LA’s Jumpstart Receives $250k Grant

The Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles (The Foundation) today announced a three-year, $250,000 award through its Cutting Edge Grants Initiative to Jewish Jumpstart, an incubator, catalyst and think tank dedicated to supporting Jewish innovation. The grant will fund Jumpstart L.A., a new initiative to assist local Jewish startups with infrastructure and operational support. Jumpstart L.A. aims to connect and strengthen emerging Jewish organizations serving diverse constituents across the local Jewish community. The Cutting Edge Grant from The Foundation will help bring together creative individuals, organizations and ideas to establish Los Angeles as a center of Jewish innovation. Jumpstart will provide direct support to nonprofits via fiscal sponsorship, organizational development and other... Continue Reading

Innovation and Tradition – A Perfect Match?

What is Jewish innovation? Do we really need it? Isn’t Judaism really about Tradition, like the song from Fiddler on the Roof?” Innovation is actually a basic tenet of Jewish thought, especially in the area of Jewish education. Jews around the world read thrice daily the command to be innovative in how they relate to and understand the Torah they are learning, as hinted in the third verse of the “Sh’ma Israel” prayer (Deuteronomy 6) “And these words which I command you today shall be upon your heart.” The Midrash explains that the extraneous word “today”, teaches that each day we should learn the Torah as if we had just received it just that day. Expanding on this Midrashic idea, the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 61:2) declares that we are commanded to be innovative “that each day... Continue Reading

Innovation: One Size Does Not Fit All

by John Ruskay Seth Cohen, Yoni Gordis, and others are raising important questions about innovation. I’m interested in exploring where innovation and sustainability meet on the Jewish communal landscape. Most would agree: innovations can only have lasting impact if they are sustained. Why launch a project and see it succeed, only to abandon it for the next new thing? Yet, sustaining – providing the funds necessary to strengthen new and existing programs and community institutions – often gets a bad rap. For some, it lacks the appeal of innovation. I’d argue that sustaining is the silent hero in this narrative. For in sustaining our community’s proven initiatives and institutions, we are positioned to act boldly, respond to crises decisively, and seize opportunities to innovate. Sustaining... Continue Reading

The Next Great Jewish Idea

an opinion piece from the Jewish Daily Forward: Jewish Organizations Should Spare the Change Innovation, we are often told, is the great savior. It will remake Detroit, cleanse the atmosphere and educate every child. Years of steady drops in the membership rolls and donor bases of many American Jewish institutions, from national advocacy organizations to community federations, have led many to conclude that innovation is also the key to solving the problem of participation in American Jewish life. Money and support should be given to young, creative Jews, who will manage new programs free of the institutional baggage that prevents the engagement of their peers. …But in order for Jewish institutions to offer something more to young people than the kind of superficiality for sale at American Apparel,... Continue Reading

Five Answers to Seth Cohen’s “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”

by Rabbi Yonatan Gordis: In his eloquent reflection on five key questions about innovation in the Jewish communal world, Seth Cohen offers us guidance for both discussion and action in the field. The following thoughts may move both areas forward. 1. What? First, we need to ask the tricky question of whether we are investing in true innovation that can have a sustainable impact on Jewish life, or are we investing in very niche areas of Jewish interest that are fashionable but not forward-thinking? Is there a difference? How we answer these questions may very well determine how well we can develop even greater amounts of investment in Jewish innovation in the coming years. It is important to remember that not all innovation is forward-thinking or need be. Not all innovators are planners. Oftentimes,... Continue Reading

A Case for Interruption

“Knock knock!” “Who’s there?” “Interrupting cow.” “Interrupting Cow wh…” “MOO!” I always get a kick out of that one. My sister’s preferred variation is “interrupting starfish,” which ends with an open palm smooshed into one’s face. In his June 29th post “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow: Key Questions on Jewish Innovation, Interruption, and Sustainability,” Seth Cohen raises the question: “how do we ensure that…Jewish innovation isn’t interrupted?” But I wonder – what founder of an innovative nonprofit hasn’t looked up from her desk and been stopped in her tracks by an interruption, hand smooshed into face and all? Innovation, as defined by Felicia Herman, the Executive Director of the Natan Fund, in her recent article “Funding Innovation,” means... Continue Reading

LA Innovators Seek a Community Who Works Together

Joshua Avedon and Shawn Landres writing in The Jewish Journal: Let’s Bring Innovation Into the Fold Los Angeles is home to more than 25 startups launched in the past 10 years, part of a growing national wave of Jewish innovation… The shifting landscape of Los Angeles is a microcosm of the Jewish future. L.A.’s Jewish community is a diffuse, non-hierarchical and self-organizing patchwork of networks and communities, each serving the fluid and porous identities of their constituents. That makes it an ideal laboratory for the Jewish communal paradigm of the 21st century. [Translate] Bookmark:  Read More →

Integrating Innovation Into The Jewish Ecosystem

When we talk about innovation, what do we mean? A groundswell is building around the importance of innovation in Jewish life, much as a consensus grew around the need for “change” in the course of 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. But “change” means different things to different people, and so does innovation. First, there’s the question of generations. As a practical matter, Jewish innovation is understood by a number of funders to mean the work of people under 40. Of course imagination and originality are not limited to any age group. So if the goal for the Jewish community were simply to come up with novel, paradigm-shifting solutions to our community’s problems, funders would be equally interested in innovative solutions across the board. When the support of innovation is limited to Jews... Continue Reading

New Teachings

by Haviv Rettig Gur I read Seth Cohen’s ruminations on innovation with great interest. I share many of his concerns and I was happy to be given the chance to respond. I cannot speak to the measurements of innovation or the business-modeling of sustainability, because I do not understand these issues. But I can offer a warning from the sidelines about a world of innovation that stands the risk of mistaking its structure for its content. My brother heads an R&D team in a successful high-tech company headquartered outside Tel Aviv. He loves it – the creativity, the wrestling with intractable knots of programming that suddenly come undone in a moment of inspiration, the competition with a worldwide community of clever programmers. But though he is enmeshed in one of the most innovative subcultures... Continue Reading

Is Innovation a Driver in Jewish Engagement?

Innovation is the hot topic in the Jewish world these days and so there is no better time to point you to two articles from the current issue of the Journal of Jewish Communal Service. On the Value and Values of Social Entrepreneurship by Yoni Gordis Philanthropists play a key role in encouraging and supporting new developments that keep the Jewish community vibrant and relevant. Where they choose to focus their resources can make the difference between stasis and progress. Jewish communal debate in the past years has focused significantly on the role of Jewish philanthropists in funding new ideas and new organizations. To best understand the context in which the discussion is occurring, it is necessary to understand the unusual relationship of the Jewish community to the phenomena of innovation and... Continue Reading

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