Peoplehood and Jewish Culture

After establishing a Jewish Peoplehood Hub last November , the Jewish Agency now has explicitly embraced the concept of Jewish Peoplehood as its top priority. The question is, just what does peoplehood mean? One answer comes from researcher Steven Cohen, who proposes that “you should be involved in your community, either religiously or socially. You should be engaged with other Jews doing things that are Jewish.” That definition will not be meaningful to the many American Jews who see Jewishness as a personal decision, not a communal imperative. It’s becoming commonplace to say that ‘every Jew today is a Jew by choice,’ and in America it may largely be true. Identifying as Jewish in America often has little to do involvement or engagement. It’s a matter of personal identity, which can... Continue Reading

Jewish Culture in a Crossover World

Words like “crossover,” “fluidity,” and “hybrid” kept coming up during a session at the annual conference of the Council of American Jewish Museums a couple of weeks ago. The panelists, drawing on both research and experience, all saw changes in attitudes and behavior among the audiences for Jewish cultural events, though not necessarily the same changes. From the standpoint of the arts generally, this is hardly news. For decades symphony orchestras have had to cope with a shift away from subscriptions towards single tickets sales. Opera companies use sexier marketing and rely less on social cachet; museums entice young adults with music and mingling in the galleries on weekend nights. Arts institutions have generally recognized for a while now that they can’t rely on the habitual... Continue Reading

Perceptions and Priorities, Past and Future

If perception is the reality we act upon, our conscious or unconscious perceptions are critical in determining how we go about repairing the world. Yet as often as not, people talk past each other because they don’t realize how differently they see the world. We can find a lot of examples in contemporary Jewish life. Think of how two very different kinds of news stories sometimes get confused with each other. One is a “trend” story, which typically brings together several different instances of a recurring phenomenon. It draws attention to events that may not seem important by themselves, but that together point to a change in behavior, values, or institutions. The other is sometimes called a “man bites dog” story. When a dog bites a man, the saying goes, that’s not news, but when... Continue Reading

Jewish Arts and Their Audiences

Rabbi Irwin Kula, the mediagenic head of CLAL, inaugurated last week’s Schmooze conference on Jewish arts and culture with what he called a “thought experiment.” Bypassing a ritual obeisance to the current renaissance in Jewish culture and the importance of Jewish art and artists, he posed big-picture questions about both the medium and the message. Decades ago, in his student days, Kula was struck by an offhand remark by Billy Crystal on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight” Show. Carson had mentioned that he had gone hunting and Crystal retorted, “Hunting! Jews don’t hunt, we’re furriers.” With that joke, reflected Rabbi Kula, Crystal had taught more Americans about Jewish values than all the rabbis in the United States. He also pointed to movies like Barry Levinson’s “Liberty Heights”... Continue Reading

Building a Thriving Innovation Ecosystem

In a recent JTA op-ed piece, Adene Sacks of the Jim Joseph Foundation shared a critical insight about the state of philanthropy and Jewish innovation. One the one hand, social entrepreneurs need support that “nurtures these early stage ventures into maturity and supports the growth of individual entrepreneurs into full leadership.” On the other hand, funders have become more strategic in their grantmaking, using grants primarily to achieve particular objectives as distinct from supporting worthy organizations. The result, she observes, is that “when JDub gets a grant for two concerts or Keshet is supported for teacher training but not for their work with GLBT students, then we, as funding entities, are not increasing impact.” A few weeks ago I wrote in this space that “helping these Jewish... Continue Reading

Culture, Media and the Jewish Future

It’s no accident that the words “communicate” and “community” come from the same root, which means “to share.” Culture, which grows from the collective experience of a group, needs to be communicated in order to become common property. Strikingly, the most ancient media – oral traditions, the written word, song, dance, and images – are still the basis of art and creativity today. The main difference is that they are now radically more accessible, thanks to mechanical and electronic means from the printing press to the Internet. Beginning with Gutenberg it has been possible for a written or visual work to be widely and more easily disseminated, and Edison and Emile Berliner did the same for sound. Those were the first mass media. Now that you can carry thousands of songs... Continue Reading

Notes From the Underground

Google recently took the unusual step of explaining its search results on the word “Jew.” It seems that Google’s algorithms bring up a lot of anti-Semitic sites when searching for this particular word, as distinct from “Judaism” or “Jewish.” One of the factors in those algorithms is the number of visits to a particular site, which raises the issue of just how influential the anti-Semitic sites actually are. This touches on a perennial question in the Jewish community: is anti-Semitism a serious threat that needs to be combated forcefully, or is it a few hotheads making a lot of noise? One source of hard data about the popularity of anti-Semitic sites is Alexa, which supplies rankings and other metrics for any website. It doesn’t report numbers of hits or unique visitors, but its... Continue Reading

Be Strong, and Strengthen One Another

Thinking about the future, I worry about the state of our communal belief in ourselves. Low expectations suggest little confidence in the possibility of doing better, and our institutional language and processes convey a similar lack of resolve. We need to get our moxie back: higher standards, more nerve, and more independent thought. My concern about standards stems from the extremely modest expectations that are attached to a lot of current ventures. Take the many programs aimed at bringing young Jewish adults together. When a Jewish young-adult group signs up 30 people to see the Yankees play the Red Sox, is that a successful Jewish outreach event? The answer can be yes only if the bar is set very low. And when institutions and their funders count such activities as a success in community-building... Continue Reading

Innovation, Management and Leadership

Jews have been debating leadership since Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. Now, as established institutions begin to make room for innovative startups in Jewish life, discussions of leadership become more complicated and confusing, starting with what the word itself means. A leader is sometimes thought of as anyone who is highly placed in an organization. A major donor may be called a “lay leader,” suggesting that leadership amounts to having power or influence. A consulting firm that focuses on nonprofits, The Bridgespan Group, issued a report called “The Nonprofit Sector’s Leadership Deficit,” which reported that nonprofits “will need to attract and develop some 640,000 new senior managers” over the next decade. They use “leader” to mean “manager.” A news story... Continue Reading

Rupert Murdoch and Jewish New Media

Does Rupert Murdoch’s vision of online journalism have something to say to Jewish media? Murdoch talked about his new-media strategy in a recent interview on his SkyNews channel in Australia, making the case that online readers will pay for content. Given the unorganized marketplace of the Jewish Web, that question is pertinent in the Jewish context as well. Of course Murdoch is flouting the conventional wisdom that “information wants to be free.” In response his critics assail him with stereotypes: he’s too old, he’s too wedded to old-media paradigms, he’s a venal capitalist, or he’s a megalomaniac. But a stereotype is not an argument. And there are good reasons why Murdoch might be right. Web users have become accustomed to surfing the world’s media for free. Many assume that... Continue Reading

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