“What can changes in the American philanthropic/nonprofit sector tell us about Judaism and American life?” When that question was discussed this week at the Association for Jewish Studies conference in Boston, many of the answers revolved around the twin issues of authority and “empowerment.” One panelist invoked Elie Kaunfer’s important book Empowered Judaism, which speaks of “a Judaism in which people begin to take responsibility for creating Jewish community, without waiting on the sidelines.” As this trend advances, goes the argument, there will be a corresponding decline in traditional authority. In some eyes this amounts to nothing less than Haskalah 2.0, a transformative new “enlightenment” much like the initial encounter between Judaism and modernity. Take someone … Continue Reading
Those Who Serve
When there’s an elephant in the room, it takes courage to be the one to call attention to it. This past Tuesday, in a webinar presented by the Jewish Communal Service Association, St. Louis Federation head Barry Rosenberg said it out loud: “I sense a real crisis in Jewish communal service.” He gave several reasons, including the difficulty in recruiting and retaining qualified people, and the “dissonance” between Jewish communal workers and amcha, the rank and file of the Jewish people, in relation to peoplehood and Israel. Most surprisingly, he articulated a problem that is usually discussed behind closed doors. “We need to be very clear,” he commented, “that in great measure the conditions, policies, and attitudes under which we work are in the control of our lay leadership, … Continue Reading
Left Behind
[eJP note] Yesterday, in Change of Generation, Bob Goldfarb presented some initial thoughts on the newly released Generation of Change study released by the Avi Chai Foundation. Here is part 2. The Avi Chai Foundation’s new study, “Generation of Change,” highlights the sizeable support given to an elite group of Jews between the ages of 20 and 40 in recent years. This investment in risk and change has yielded a startling number of new options for expressing and enacting Jewishness: organizations working for social justice and human rights, new religious communities, websites offering access to Jewish resources, cultural programs, groups for recreational activities, and communal living organizations. Collectively these new entities have dramatically reinvigorated Jewish life - for those … Continue Reading
Change of Generation
Press coverage aside, the biggest news in the recent study sponsored by the Avi Chai Foundation is not its facts and figures. After all, it is hardly remarkable that young Jewish leaders are not monolithic, or that attitudes of nonestablishment leaders are different from those in more traditional roles. It has been clear for some time that younger Jews are less concerned with Israel and anti-Semitism than their older counterparts. And it will surprise no one that the denominations of American Judaism are in flux. Two conclusions of a very different kind have much more striking implications. One - based on the work of Vanderbilt’s Prof. Shaul Kelner - is that foundations have, as a sector, fundamentally redefined leadership in their own terms through leadership training programs. The report … Continue Reading
Jewish Media: One Scenario
Jewish media organizations have been largely immune to broader business trends towards consolidation in order to realize economies of scale. Those pressures to rationalize their businesses, together with the obsolescence of print and the decline in communal affiliation among Jews, are bound to result in radical changes in the structure of Jewish media in America in the next several years. Fortunately, however, the situation is not yet critical. As local papers gradually become unsustainable, the community has a window of opportunity to preserve the vital channel of communication that Jewish media represent. Media are already part of the communal agenda. Local Federations have been involved with local newspapers for a long time, and the National Federation/Agency Alliance is a major funder of … Continue Reading
Jewish Media in the Future
Why do we have Jewish newspapers? For the same reason as ethnic publishing developed in many communities: there was a demand for it, and money to be made by providing it. No one yet knows what will replace the old model, but whatever that turns out to be, it too will need to provide a needed service of economic value. As general-interest newspapers have ruefully recognized, there are now other and faster ways to post and scan classified ads, find obituaries, check the calendar of entertainment and cultural options, or read news from abroad, including Israel. The pressing question for all newspapers is, what is their unique value proposition for the future? Many editors of Jewish newspapers contend that their strongest product is the local content they originate. Yet their papers have … Continue Reading
Jewish Media Now
In the last issue of New York Review of Books Russell Baker writes about the “blight [that] has finished off several highly respectable papers, left many others palsied and witless, and reduced print journalism, once a vital element of American popular culture, to the verge of ruin.” The same problems afflict Jewish newspapers too. Why did it happen? The short answer is the Internet, but as Baker points out, “the industry-wide failure of entrepreneurial daring and imagination is too rarely mentioned, but such complacency was extensive in newspaper board rooms and probably contributed generously to the ruin.” Among Jewish media outlets there have recently been encouraging signs of entrepreneurial imagination, sometimes with promising results. Over the past couple of years the Los … Continue Reading
Marketing Rosh Hashana
This season is a time of reflection, self-assessment, and new beginnings for Jews the world over. To synagogues it can mean something much more practical: an unmatched opportunity for attracting new members and new revenue. That’s why synagogues fill pages of Jewish newspapers with advertisements at this time of year as they compete for worshippers and their dollars. A fight in Boca Raton, Florida, shows just how high the stakes can be. For the first time the Levis Jewish Community Center is offering High Holiday services this year, and synagogue rabbis are reportedly “enraged.” One calls the JCC’s move “a usurpation and invasion of the synagogues here.” He protests, “This is what we do. They have stepped over the line and are acting as a synagogue.” In other words, he … Continue Reading
History Repeats Itself
How different is the “millennial” generation of Jews? Some attitudes and behaviors have certainly changed, as the sociologist Steven M. Cohen discusses in a recent interview with Manfred Gerstenfeld. There is a danger, though, of confusing superficial differences with fundamental change, and of overlooking parallels with the past. Discussing the rise of independent minyanim in the past decade, Prof. Cohen says “its leaders try to differentiate their community from what they see as the spiritually unengaging and experientially passive suburban synagogues that most of them grew up in.” Aside from the suburban setting, that also was an important rationale in the founding of the Reform movement in the 19th century and the spread of Hasidism beginning in the 17th century. In the area of … Continue Reading
Conservative Judaism, Still at the Crossroads
Three years ago the Forward published a forum entitled “Conservative Judaism at a Crossroads,” just before Dr. Arnold Eisen was inaugurated as chancellor of the movement’s flagship institution, the Jewish Theological Seminary. Thirteen opinion-leaders offered their advice about the future of the movement, including prescriptions to be more spiritual, more charismatic, more intellectual; to have better worship services and better communication; to be more pluralist, more balanced, more differentiated; to bring more confrontation and more healing. Chancellor Eisen, a leading scholar of Jewish communal life, is of course deeply conversant with these questions, and he might have been tempted to tackle them as his first order of business. Instead he wisely turned to the less glamorous but … Continue Reading
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