
[This essay is part of a series from leaders in the field of Jewish philanthropy, who will offer reactions and analyses to Jack Wertheimer’s report, Giving Jewish: How Big Funders Have Transformed American Jewish Philanthropy, commissioned and released earlier this year by The AVI CHAI Foundation.]
By Lisa Farber Miller
“The Jewish world is resounding with cries and counter-cries. Jews are divided into factions that antagonize one another … Look over the rosters of our congregations, and how many young men and women under thirty will you find in those rosters? Incredibly few. They join country clubs, golf clubs, lodges, big brother associations, community centers… all good in their way, but the last organization that most of our young people think of affiliating themselves with, is the congregation.”
This comment could have been made today. In fact, Dr. David Philipson made it nearly 80 years ago. Indeed, more than 200 years ago, in 1810, Isaac Gomez, Jr. worried about his teenage son’s Jewish future, saying, “I know mankind in general, the young part especially, are so much attached to earthly pleasures and enjoyments as to devote a little portion of their time to the sacred duties of religion; and that little, too often with reluctance.”
Recently, the Jewish Teen Funder Collaborative (Collaborative) visited HUC-JIR Cincinnati where we had the privilege of learning from Dr. Gary P. Zola, Executive Director of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives. Local and national funders and organizations from 10 communities were wrestling with how to engage more Jewish teens. Dr. Zola surprised and delighted us with original source documents including the Gomez manuscript from the American Jewish Archives.
It was reassuring to know we are not alone and teen engagement is an enduring problem each generation must tackle. All ten communities – national, local funders, and Jewish organizations together – are committed to pooling millions of dollars to experiment with new ways to connect Jewish teens and walk alongside them on their Jewish journeys.
This kind of innovation and funder collaboration are key trends explored in Giving Jewish, a landmark study of American Jewish philanthropy authored by the esteemed researcher Dr. Jack Wertheimer, which focuses on the largest funders. The Study provides valuable information and analyses of big donor giving. Given that he puts the spotlight on national funders, I want to take the opportunity to provide a local, large donor perspective and highlight diverse and effective philanthropic approaches of regional funders.
As a foundation granting over $2.5 million annually to the Denver/Boulder Jewish communities, Rose Community Foundation (Rose) meets Dr. Wertheimer’s criteria for a “big donor.” However, the Study focuses on “national foundations” (although many of them are international in reach). There is a vibrant network of place-based local foundations and federations engaged in exactly the kinds of investments, collaborations, and partnerships the Study exhorts funders to do. The Collaborative is a great example and is discussed in the Study.
The author is not shy about his belief that education is the silver bullet to ensure the Jewish future and it should be a priority for foundations rather than engagement. He states “a solid Jewish education for all Jewish children is the most effective way of building a pipeline not only to leadership but also to future philanthropists and engaged participants in Jewish life.” He wonders, “Why is improving Jewish education for children not a high priority for foundations?”
Improving Jewish education is a focus and high priority of countless large and local funders. But, learning goals and modalities have changed and one expert’s definition of education differs from another’s. Jewish education means much more than classroom learning. As Dr. Jonathan Woocher z”l wisely taught us, “Twentieth-century Jewish education was designed to answer the question: ‘How can we ensure that individuals remain “good” Jews even as they become good (and successful) Americans?’ Jewish education must respond to a subtly, but significantly different question: ‘How can we help Jews draw on and use their Jewishness to live more meaningful, fulfilling, and responsible lives?’”
After years of research, the Collaborative learned that teens need much more than just a “solid Jewish education.” The study Generation Now: Understanding and Engaging Jewish Teens Today clearly demonstrated that teens do not see a connection between their Jewish education and their day-to-day lives. We must be more holistic in our view of learning and engagement in order to serve teens – and children and adults – and be relevant. We need more well-trained professionals who know how to convey Jewish learning in a way that links to the interests and contemporary issues teens face and the skills they need.
To this end, the Collaborative funders are giving innovation grants to help teens understand how Judaism can inform, inspire, and promote their personal development and the good they want to do in the world. We help teens answer four questions: “Who am I?” “To whom and what am I connected?” “For whom am I responsible?” “And, how can I make a difference in this world?”
Dr. Wertheimer asserts that “the lion’s share of foundations support innovation.” He presents a divide between national foundations that invest in innovation and local donors who are left to sustain “unsexy” social services and legacy organizations. This divide exists; however, some of the largest Jewish foundations like the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation do indeed fund the Jewish safety net on a massive scale. And many local foundations are working closely with social service and establishment organizations to innovate.
