by David Bryfman The New York Times online has a free and premium subscription. Naturally, I joined for free. After a few weeks of enjoying free articles, I reached my permitted limit and could not reach the one article that I was really looking forward to. So I took the $5 plunge and paid for a premium service; recognizing that the value of having the full NY Times delivered to my screen whenever I wanted it was much greater than saving the few dollars a month. … [Read more...]

by David Behrman Sam Glassenberg says we need to treat Jewish learners as consumers, and create a Jewish experience good enough that they want to buy it. And he’s right. Why? Because “every Jew is a Jew by choice.” We all make choices about how we spend our time. There is a “global marketplace of ideas and commitments” as Joshua Avedon, Shawn Landres, and Felicia Herman observe in The Jewish Innovation Economy. And they are wise to include commitments. The things that pull on our time can pull us away from Jewish practice and from Judaism. … [Read more...]

by Russel Neiss In an evocative Eli talk, Sam Glassenberg suggests that by ignoring global Jewish problems and focusing on market based solutions to meet the needs of individual Jews we'll sell a lot of things and as a side effect we might do some good too. As evidence, he sites JDate's success at building 'Jewish continuity,' paying particular attention to the amount of users and money that the site generates. I'm not going to spend much time quibbling with Sam's statistics, (despite the fact that there have been countless articles about gentiles on JDate), but instead I want to get right to the heart of the issue. … [Read more...]

by Lisa Colton Today we’re working in an attention economy as much as a financial one. While of course the dollars matter, we cannot achieve any communal goals without the attention of the people we seek to impact, inspire, connect and educate. As educators we need to have our own agenda. But without a way to deliver that agenda to the people we want to reach, it hardly matters. Our institutions are good at creating content and less good at understanding the demands of an attention economy. Children and adults alike have many demands, crazy schedules, multiple gadgets and a constant onslaught of media pounding them. How can we possibly compete for their attention? … [Read more...]

In partnership with ELI Talks, eJewish Philanthropy will be running a series over the next few weeks of responses to an ELI Talk given by video game designer Sam Glassenberg. Glassenberg brings up many issues in his short talk, including whether our models of philanthropy-supported community institutions are at a disadvantage compared to for-profit models. For-profit businesses must, by design, be attractive to the end consumer. He asks whether there is a consumer-focused strategy that can work for the Jewish community, and he tells us that there already is a highly successful for-profit model for the Jewish community that we should emulate. Watch Sam's talk here and join the discussion. The first response, by Lisa Colton, can be found here. In the coming weeks, additional responses will be … [Read more...]