In this morning’s “eJewishPhilanthropy”, a widely respected and much read collection of opinion pieces, there was a thought piece by Stephen Windmueller. He correctly identifies the profound and long-term changes underway in Jewish life today. And he correctly identifies that without some serious visioning and looking in the mirror, the community, as he defines it, may be coming to a crisis.

However, I believe that he is asking some of the right questions, but his solution is tautologically self-limiting. In it, he calls for the institutions of Jewish life to meet to converse. But in so doing, he overlooks a few key components of the era in which we now live:

• There have been conversations along the lines he mentioned occurring for several years. It is intriguing to look at which one’s have been fruitful and productive, and which ones haven’t. For but one example, Gary Rosenblatt has convened “conversations” for several years, purposely and proactively trying to bridge as many formal and informal boundaries as possible. These low-keyed, closed door sessions have led to many productive networks independent of organizational limitations. However, when some of the local and national Jewish organizations themselves have tried to convene such conferences, they have often bumped against organizational defensiveness or blindness. [E.g., I was recently contacted by the web developer of a very prominent Jewish organization asking my advice on how they should make their website more likely to attract younger donors. My response was that this was not a matter of technology; it was a matter of credibility; until that organization is perceived to actually incorporate the aspirations and styles of younger people, it could hardly expect that their website would attract younger donors.]
• Moreover, if the analysis of 21st Century life is correct, traditional organizational structures, based on their models of financial support and long term loyalty, are a very successful 20th Century model – in other words, yesterday’s news. When the question is how do we preserve ourselves, as opposed to how do we reinvent ourselves, the conversation is a non-starter.
• We already have the outlines of what the new models of institutional life will look like. I say outlines since we are only at the earliest stages of confronting the challenges of scale, funding, and impact, but the abundance of viable alternative models of Jewish life in the US and elsewhere are clear indicators. [Full disclosure: my service on the board of Bikkurim and as an informal advisor to many of the innovative groups has informed my perspective.]
• I believe that the most profound changes are those that take place outside the mainstream. Let them be the “risk capital” and the “test labs”. But also let them help formulate what a coherent response to 21st Century identity should look like. I have occasion to sometimes speak to the best of the organizational thinkers, and on other occasions with the best of the new. They are profoundly different conversations, with differing assumptions, vocabulary, and visions of the future. Are we better off encouraging a parallel universe or trying too hard to make square boxes and round holes align themselves?
• Is it so terrible if some institutions fail? Jewish history is marked by changes. The post WWII Jewish community would be unrecognizable to those who lived only 100 years earlier; that in turn would have been incomprehensible to those who lived only 100 years before that. We are constantly reinventing, reimagining, and relegating to footnote or lesser status institutions that were dominant in the past. It is not the death knell of American Jewry if the same thing happens now. [I am not trivializing the consequences on many levels.]

Does all of this obviate Steve’s heartfelt plea? No, of course not. But if what takes place is a collection of organizations wondering how to co-opt the best and brightest of the innovators, it will not achieve the re-visioning he envisions. Rather, what needs to take place is for the organizations to educate themselves first: to understand that the world has changed and it isn’t going back. Only then will a productive reinvention take place, modeled not on how to bring the outliers back but how to bring the “in-liers” out.

A few years ago, I suggested that those of us above a certain age are guests in this century. [It is a phrase that has been quoted quite a lot.] I profoundly believe that and have done everything I know to learn how to be an educated and sensitive guest and participant in a world radically different than the one which defined us in the last. When the history of this century is written, I suspect that what we will see is that it will not prove to be the demise of history’s largest and most successful Diaspora community, but a time when that community has simply redefined its categories, vocabulary, what identity is, and how that identity becomes manifest. It excites me to be here.