Ten summits in the Making: ROI Community has developed a diverse, Universalist, open-door community that strives to better the world
By Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman
eJewish Philanthropy
How do you take a multidisciplinary, cross-cultural group of people and create a common language? According to Shimon G. Levy, an Israeli-born resident of Detroit, Mich., one could take a lesson from ROI Community.
A Schusterman initiative, ROI is currently celebrating its 10th ROI Summit in Jerusalem, bringing 150 young Jewish – atheists, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform, businessmen, entrepreneurs, chefs, artists, civil rights activists and politicians – into one meeting space. A fusion of networking, skill-building and ideation, explains Levy, the ROI summit is creating community.
At the current ROI conference, you can see Levy’s words coming to fruition. Leading young Jewish change makers from 29 countries are tackling issues such as sexual abuse in the Jewish community, immigration, Middle East peace and more in the halls and social halls of Jerusalem’s Hotel Yehuda. The commitment: building a more vibrant, inviting and inclusive Jewish future for the benefit of the Jewish people and the broader world.
For example, Levy took part in a Jewish-Muslim dialogue program in Israel, working to building bridges among the different streams at different levels of society. He also tackled what it means for Israel to be a Jewish state.
Lijavetzky says ROI Community taught her the best thing a Jewish innovator can do is “to start opening the doors of our community.”
“We are in a world that needs a lot of people with innovative ideas, with energy and that are willing to better the world,” Lijavetzky said. “I think the best thing we can do as a Jewish community is to share our richness with the entire world.”
Stephen Shashoua has a similar mindset and skillset, which he picked up since joining the ROI community in 2010. Back then, he was running a small-scale interfaith and intercultural organization in the United Kingdom, Three Faiths Forum. The program was impacting thousands of youth in the UK, and Shashoua was building it up, increasing staff from two to 20 members, adding new educational and art programs, training and policy work. However, once he joined ROI and expanded his network worldwide, he was able to take the Three Faiths Forum worldwide, too.
The program has now been replicated in Sweden and the model is used as a reference point for several other interfaith educational initiatives.
“ROI was a door into the larger Jewish world,” he said.
Shashoua recently left Three Faiths Forum to pursue a job as a consultant for interfaith and intercultural work. He helps companies deal with religion in the workplace, tackles with NGOs and for-profits how to help counter prejudice, anti-Semitism and xenophobia.
Shashoua said he may have once been a Jewish innovator, but he has dropped the “Jewish” label – though his work is rooted in ROI’s Jewish values. Today, he sees himself as “simply an innovator,” and someone who can help bring about a new wave of interfaith dialogue that can be “more authentic and a little louder.”
Photos by Snir Katzir