American Jewry is experiencing a revolutionary moment as we face the onslaught of a significant set of demographic, political and structural challenges. In prior articles both on these pages and elsewhere, I have laid out these transformational issues. Our institutions are currently seeking to respond to these changing realities, but what concerns me is that Jewish leaders are employing worn out strategies, re-engineering dysfunctional organizational models and introducing out of date communal practices. The emerging threats and existing challenges will require a fundamentally different community organizing paradigm.

American Jewry’s initial stage of community development took place over the period of 1880-1920 with the formation and evolution of our legacy institutions. The “second American Jewish revolution” (1985-2025) produced boutique organizations, social media platforms and virtual educational opportunities that helped to reshape the Jewish communal landscape over a 40-year period.

Today we are preparing a new transformational moment. Moving forward, how will American Jewish organizations reposition themselves not only to manage the growing external threats to our community’s political interests but also to handle our internal divisions and communal challenges? Do we have the right leaders, meeting the essential and contemporary expectations for guiding our community?

This is a revolutionary moment that is challenging the leadership capacities of our community and will fundamentally test the viability and legitimacy of our communal system. One needs to understand that there is a growing sense of concern and frustration involving the capacity of umbrella delivery systems, such as our denominational bodies and federated structures, to serve their constituent groups. Correspondingly, advocacy organizations are facing pushback in connection with advancing the community’s political interests and social values concerns; with religious and educational structures in reaching and serving new generations of Jewish learners; and with communal and philanthropic institutions in effectively and efficiently managing our resources and in delivering critical dollars. Is the American Jewish organizational system working today for this nation’s Jews? This growing credibility gap will challenge our communal and religious apparatus to rethink their existing organizational models. 

The American Jewish remake 

The critical issues facing American Jewry require today the implementation of a Jewish-ly framed business model and new leadership paradigm in order to reinvent the American Jewish brand. The ideas introduced below are interconnected, requiring an investment in a national Jewish organizing plan. Every sector of the communal enterprise must be invited into this initiative.

Why do we need such a proposal? 

First of all, we are not “growing Jews”; that is to say we need to increase our numbers, levels of engagement and our financial base. To do that requires a Jewish awakening that excites and energizes Jews to become involved.

Second, we are losing a PR and community relations battle Jews do not have the luxury of losing. Our cause involves the defense and security of Israel through advancing Israel’s case before the international community, as well as the safety and well-being of American and global Jewry. At this moment, we are failing to advance these core interests in a coherent and planned manner.

Third, at this moment we are facing a leadership vacuum of profound proportions. We need visionary, well-prepared Jewish thought leaders. The Jewish leadership bench must be a central feature in planning and implementing all the necessary structural, policy and program proposals.

Fourth, we require knowledgeable, committed Jews who are rooted in Judaism and equipped to deal with Jewish life. We need an education campaign to bring Jewish culture, tradition and values to young and older Jews, alike. We need to construct the learning platforms and delivery systems to reinvent Jewish education, Zionist and Israel Studies. 

In constructing the Jewish path ahead, we will require a more strategic, systematized response to the demographic, political and educational tasks before us. The following steps must be seen as only the jumping-off point for a serious and sustained conversation about the American Jewish future. 

• Re-envisioning our community infrastructure: We need to re-envision the organizational model for our community to meet the needs and services of a 21st century community system. As I have suggested previously, we are presently a 21st century community, living with a 19th century set of legacy structures, operating on a 20th century agenda.

• Managing Jewish public affairs: The conduct of Jewish community relations requires that we redefine our necessary outcomes and priorities, reimagine the delivery and management of programs and activities and refocus on how Israel information and how Jewish public policy ideas and programs are introduced and delivered to the American public.

• Fighting antisemitism: American Jewry requires a national organizing plan for managing the fight against antisemitism. Today, multiple institutions and a broad swath of community leaders are introducing an array of “solutions” in trying to manage the largest growth of antisemitism seen since the 1930s. The extraordinary amount of money and resources being invested in this fight are not effectively or efficiently directed to “winning” this battle. As with all problems, there requires a strategic management plan to facilitate and maximize the resources in dealing with the best approaches to monitoring and countering anti-Israel and anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions. 

• Building a national Jewish communications network: Jews need a nationally organized and managed media system able to deliver to both Jewish and general audiences’ information and education pertaining to Jewish life and culture in America. Such a vehicle of news will more directly be able to provide in a direct and timely fashion information about Jews, Judaism and Israel. The Jewish community is engaged in a public relations battle on several fronts, and one of primary goals is to advance the case for Israel by countering misrepresentations, inaccuracies and untruths and promoting essential information. Employing the tools and drawing from the experiences of other faith communities, American Jewry can creatively and effectively enter the communications arena and operate on social media platforms.

• Re-thinking liberal Judaism: Liberal American Judaism represents the largest segment of American Jewry. If this sector of Jewish religious expression hopes to succeed and grow, it will require a fundamental reorganization. No longer can we afford multiple seminaries and the presence of duplicative umbrella denominational structures. A network of liberal Jewish institutions ought to be charged with meeting the educational, spiritual and religious needs of today’s Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Renewal Jews and congregations.

• Investing in Jewish education as a lifetime experience: A “Marshall Plan” for both formal and informal Jewish education must be a core priority for a 21st-century Jewish communal model. From preschool to senior adult learning, our communal system must galvanize the resources and leadership to literally reinvent both what and how we deliver Jewish learning to our community.

• Planning a leadership pipeline: No more important resource exists than the talents, skills and commitment of our leaders. The Jewish community has sadly squandered and wasted this rich reservoir of talent and expertise, and in many cases has failed to bring to its leadership circles some of our best and brightest. All of this requires the establishment of a high quality, leadership training center designed to identify, prepare and help place the next generation of lay and professionals in the core decision making and policy bodies of the Jewish community. At present, our community has a host of professional leadership and management training programs. As they are presently constituted, the community misses the opportunity to maximize their impact, energy and resources. Currently, we are bereft of any systematic means for identifying, recruiting, training, or placing lay leaders. The essential measure for great communities and front-line institutions is identified with the quality as well as quantity of leadership.

Change here will most likely occur bottom up, as synagogues, schools, JCC’s and organizations undergo a radical transformation. A top-down formula for fundamentally reinventing the American Jewish communal model appears far less a reality. 

The economic framework of the existing communal model is borne out of a competitive, capitalist-based system, forcing the existing organizing framework to undergo a fundamental cultural and structural change.

A business management mindset must drive the Jewish organizing agenda moving forward. The Jewish communal system would benefit from the establishment of a research and development body that would be invested with the responsibility to identify key trends that will impact our community, making appropriate recommendations on how best to implement programs and services responsive to the changing conditions and needs of Jewish life within the United States. The Jewish community deserves a rigorous plan for how its core resources and immense talent ought to be strategically engaged. 

Great change always begins where dedicated leaders can envision an alternative way to create change. Fundamental transitions emerge from the outside, led by individuals who think in broad and sweeping terms and who understand that constructive disruption represents a transformational way forward. 

The revolution is happening even as we continue to try and reset our existing communal table. 

Steven Windmueller is a professor emeritus of Jewish communal studies at the Jack H. Skirball Campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles.