in Washington.
The Democrats, wrung out by
all those stories of family strug-
gle and survival, were limping
home from their convention in
Chicago; Republicans, journal-
ists and bureaucrats were on va-
cation, using the Labor Day
weekend to rest up for the great
political battles to come.
The only folks on Capitol Hill
were a small and dispirited
bunch of right-wing zanies ped-
dling anti-government conspir-
acy theories, ever watchful for
sinister black helicopters.
But none of that dampened
the spirits of the 1,000 members
of B'nai B'rith, the world's
biggest Jewish organization and
habitually one of the most trou-
bled, who assembled in the sub-
terranean rooms of the Grand
Hyatt for their biennial conven-
tion.
There was an unmistakable
element of deja vu at this year's
event; once again, the center-
piece was an ambitious plan to
breathe new life into an orga-
nization that was trying to shed
its fraternal past without shed-
ding its remaining membership.
And as usual, there were
deep, angry divisions between
those who like things the way
they have been for the past 150
years, and those who think B'nai
B'rith needs to blend in better
with all the other, "modern" Jew-
ish organizations — which, by
the way, also are fighting for
their lives, but with a modern,
blandly efficient flair.
There is a tendency in the
Jewish organizational world to
look at B'nai B'rith with amused
contempt. Its membership is old
and stubborn, although the del-
egates at this week's convention
did not exactly conform to the
stereotype; the lodge structure
seems stuffy and out of date,
something from "The Honey-
mooners" days, not the "Sein-
feld" era.
Younger Jews, more prosper-
ous and assimilated, no longer
desperate for organizations that
will accept them, tend to prefer
smorgasbord activism — pick-
ing and choosing specific issues
that deserve their attention and
their money.
Jews are now prominent in
the major political parties, in
non- Jewish charitable and cul-
tural organizations, in commu-
nities where Jews are a small
minority; they have good insur-

COMMUNAL page 130

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