Counterpoint's 50-year reunion in Israel:  A trip down memory lane

It was 50 years ago this month that 15 educators boarded a flight from the United States to Australia. There were nine men and six women who, at that time, were among the leaders in informal Jewish education in America – and all, except for me, were from Yeshiva University. We spent a month and a half in Melbourne and Sydney. These Jewish communities would never be the same again.

Counterpoint was an informal Jewish education program that was brought from the United States to Australia and South Africa. It was based on the Torah Leadership Seminar (TLS), possibly the most successful Orthodox Jewish outreach program in America. TLS had been developed by the Community Service Division at Yeshiva University in the 1960s. Its purpose was to enhance Jewish identity through the use of week-long seminars held the last week in August and December plus weekend getaways called Shabbatons.

Let’s jump ahead to July 4, 2024, when close to 150 people gathered in the auditorium of the Gruss Campus of Yeshiva University in Jerusalem. They were there celebrating 50 years of Counterpoint. Although most of them had been advisers who staffed these programs from 1974 to 2005, about a third of the crowd had been participants at these seminars in Australia and South Africa. We were there to take a trip down memory lane, looking back at what turned out to be one of the most successful Jewish outreach programs in the English-speaking world.

If you’re wondering why this event was taking place in Israel, besides being the center of the Jewish world, it’s the place where many of the staff and participants of Counterpoint eventually ended up. Of the 15 members of the first Counterpoint team, 11 are now living in Israel. The majority of the children of Counterpoint’s founders have also made aliyah.

Our master of ceremonies for the evening was Johnny Krug. He had been part of the American team three times in the 1970s and returned four more times a quarter of a century later.

Most programs which take place in Israel today set aside the first few minutes to remember the brave men and women serving in the Israel Defense Forces, as well as the hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza. This evening, the prayers were led by Avshalom Katz, who twice had been the music personality during the first years of Counterpoint in Australia. He was also the performer at the one Counterpoint event that took place in Latin America.

Next on the podium was Hillel Davis, who had led the first team to Australia in 1974. He briefly spoke about the history of the Torah Leadership Seminar. Besides strengthening the religious identity of Jewish teenagers, it had a secondary purpose: recruitment for Yeshiva College for men and Stern College for women. Davis gave full credit to YU for creating Counterpoint, which had no possibility of bringing students from so far away.

Davis also pointed out other differences between the TLS and Counterpoint programs, which proved to be quite challenging that first year. In Australia, all the high school students at the Mount Scopus Memorial College in Melbourne and Moriah College in Sydney were required to attend the programs – and their parents had to pay for this privilege. The American programs were attended exclusively by high school students who wanted to be there, and payment was sometimes subsidized by scholarships. 

In addition, the intense impact that Counterpoint had on Melbourne and Sydney was entirely different than what programs like this had in the States. At TLS, you might have a small number of students from Boston, New York, Baltimore, etc., as opposed to the hundreds who attended Counterpoint from just two Australian cities.

A Tribute to the Visionaries

THE MAIN part of the program was a Tribute to the Visionaries, the three founders of Counterpoint. They were Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, whom Davis called the leader of Modern and Centrist Orthodoxy; Dr. Abraham Stern, whom Davis called the “godfather” of informal Jewish education; and Hans Bachrach, who financed all the expenses of the first team. Josh Lamm represented his family. He spoke of his father’s professional career from his years as rabbi of Manhattan’s Jewish Center until the time he was president of Yeshiva University.

Rivkie Stern Lamm, Josh’s wife, spoke on behalf of the Stern family in the presence of their mother, Malka. She talked about Dr. Stern’s work with experiential learning and applying it to informal Jewish education. He was the creator of the first Shabbat getaway programs, which he called Shabbatons. He felt that through Torah Leadership Seminar programs, Jewish teenagers could be educated about their religion while using trained advisers as their role models.

Nurit Bachrach, representing her family, spoke about their parents’ roles in starting Counterpoint. They sponsored Rabbi Lamm’s 1973 trip as a scholar in residence for the Australian Jewish community. She talked about his standing-room-only lectures. It was like being a “rock star,” with sold-out appearances by the end of his tour. “There was electricity in the air.”

Nurit was witness to that final dinner at their home when Mindy Lamm turned to her husband and asked, “Don’t you think the Torah Leadership Seminar would be a good fit for Australia?” The story goes that after an enthusiastic discussion, her father went into another room and came back with a check to pay for a TLS team to go to Australia the following year.

