From Generation to Generation
an opinion piece by David Sax
Last week, my father was looking for help. He’d recently teamed up with an Israeli nonprofit serving the mentally disabled, and wanted to recruit younger Jews to head up outreach in Canada. So naturally, he came to his 31-year-old son to help him bring young Jews aboard.
I called the first friend I could think of: a passionate Zionist who’d served in the Israeli army. “I can’t,” he said. “My father’s heading up a fundraising committee for Tel Aviv University, and he’s tasked me with recruiting young Jews as well.” One friend’s parents had roped her into bringing friends to a large federation event; another’s mother had cajoled her onto the temple’s youth outreach committee.
You hear it everywhere, from the bimahs of our synagogues to the boardrooms of our charities. “The young people!” our leaders cry out. “How are we going to get the young people?” Speak to any fundraiser, any committee chair, any macher with his name on a brass plaque, and they will all tell you the same thing: Our future depends on the young people.
The baby boomers know that their time is short and retirement beckons, as does the need to hand off the institutions they’ve built and managed to a new generation of Jewish leaders. But that next generation – my generation – isn’t taking up the reins as eagerly as hoped. Our donations aren’t flowing as freely, our volunteer hours aren’t as numerous.
This has led to bewilderment and frustration from many community leaders, who sometimes paint us as spoiled, selfish and entitled. All our fancy bat mitzvahs, instant online gratification, and free love with gentiles have caused us to neglect our Jewish responsibilities. We are wasting time on Facebook as our communities die a slow death.
There may be a kernel of truth to this, but it is just as easy to fault these same institutions for failing to inspire us. If the institutions that need our support want our talents and dollars, they need to keep a few things in mind.
First, our relationship to congregations and to Jewish charities is different than that of our parents and grandparents, in the same way our taste in music or clothing is. Your father supported the burial society and your mother the women’s temple auxiliary, but you threw your ideas and money behind Holocaust memorials and the campaign for Soviet Jewry, meeting the needs you saw as relevant to your own interests and the needs of the time. We are doing the same.
Second, we will see similar causes in a different light. Your involvement with Israel came from its birth as a fledgling state (complete with plucky kibbutzim), its harrowing survival in ’67, and the military miracles that followed. Back then, Israel was a startup, and the best way to support it was buying bonds to build the roads, forests and hospitals of the new Jewish state. For us, Israel is no less a passionate cause. But Israel isn’t a new nation anymore, and its political and military narrative is far more complex. Because of this, we support causes across the spectrum of Israeli society. Some of us donate to Peace Now, others start new settlements in the West Bank, and others join gay rights organizations in Tel Aviv.
Third, the best engagement with our community will come from institutions we build ourselves. Established organizations may scoff at younger Jewish startups like Hazon, (which promotes environmentalism), JDub (music) and Reboot (creative thinking), but these organizations resonate well with younger Jews because they were created and built by our peers to meet needs we see as important.
Finally, let’s remember not to panic. As long as there’s a Jewish community, there will be Jewish needs, institutions to fill those needs, and Jews there to staff, fund, and contribute to them. Just as the burial societies and Hadassah didn’t disappear when the baby boomers were born, so they won’t when their children take over. Some of us will follow our parents to their organizations, some of us will strike out on our own, and others will remain uninvolved.
And in 30 years, God willing, all of us Millennials will be pulling out our remaining hair, trying to figure out how to connect to the next generation of young people. The young people will just yawn, turn to their friends, and remake the Jewish world in their image.
David Sax is author of “Save The Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen.” He lives in Toronto, Canada.
This article originally appeared in The Jewish Daily Forward; reprinted with permission.
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Good piece, but Sax’s solution as it were is to not worry. People will still support the unsexy communal institutions like the burial societies and old folks homes and whatnot. Those are just as important as the feel good enviro-tikkun olam stuff millenials seem to love. We have to teach and show that community is an organic whole – not just you and your buddies at the indie minyan.
One issue that remains largely unresolved is soemthing Sax touches on but does not explore. The proliferation of legacy organizations, many struggling under the weight of their overhead, creates undue strain and a lack of results for our Jewish tax dollars.
Edgar Bronfman himself owns up to this in “Hope Not Fear.” How many self-defense organizations do we need? Forget about how relevant they are to the next generation, how relevant are they to the community’s actual needs?
A recent Chicago Jewish News article bemoaned the demise of the local organization dedicated to rescuing Soviet Jewry. News flash- The Iron Curtain fell two decades ago and Russian Jews are now a force to be reckoned with in America, Israel and the FSU. Why do we need to maintain that organization.
Likewise, do we need to support a JCC that only delivers pre-school, eldercare and a dilapidated gym at significant overhead with annual allocations, individual giving and more? There are commercial businesses down the street that do these things better and cheaper.
Why not get rid of the building that you can’t get anyone to walk into and use the funds to implement programming where people already go?
Moreover, the Jewish community has turned a blind eye to its own demographic shifts- with relatively fewer young Adults in the rising generation to fill their parents shoes and more organizations and initiatives to support, there ae only so many ‘young leadership’ organizations that are sustainable. Instead of creating more of these auxilliary arms, organizations would be well served to simply give young adults a seat on the Board and cater to their interests.
In short, don’t try to exploit young adults, empower them.
Having worked with many youth movements, groups, programs, schools and volunteering on different boards and panels for the continued interaction and participation of younger generations…(as I myself just turned 50), I am reminded by every organization, as mentioned in the article above that “the youth being our future.”
But that is usually followed up with the fact that there is no budget for developing youth programming and events…
and then we call upon our younger constituents to participate in the task of fund raising or helping with donating time to help in old folk homes or other worthy causes.
It seems we are quick to demand our younger generations to take part in the “burden” of helping, instead of teaching the beauty in “good deeds” and “paying it forward”.
There will always be those, that at some point, will rise to the occasion of philanthropic “giving”, but those would increase in number if we spent more time, effort, energy in teaching our younger generations that the beauty of giving and sharing can be as important as the desire to obtain and have.
It is true that Israel is not a “start up nation” anymore, at the age of 62, and even more true that modern Zionism is no longer only about 1948 or Herzl, but rather how Israel continues to surge forward in the world Theatre of medicine, technology, providing world solutions to water management, and solar power solutions for the world. You can read about this in a book entitled…”start up Nation”.
Lets put the “WOW” back in the beauty of being a Jewish teen and teach them to have the tools to want to participate and learn and share. Lets make each youth group take on the capacity of being proud activists in their communities. Lets show them the Israel that not only teaches them from where their feet are like deeply planted roots in a great history and culture, but more, show them how their arms and minds are connected into being the future as well, modern Zionism.
Lets find the budgets, to create reason for our youth to be involved out of their own desire and curiosity. Lets involve them in the processes of making decisions and celebrating in the empowerment of being “Bnei Adam” Lets realize that investing in our youth today is considered “long term investing” that has its occasional short term payouts.
WE need to believe that great leaders are in each one of us, and each of our children, and that it is the obligation of each generation to turn an outreached arm to the generation directly behind them, and directly in front of them…and then we will have…connection to the next generation, continually!
OR we can wait until we are on boards that needs to raise money for for organizations and call our 31 year old children…and hope they can find some time to share in the task…