NewsBits: The NowGen Continues to Break New Ground
from NY Blueprint:
Quietly, and without fanfare, a new organization expanded its reach beyond its New York environs to Los Angeles last month. Dor Chadash (The New Generation) opened its offices in both Woodland Hills and Beverly Hills – effectively straddling both sides of the hill.
Established in New York in 2003, Dor Chadash is a non-profit organization designed to bring the young, professional American Jewish and Israeli communities together and unite them through cultural, philanthropic, and social action pursuits.
from Zeek @ Jewcy:
Logging onto Facebook recently, I received an invitation to join an initiative called Grassroots Jews, a project led by a small group of people working together to put on High Holy Day services in north west London this year. Not within an existing synagogue, not even in partnership with an existing synagogue, but entirely independently. They are flying in a guest cantor and teacher from Israel – a remarkable Jewish leader, musician and professor of medieval Jewish history at the University of Haifa – and are going it alone…
and they are not offering one service, but two – a traditional option and an alternative option.
The somewhat curious fact that the traditional option is happening in an alternative setting isn’t really acknowledged, any more than the completely bewildering fact that the alternative option is, of course, an alternative to a traditional option that is, in and of itself, an alternative.
…We can see all of these trends in the Jewish initiatives described above, and we shouldn’t be surprised if they continue to inform Jewish behaviour patterns as the cohort enters its 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond. The likelihood is surely that, even if this generation does begin to gravitate towards the more established communal frameworks, they will do so with a set of assumptions that will demand and necessitate significant change.