As the COVID-19 pandemic wound down in 2022, the world began grappling in earnest with returning to a new normal. After two years of working from home in a Zoom-centered universe, for instance, many executives, program directors and organizations urgently felt the need to get back to some type of in-person work environment. While most understood that our online world wasn’t going to disappear completely, it was taken as a given that live in-person interaction was still the preferred paradigm, an approach backed by plenty of research. Though many leaders appreciated the convenience of working from home, they also saw enough value in in-person interactions to institute mandatory office days, replete with incentives ranging from Krispy Kreme donuts to massages to lure people back in.

But one demographic group in particular has pushed back: Gen Z, defined by the Pew Research Center as the generation born between 1997 and 2012. 

Illustrative. Christian Buehner on Unsplash  

We at Jewish Federations of North America saw this dynamic play out first-hand in our Jewish Changemakers program,  a Jewish leadership development program helping 1,000 young Jewish adults annually build their leadership skills and nourish their passion for strengthening the Jewish community. Changemakers began as an emergency replacement for summer jobs and internships that evaporated when COVID-19 hit, but when it came time to adapt to the post-COVID world and consider expanding our offerings to regular, in-person meetings, our Changemakers were crystal clear in communicating they largely wanted the program to remain virtual.

Why? 

As a Gen Z-native initiative, we at Changemakers constantly strive to better understand our audience: who they are, what they need and how Changemakers, Jewish federations and the Jewish community overall can best support them. To deepen that understanding, we conducted a survey in June 2024 gathering insights from 763 Jewish young adults aged 22 to 30 on topics like career, leadership and community involvement. Some of the results mirrored or expanded on the findings of Jewish federations’ impact and growth research; but we also gained further insights into our respondents that we are eager to share more broadly, in the hope that other organizations and initiatives can benefit from what we learned.

For Gen Z, the pandemic came during a critical developmental moment. Many of them finished their high school careers or had much of their college experience online. Significant numbers entered the workforce in a hybrid reality, their first professional internships and work experiences taking place on living room sofas, at dining room tables or in their parents’ basements.  

Additionally, people in their 20s are often more geographically mobile, meaning they have even more reason to prefer building their communities online. It’s easier to keep an online network together as one moves from job to job, city to city or school to school than to put all of one’s eggs in one place-dependent basket; the resulting networks are broader, more resilient and more diverse. 

Just as millennials were digital natives, members of Gen Z — whose first phones were likely smartphones — are native to life conducted via virtual platforms in a way that no previous generation has ever been. You could think of them as Generation Zoom. 

In the aftermath of Hamas’ horrific Oct. 7 massacre and the war that has followed, our Changemakers have found further reason to lean into their virtual platforms. As antisemitism and anti-Zionism spike, especially in educational environments, young people are bearing much of the brunt of the prejudice, discrimination and violence toward Jews. They are also feeling an overwhelming sense of how important it is to connect more fully with the Jewish communities — and many don’t have the option to do so where they live. In fact, 41% of participants in the Changemakers program live in places that don’t have significant Jewish populations, and many others don’t have access to the kind of in-person, community-building programming that speak to today’s young adults. 

In addition to keeping a virtual-first approach, we adapted the program to respond to Gen Z’s needs in other ways. We offered ongoing mentorship opportunities to help address the 31-point gap between those who said mentorship was important and those who said they had a mentor. We provided small, achievable leadership opportunities to help build their leadership confidence, an area where they expressed self doubt.

By meeting this generation where they are, we have achieved notable results. A surprisingly high 29% of alumni of the program are already working for Jewish organizations. And whether or not they aspire to serve the Jewish community in a professional capacity, 82% of alumni declared that Changemakers had helped them develop leadership qualities and taught them how to put them into practice. 

One alum reflected that the program “taught and empowered me as a Jewish young leader, gave me access to new and important opportunities, and made me feel like my voice matters.” Another recalled that it served as a “really comforting space to have amidst the war and rising antisemitism on campus. It helped me process and cope with what’s been going on.” And a third said that the program inculcated “values of community, education, and social responsibility that have encouraged me to contribute positively to society and to work towards a more equitable and compassionate world.” 

The Jewish community is at an inflection point, and if we hope to continue engaging younger generations in order to create tomorrow’s Jewish leaders, we will have to continue adapting to their needs. 

Julia Malkin Reger is the managing director of Jewish Changemakers, a program of the Jewish Federations of North America.