• Home
  • About
    • About
    • Policies
  • Submissions
    • Op-eds
    • News / Announcements
  • Contact
  • Donate
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

eJewish Philanthropy

Your Jewish Philanthropy Resource

  • News Bits
  • Jewish Education
  • Readers Forum
  • Research
  • Show Search
Hide Search
You are here: Home / The Blog / Will Social Media Save the Jews?

Will Social Media Save the Jews?

November 28, 2010 By David Abitbol

Uhm… no. Probably not.

The Jerusalem Post coverage of the recent GA in New Orleans verily gushed at the conference’s convergence of youth inclusivity and technology when it reported “…over 700 students, of course, meant over 1,400 thumbs eager to communicate with fellow electronic communicators. And so, the scene was set for a semi-underground burst of chatter on Twitter throughout the sessions.”

Florence Broder, who tweets on behalf of the Jewish Agency, wrote in eJewish Philanthropy that “…this was a much younger GA and there was simply a fervent energy in the air. There were 600 Hillel students and more NextGeners than ever. With them they brought their tech savyiness (sic.) which filled a significant void. They were armed with their smart phones, laptops, and more. Additionally, their presence demonstrated that they are interested in sitting at the Jewish communal table along with everyone else.”

Sounds awesome right? So why did Caroline Kessler’s blog post on the GA in the student oriented New Voices Website sound such a sour note? Titled “It Wasn’t a Conference For Us, But We Were There,” it repeated a litany of complaints about the lack student and young adult involvement in the GA that seemed out of touch with what others had reported. Ariel Beery of PresenTense repeated this sentiment in a tweet that stated “Yup – #nolaga seemed to have lots of window dressing but little actual content bridging the generations.” Nathan Gilson, a Fellowship VP at TAMID and a student at University of Michigan tweeted that “Lots of my peers at #NOLAGA (students) had frustrating “Are we spectators or participants” feeling.”

So what actually happened? Well… there were in fact about 4000 GA-related tweets. However, most did not come from students and young adults but rather from professional and organizational twitterers. And yes, the students and Next Gen people I spoke to at the GA did feel sincerely out of sorts but it wasn’t for the Federation’s lack of trying to make them feel included. Many simply came down to New Orleans not knowing what to expect and were thus ill prepared for the experience.

A productive General Assembly experience requires research and preparation. It’s your one opportunity to corner the top leadership of countless important Jewish organizations and engage them in hopefully constructive dialog. It seemed to me that no one told the kinderlach that all the really important stuff at the GA happens in the shmooze. They felt that as “leaders” they ought to have been given more attention because they are the Next Generation that everyone was paying lip service too, right?

Well. No. Not really. The term “leaders” implies the existence of followers and a lot of the youth representation, well scrubbed and eager as it may have been, was not representative of the Jewish student and young adult population at all. Most people in that cohort have no idea what a Federation or a General Assembly is. Most of the students that participated in the GA came from their local Hillels who themselves struggle to engage the bulk of their Jewish student population.

The funniest aspect of all this for me, is the fact that most Jewish students and young adults, even the more tech savvy ones, do not use twitter. Over the past summer, I must have spoken to close to 500 Jewish students. No more than 10 had twitter accounts. Pretty much all of them however were on facebook – but since facebook is more of a closed system compared to twitter, no one was able to track status updates discussing the GA – and if you can’t track it then what? It doesn’t exist?

Clearly there is a gaping disconnect between reality and perception here. And on so many different levels as well. Who and what is to blame for this? I think the little video at the top of this post is a good starting point for such a discussion – well one has to hope that there will indeed be a discussion at all – but I guess we’ll see, eh? In the meantime, I am already like, totally stoked for #COLOGA 2011 yo! Woohoo!

David Abitbol is the creator of Jewlicious.com.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Filed Under: The Blog Tagged With: NOLA GA 2010, social media

Click here to Email This Post Email This Post to friends or colleagues!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Sarah says

    November 29, 2010 at 7:36 pm

    I tracked tweets all conference long. 99% of them came from a dozen or so people that I know in real life. (Myself included.) None are under 35. None are unaffiliated.

    Still, it was fun and sometimes useful, although the constant chatter was an indication that the sessions weren’t so compelling. 🙂

  2. ck says

    December 1, 2010 at 2:50 pm

    Well there you go. Thanks for confirming my assertion Sarah although I should say that some of the tweets cited by the JPost came from our Jewlicious crew and both Tanya and Eden are under 35. So yeah. There ya go.

Trackbacks

  1. The GA, Remixed « New Voices says:
    November 30, 2010 at 12:52 am

    […] the article (it’s not a conference meant for students) and some that addressed some different ideas, like how young adults use social […]

Primary Sidebar

Join The Conversation

What's the best way to follow important issues affecting the Jewish philanthropic world? Our Daily Update keeps you on top of the latest news, trends and opinions shaping the landscape, providing an invaluable source for inspiration and learning.
Sign Up Now
For Email Marketing you can trust.

Continue The Conversation

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent Comments

  • Jordan Goodman on Reinventing the Jewish Public Square: Promoting a Jewish Community Relations Model for the 21st Century
  • David Shapiro on An Antidote for the Stressed-Out: Jewish Overnight Camping for Families
  • Marc Swatez on Poverty: It’s About Us
  • Judith Mentzer on Reinventing the Jewish Public Square: Promoting a Jewish Community Relations Model for the 21st Century
  • Judy Aron on Poverty: It’s About Us

Categories

Archives

Footer

What We Do

eJewish Philanthropy highlights news, resources and thought pieces on issues facing our Jewish philanthropic world in order to create dialogue and advance the conversation. Learn more.

Top 40 Philanthropy Blogs and Websites to Follow in 2018

Copyright © 2018 · eJewish Philanthropy · All Rights Reserved