TLS CHANGED its name in Australia to Counterpoint. Its purpose was to deepen the Jewish knowledge of Australian Jewish youth. Carmel College in Perth also got involved. The success of Counterpoint can be seen by the fact that it continued for many years even without the involvement of its original initiators. In 1975, it went to South Africa, where it was sponsored by the Jewish communities of Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, and Port Elizabeth.

A lot happens in 50 years. So, the names of the 14 staff people who had passed away since the first Counterpoint were mentioned. It was also nice to remember that there were many couples over the years who first met at these programs and later got married.

Lenny Solomon had been the musical performer at Counterpoint programs multiple times in Australia and South Africa. He has made many recordings with his band Shlock Rock, which parodies songs in English to teach Jewish values. The lyrics he wrote were perfect material for informal Jewish education. That evening, everyone in the room sang along to the eight songs from that era that he performed.

The next speaker was Rabbi Selwyn Franklin who, along with his wife, Eileen, had been part of the first Counterpoint team in Australia. After becoming a rabbi in Durban, he brought the program to South Africa the following year. A decade later, he returned to Sydney, where he became rabbi of the Central Synagogue. 

First, he sang a couple of songs that he felt should have been included in the program. The first was “Shake It Up, Zaydee” which was a parody of The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout.” From there, he went to Effie Buchwald and Mordechai Reich’s “Puff the Kosher Dragon,” also sung at the first Counterpoint programs in Australia and South Africa.

On a more serious note, Rabbi Franklin spoke about Counterpoint’s impact on both continents. He described what Orthodox Judaism was like 50 years ago in Australia and South Africa.

“Almost everyone at that time attended religious services in Orthodox synagogues,” he said. “Conservative or Reform congregations were almost nonexistent. Probably only five percent of the Jews were actually Sabbath observers. However, when asked which synagogue they attended, congregants would reply that they go to the one where the rabbi does not drive on Shabbat. It was a non-Orthodox Orthodox lifestyle where each Jew did have the spirit of Yiddishkeit. It was Counterpoint that eventually came around and actually lit that fire.” 

And it changed the Australian and South African Jewish communities forever.

I CHOSE to share a story with the audience. Our flight to Australia seemed endless. By the time we arrived at our hosts’ homes in Melbourne late in the afternoon, we were exhausted. I told my hosts that I needed to nap. They asked if they should wake me for tea and I said, “Please don’t.” 

I woke up a few hours later and asked, “Doesn’t anyone eat around here in the evening?” They answered that I had asked not to be woken for tea. That’s how I learned that “tea” meant dinner or supper. 

A few weeks later, when I was in someone’s home in Sydney in the late afternoon, the host asked very nicely if I was interested in having tea. I’m not an idiot, so this time I answered in the affirmative. Minutes later, my host returned with a cup filled with hot water. Obviously “tea” in Sydney is not the same thing as “tea” in Melbourne. It was a hard lesson for me to learn. They might speak English in Australia, but it doesn’t always translate to American.

That was my introduction to the next speaker, Leora Pushett, an olah from Melbourne. As a student at the Mount Scopus Memorial College, she had attended Counterpoint as a participant in the early 1980s. She eventually became a Counterpoint adviser and ultimately the school’s informal Jewish education coordinator. 

At the first Counterpoint program she attended with the 120 classmates in her grade, she was just one of three observant students in the group. After the 10-day seminar, that number began to change slowly and then continued to grow. She realized that she was no longer alone. 

Pushett has worked in Jewish outreach her entire professional life. That evening, she led the Americans in the crowd in a game called Strine, testing the former advisers’ memories of Australian slang. Needless to say, a fun time was had by all.

THE COUNTERPOINT program was run by Yeshiva University in Melbourne from 1974 until 2005. At first, it was with the cooperation of Mount Scopus Memorial College and was switched over in its final years to Leibler Yavneh College. Imagine our surprise when, in preparation for this evening, we discovered that a program called Counterpoint still exists and is running in Sydney at Moriah College. 

After YU left, the school decided to continue to organize seminars. This was first done by Rabbi David Shaw, who at the time was Moriah’s director of informal Jewish education. An immigrant from South Africa, he had become observant at the second South African Counterpoint in 1976. Years later, he left Australia and returned to his birthplace, where he is now a prominent rabbi in Johannesburg. Counterpoint’s new director in Sydney was Rabbi Benji Levy, who today runs it with his wife, Renana.