Innovation also has many meanings. In this Study, innovation is conflated with Jewish engagement. The Study asserts that foundation innovation is reserved for new startups serving the least engaged Jews and other experiments outside of the conventional Jewish community. But there are many ways foundations fund innovation well beyond engagement. And, innovation can often involve legacy institutions as partners. For example, Rose has funded a series of grants to Kavod Senior Life, Denver’s Jewish HUD-subsidized senior housing, so it can innovate and for the first time become a data-driven organization, gathering information about residents to provide more targeted and customized services for the older adults who live there, such as fall prevention programs, physical therapy, and on-site mental health services.
Increasing the numbers of Jewish donors is a focus of this Study. “Capacity building” – strategic grantmaking to help Jewish organizations attract stakeholders and involve donors in new ways – is one way this occurs. At Rose, we are keenly aware of the need to bring more investors to the table. Many local donors do as we do: fund evaluation so grantees can demonstrate and quantify their outcomes to satisfy donors who seek proof of impact. We also fund new development staff to strengthen fundraising.
We also work intensively with Jewish early childhood education centers to improve their educational practice and profitability through teacher and director professional development, intensive marketing and enrollment conversion training, and we help them enhance family engagement so they can increase the numbers of young families they serve – creating the very pipeline of new philanthropists Wertheimer says is needed. Six local big givers as well as the Reform and Conservative movements and the JCC Association have supported all these efforts.
It is true as Wertheimer asserts that “the challenge ahead is to build bridges between foundations, which have a constituency of one or two funders, with large organizations, which are accountable to multiple constituencies.” This in mind, many foundations do provide funding to diverse constituencies and engage grantees, donors, and community members in meaningful ways – from serving as thought partners to co-creating grant programs and designing initiatives together to attack enduring problems facing our Jewish communities. Some empower grantees to be funders. For example, a coalition of local donors provides Hazon Colorado with $25,000 annually to fund food and gardening projects. These projects attract Jewish people who are passionate about food and the environment but have never done it with a Jewish organization.
There are many other ways local foundations that partner and invest millions of dollars to enhance Jewish life that are diverse and effective. We earnestly try to tackle the enduring problems we face with ingenuity and innovation as generations of leaders did before us. We just don’t attract the attention that national funders receive.
The challenge is making this vibrant, interconnected local funding ecosystem more visible to all, including researchers, and to bring our successes to scale. Second stage capital will be required. More donors will be needed. Increased support for field-building where like-minded funders of all sizes can exchange and market their ideas would help. Visionary, authentic philanthropic leaders who live Jewish values are important too. There is much work to be done to ensure that every Jewish person and donor is valued, included, and welcomed in a Jewish community where all members can realize their potential and understand how Judaism can help them achieve lives of purpose and meaning.
Lisa Farber Miller is senior program officer at Rose Community Foundation. Rose Community Foundation strives to enhance the quality of life of the Greater Denver community through leadership, grantmaking and donor engagement – stewarding philanthropic resources and investing in strategic and innovative solutions to enduring challenges and emerging issues.
Excellent insights, Lisa. Rose is a leading example of place-based foundations, making a significant impact in the life of the community.
Superb insight and guidance. Thank you.
Good article – but why is Jewish Education so very expensive. My children emigrated from south Africa to Melbourne, Australia a year ago and cannot afford to send their daughter – who was at a Jewish day school here in Cape Town – to a Jewish day school there. As new immigrants they do not have the resources yet to send their child to a private school. I feel no child should be turned away from getting a Jewish education.
This is so true. In Florida, working with a local Conservative shul who has available funds, we pay High School students to come to 18 classes a year! We are in our fourth year and have 40 students. I started the idea, developed the curriculum and teach. They love it. The end of year comments make me cry. I teach the relevance of Judaism on there lives and others through prayer, Talmud, Torah, Ethics History, Israel etc.
I can’t help, but think about what’s going to happen when the nonorthodox core that supports Jewish Community Centers becomes so small that they won’t be able to afford to stay open and will close down. Will those centers be bulldozed down? Sold to the YMCA? Will the rapidly growing orthodox Jews take them over? It’s already started with nonorthodox synagogues. I’ve heard of one nonorthodox day school that has actually begged orthodox Jews to join with promises of accommodation, anything to keep their multi-million dollar complex from disappearing.
Community demographics in the US are historically fluid. I know several communities that have completely changed not once, but twice in the past 50-70 years. Areas that once had large Orthodox populations and today you couldn’t find a minyan (by anyone’s definition) even if you wanted. I know numerous Orthodox shuls that have becomne Korean or Baptist churches. Same for JCCs. Maintaining physical structures are the least of the problems of the American Jewish community.
