Following our post yesterday on the closing of the Jewish Peoplehood Hub, we received this from UJA-Federation NY, one of the three partnership members:
The challenge of creating a globally connected Jewish people remains a vital priority for UJA-Federation of New York through the work of the Commission on the Jewish People (COJP).
COJP aims to create connections among Jews and experiences of Jewish peoplehood that lead to a sense of belonging to the Jewish people, and promote and develop management leadership, governance, planning, and infrastructure.
The cooperative working relationship of the Nadav Foundation, the Jewish Agency and UJA-Federation that was reflected in the Jewish Peoplehood Hub was a valuable and productive effort. It moved the global discussion of this issue forward and brought a variety of new elements into this conversation. At the same time, the effort to create organizational entities to advance a sense of global Jewish Peoplehood is a new endeavor and we are all experimenting as we go. It is a learning process for all involved, and we have come to the conclusion that the Hub as currently structured is not the most effective way to do this.
No one should confuse the decision to rethink this particular organizational structure with a change in UJA-Federation’s commitment to advance the Jewish Peoplehood agenda. We will continue to explore, develop and build new approaches and structures for strengthening the sense of a collective Jewish identity throughout the Jewish world.
David Mallach
Managing Director
Commission on the Jewish People
UJA-Federation of New York
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I admire the UJA Federation of NY and the Jewish Agency for their transparency.
That is why I am looking forward to seeing a post in the coming days explaining how the amount of $600,000 (or less $200,000 Nadav private funds) was spent.
I fully commend the entire process. We don’t do enough R&D in Jewish life. Thousands of products/ideas at Apple and Microsoft are funded and incubated for a period of time and the money spent is a true investment in R&D. We only see a very small fraction of those hit the shelves. Sometimes the best of the innovative ideas come from the things we tried that didn’t fully work or meet our expectations. It has been my experience that funders in Jewish life have been hesitant to step into the role of R&D because the metrics for ROI are geared for that. In this case, the leadership has tipped its hat to the incubation process.
Robin,
I assume you are in favor of full transparency for this “incubation” process.