To celebrate this discovery of our “lost grandchild,” we introduced our final speaker, Rabbi Levy. He talked about how his father had attended the first Counterpoint in South Africa in 1975, which Rabbi Franklin coordinated and where I played the music. His family eventually moved to Australia, where Benji also attended Counterpoint. He then became an adviser and eventually the director of informal Jewish education at Moriah. 

Since making aliyah, he continues to run the Counterpoint program every summer. Benji is currently training 20 English-speaking advisers from Israel, who in August will be joining another 30 Australians in Sydney. This summer’s Counterpoint will be attended by 900 students from Moriah College.

Rabbi Levy ended his talk by thanking all those present for the privilege of continuing the legacy called Counterpoint. He valued the contribution by those visionaries more than a half a century ago. Benji also expressed his appreciation for what the program had done for his father and for him. 

He was especially thankful to Counterpoint for having set in motion the opportunity for him to meet his wife at a seminar. Now we’re able to add their names to the list of couples who first met at Counterpoint. That’s still happening, as is the program itself, which we now know is alive and well in Australia after 50 years.

To end the evening, I chose to sing just one song that I knew had been sung at every Counterpoint event held around the world – “Am Yisrael Chai!” (the nation of Israel lives). These words had been put together by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach shortly before the Six Day War after visiting Jews living behind the Iron Curtain in Romania. 

Today, one sees this phrase on banners hanging from people’s balconies and on bumper stickers. The words “Am Yisrael chai” have been spoken in numerous speeches this year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Remembrance Day for the Fallen, and on Independence Day. We all sang up to the heavens together. It was the perfect way to end what had been a memorable evening.

The Counterpoint 50 reunion was broadcast around the world on Zoom. There was a gathering of former advisers in New York in the afternoon, while some former participants gathered in South Africa that evening. Australians who had participated in the program had to wait until the next day to view the previous evening’s event.

THE BUILDUP of excitement before the reunion already began in April with the announcement in the Jerusalem Post Magazine of the upcoming get-together. WhatsApp groups made up of people who had attended Counterpoint suddenly sprang up. They’re still active, with a total of 140 members. It was inspiring to read in the months leading up to the reunion some of the things that they wrote about their experiences at Counterpoint.

When people signed up for the reunion, they were asked “How did Counterpoint affect your life?” Here are just a few of their responses.

Shimy Davis wrote, “I still remember when my brother went in 1974, and we went to meet him at the train station. I was shocked to see all these people dancing on the platform of the station. I was to follow the next year, and the rest is history.”

Ilana Nayman said, “Counterpoint made religion fun and exciting and interesting. The big personalities of the advisers made us all want to be like them. Their influence endured over the years, many of us leading more religious lifestyles over time.”

Willy Lederman sent this response. “I was at the first big one at Shalom College with Moriah and Scopus kids. Counterpoint had a big influence on me. In fact, I did my sociology and pedagogy thesis on ‘sensitivity programs,’ as it was relevant to Counterpoint. Allow me to say that Counterpoint was a brilliant education asset to Australia and for the development of informal Jewish education.”

Here’s what Mark Schneider sent in. “Without a doubt, Counterpoint played a crucial formative role in developing me and my Jewish identity. That influence has now culminated in my wife and I, our children, and their spouses, all of whom attended Counterpoint and who now all live active, engaged, observant Jewish lives in Israel.”

Mordechai Becher wrote, “I attended Counterpoint in Melbourne when I was 13, became observant, and I’m now on the faculty of Yeshiva University in New York.”

Yitzhak Ajzner replied, “There is no question that Counterpoint was one of the major turning points of my life. The recipe was a rich mix of extraordinarily creative activities; absolutely brilliant, young talented educators; and an opportunity to reflect on one’s life. 

“The result was that I was gently pushed to look in the mirror and admit to myself that there was a world of faith and tradition that I knew I believed in and to which I felt deeply connected but had been ignoring and neglecting. With tender encouragement, I set out on a journey which has defined who I am, what I live for, and what gives my life meaning. I have always held the deepest gratitude to the fine leaders who skillfully guided me and the generous philanthropists who made it possible.”

I couldn’t have said it any better myself. Happy 50th anniversary to Counterpoint. May it continue to live long and prosper! ■

The writer lives in Jerusalem with his wife and family. They recently celebrated 40 years since they made aliyah.