Yes, community demographics in the US are historically fluid, but the commitment of today’s orthodoxy has zero to do with that of the past which was largely unsustainable without orthodox without yeshivoth and orthodox day schools. I’m really only asking if JCCs would rather give their JCCs to orthodoxy OR let them collapse. Maintaining physical structure may be the least of the problems of American Jewry, but orthodoxy, especially Chabad, would certainly know how to run a JCC according to their ideals. So many Chabad Houses started running their day schools, camp, schools, dinners & events out of their own homes. I recently returned from Pico Avenue in Los Angeles & saw a very young, burgeoning Sefaradi schul with PLENTY of very young Jews, but not enough money to quite finish their large RENTED schul, complete with a school & summer camp & stacked minyanim every half hour. Pico Avenue is jammed packed full of schuls, including Aish HaTorah & Chabad, that COMPETE to bring in the young crowds of the area. Shabbath in the Pico Avenue area looks surrealisticallly fantastic, with nearly all of surrounding suburbia leisurely, pleasurably, strolling with growing young families en route to schuls, simchas, family & friends or stam to be out & about. These folks are the future of American Jewry, but community centers would make it a lot better for them.
“These folks are the future of American Jewry.” NO! Thess folks are one part of the future of American Jewry.
Okay, you’re right, but I mean in the sense of only orthodoxy will be around.
A charedi MK once pointed out to Bibi on an American map that only cities with yeshivoth and orthodox day schools will have Jewish populations in the future.
I disagree with the MK – shows his complete ignorance of American Jewish life. And I disagree with you if you buy into that line of crap, uh reasoning.
Dan, can you explain why you disagree? Tell me what you see as the future of American Jewry.
I’m just looking at birthrates based on Pew & it looks like nonorthodoxy has already passed the point of no-return. Please, enlighten me, I’m always willing to listen.
If you are fixated on birth rates, you’re fixated on quantity alone. Sounds very Israeli to me. There is significant meaningful non-Orthodox Jewish life in NA. Perhaps the total % of the non-Orthodox community will go down in the future, but writing an obituary for non-Orthodox North American Jewry is naive.
One note about Pew: the survey is more than 5 years old. There has been no follow-up. We have no idea where birthrates are today.
Since there have been no further surveys you think that maybe the nonorthodox trajectory may have changed? “Quantity” sounds “very Israeli” to you? We’ve been outnumbered & outweaponed in every war against us & have also focused on quality, so exactly how is that “Israeli?” You also make it sound like there’s something wrong with being “Israeli.” Why did you even mention “Israeli?” How do you know if “there is significant meaningful nonorthodox Jewish life in NA,” has there been a survey in the last 5 years? “Perhaps the total % of nonorthodox Jewry will go down in the future?” “Perhaps?” Do you have ANY indication that it will not??? I’ve asked you for why you disagree, meaning, evidence. Do you have any? Saying something is “naive” is not evidence, it’s hopefulness. And according to the nonorthodox trajectory it that hopefulness is quite unwarranted. We have no business to believe that anything has changed, though maybe it has worsened because there are no less Jewish partners available for single nonorthodox.
I said there has been no follow-up to Pew; there have been numerous communtiy studies. In just the past year alone, Pittsburg, DC and San Francisco have all released studies showing vibrant Jewish life – across the spectrum – in their communtiies.
How do I know if “there is significant meaningful non-Orthodox Jewish life in NA” and “Do I have any evidence?” Yes; notebooks full. I spend 75% of most weeks in the field speaking to community members and practioners and witnessing first hand flourishing Jewish life in North America. I meet with activists and professionals from all streams and interact with community members and professionals from “Just Jewish” to Chabad to right wing. On a regular basis I see non-Orthodox Jewish life flourishing.
How much time have you spent “on the ground” in Jewish communties in the US since Pew was published? Where is your information from? A Charedi MK with an agenda?
Since I live in Jerusalem, most of my contact w/N. American Jews is online & w/visitors I meet here as well as my daughter’s experiences in LA. But the Pittsburgh survey you mention actually shows a big fall in nonorthodox affiliation & a slight rise in orthodox affiliation, so I don’t understand why you said it demonstrated a “thriving nonorthodoxy.” The Washington survey also showed a lower than average affiliation, hardly thriving. The San Francisco survey was the most disastrous with a 41% non-affiliation rate. How are all these surveys missing your findings of “thriving nonorthodoxy?” Goodness, what “agenda” could I have? How would my words have any effect? I don’t want nonorthodox Jews to disappear. I engage them whenever I have a chance & encourage them to grow Jewishly. Interestingly, when we were recently in San Francisco waiting for a train a black Christian man approached me & asked me if his & his Jewish kids are Jewish. I told him 100%! He got quite emotional, I gave him a hug. I certainly want every Jew on board, one way or another.