by David Bryfman
Over the last few years I have begun to uncover one of the most startling paradoxes in Jewish communal life – that many of the most committed and passionate young Jews appear as statistical zeros in Jewish communal surveys. How is it possible, I ask myself, that these dedicated individuals have come to be known as the “unengaged” or the “unaffiliated”?
The answer is that they actually are unengaged and unaffiliated, but not from Jewish life. They are however not connecting to ‘typical’ Jewish institutions and communities – the ones that many of our surveys and demographic studies are most inclined to ask about.
This should not be interpreted as young Jews not caring. As evidenced by the extraordinary number of young Jews involved in service projects, active in a variety of global causes, traveling to Israel etc these young Jews do care – they just might not be showing it in traditional ways of connecting with the traditional Jewish community.
Together at the upcoming Jewish Futures Conference we will see that what is taking place in the Jewish world today is a direct reflection of general society. Young people in particular, but also many adults, are finding meaning in their lives by belonging to communities that were not even on our collective radar even a few years ago. And while it is true that many of these communities are virtual, or more accurately manifest themselves in a digital space, they often exist in tandem with concrete Jewish institutional life.
There are now countless examples of young Jews around the world developing Skype relationships with one another, encouraged and often curricularized by their teachers. Jewish knowledge communities are forming through countless blogs, wikipsaces and list serves. Jewish ritual life is exponentially increasing in virtual worlds and live streamed services. Jewish popular culture is becoming increasingly pervasive as more and more young Jews participate not just in its consumption but in the production of thousands of viral videos and podcasts and their attached communities of ‘commenters’. And for a generation of young people often accused of being self-indulgent and narcissistic, their involvement in on-line causes through Facebook, Twitter and the like, in numerical terms at least probably exceeds the number of Jews committed to the largest number of causes at any other time in history.
In a Facebook age notions of community, belonging and affiliation mean something very different to when most Jewish communal institutions today were initially established. There now exists, alongside a community of ‘bricks and mortar’ an emerging, yet robust community in the cloud. The cloud is a term, popularized by Apple and others referring to this amorphous space where connections are made, new ideas are generated, and change is made.
The cloud might not be the community that you or your parents once belonged to. But it is the community being found by many young Jews today – who clearly don’t count as statistical zeros.
The question that the Jewish community must ask ourselves, and one that will be the focus of the Jewish Futures Conference on June 4th in New York is, “what happens when the bricks hit (or at least meets) the cloud?”
With less than 50 places remaining please go to jewishfutures.net for last chance registration. Can’t join us in person? Join our live-stream! Live streaming will begin June 4th at 3:30pm EST (12:30pm PST)
David Bryfman is the Director of the New Center for Collaborative Leadership at The Jewish Education Project , who together with JESNA’s Lippman Kanfer Institute and the collaboration of UJA Federation NY is sponsoring this year’s Jewish Future Conference.
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I agree with David about how young Jews can appear as “statistical zeros” in Jewish communal surveys. In fact, I wrote the following words in an abstract of my doctoral dissertation on the utilization of the 1990 NJPS that appeared in the Spring 2000 issue of the Journal of Jewish Communal Service.
“However, Jewish community studies are not designed to provide an ideal vision of a healthy Jewish community. In other words, community studies do not tell us what is preferable, but what is probable. Moreover, the very indicators used in community studies to measure Jewish life as it is may tend to reinforce assumed norms about the nature of Jewish identity, while missing emerging forms of Jewish identity. Thus, community studies may also create a distorted picture of community vitality because of their implicit assumptions about what constitutes a healthy Jewish identity and a vital Jewish community.”
I’m guessing that there were others who made similar observations before me. The question still remains: how do we encourage broader perspectives about the nature of engagement so that we see a more nuanced version of community?
The important thing to understand about “the bricks” is that they were revered by previous generations as institutions built by parents and grandparents; as the repository for the Yahrtzeit plaques and naming legacies; and as the venue for sharing life-cycle events. Synagogues, in particular, were/are community gathering places that were/are comfortable and accommodating. Often, these “bricks” would play such an important role in Jewish lives that even when families would move, they would return to the old neighborhood and continue to support their “home” synagogue. They became focal points of personal and communal Jewish memory.
And now we have a generation that is more than indifferent to the physical/communal institutions of the previous generation. They are inventing new kinds of structures for communal life and vehicles for Jewish learning and practice. Abandoned synagogues and communal buildings are nothing new. One can find them in almost every city. The difference in this generation is that the young builders are not interested in replicating the experiences of their predecessors or rebuilding in a new location.
Still, the search for meaning and the need for communal memories have not really changed. I believe that even if “the bricks” of yesterday are replaced with an amalgam of geographically dispersed, cloud supported, open-source, customized, and interest-driven activity, the key to success will still be in their facilitating personal meaning and participation in communal memory. How will all of these elements effectively coalesce – I wonder.
I agree with Deborah. Her third paragraph in particular says it all. Especially the statement –“the challenge is to facilitate personal meaning and participation in communal memory”. How do we do that? In an age when we spend so much time in front of personal computers, some of it extremely productive time creating connectivity and interoperability, how do we also create real time experiences face to face that enrich, enliven, connect and create memories of community that matter?