Now’s the time for all good men to get together with one another;
we got to iron out our problems and iron out our quarrels
and try to live as brothers. –Lyrics to “Yes We Can” by Allen Toussaint
Last Monday night in New Orleans, well after the midnight hour in a nondescript bar in uptown, one of the great local house bands, Papa Grows Funk, started belting out the words of the Lee Dorsey classic and post-Katrina anthem while a room of dancing, sweating and smiling listeners grooved along. Certainly not an unusual sight for a city that has made its reputation by singing and surviving, but what made this room different from the standard Mardi Gras/JazzFest/Spring Break crowd was who was in the room and why they were there. Jewish professionals, young leaders from across the US, social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, a few Jewish funkateers and even an Israeli government official were all swaying to the music and all in New Orleans for one reason – the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly.
It was at that moment I realized why the GA still matters.
The truth is, I almost didn’t go to the GA this year. The truth is that I was beginning to wonder if my prediction a year ago that this would be an amazing, new type of GA would be proven wrong. To be most truthful, I had begun to wonder if the GA mattered at all any more. In a busy calendar of family, work and community, the GA didn’t seem to be worth the effort or the energy; and as much as I love seeing my global Jewish family, I also hate to be away from my ‘real’ family at home in Atlanta. Besides, did I really need to be a part of the ‘big embrace in the Big Easy’ when I could just Skype everyone from my office?
Despite my hesitation, I went. I went because I still wanted to believe in the potential of the GA. I went because I know too many people who worked hard, dreamed big, navigated difficult financial constraints and limited hotel space to make this GA something special. They believed the GA could still evolve, and I still believed that supporting them mattered as well. Regardless of what wasn’t going to happen at the GA, plenty of things were going to happen – some by design and some by serendipity. The GA, for all of its limitations, still reflects the unlimited potential of the Jewish people to connect, combine and contribute with one another. It is still a historic place filled with a special people that are keenly aware they are a historic people with a special place in the world.
And it is that fact that makes the GA, and this particular GA, so special. It is a Jewish mash-up, with people, projects and passions all coming together for a whirlwind of activity that’s scope is equaled only by its complexity. Every table is filled with discussion of Jewish life and its challenges; every parlor is filled with gatherings of Jewish people and their celebrations. This year was no different – ideas were floated, challenges proffered and even dignitaries heckled. 20-something Hillel students and septuagenarians donors sat together as they listened to a Jewish astronaut and danced together as they listened to something altogether Galactic. This GA was indeed an experience that provided much optimism about the potential of future General Assemblies.
Now to be fair, it was not perfect. More people could have been there, and affordability remains a key limitation of the potential of the GA. While there were new ideas injected in this GA – an afternoon of service, programming by Jewlicious and an Innovator’s Alley, these ideas only scratched the surface of what the GA can become. For example, the days of the Jewish entrepreneurial community being lauded and fetishized on panels is long over; at this GA this rapidly growing cohort roamed the hallways en masse and put on panels of their own. What was a curiosity of the future a few years ago is now a fundamental aspect of the present and bringing more of these Jewish futurists to be present at the GA is and must be an essential goal of future GAs. It was big, but it must get bigger; it was diverse, but it must become more diverse.
There has been a great deal of hand wringing about the future of the Jewish Federations of North America and how that future will unfold very much remains to be seen. But even its harshest critics must credit JFNA with at least one thing, the General Assembly remains an important moment where the Jewish world can find one another in one place, even if they are not of one mind. Only when we come together, only when we mash-up our passions, our hopes, our needs and our fears with one another, can we truly embrace one another as a common people with shared history. Only then can we, as a Jewish community, dance together into our collective tomorrow.
“I know we can make it.
I know darn well we can work it out.
Oh yes we can, I know we can can
Yes we can can, why can’t we?
If we wanna get together we can work it out.”
Seth A. Cohen, Esq. is an Atlanta-based attorney, activist and author on topics of Jewish communal life and innovation. Seth served as a member of the recent Strategic Planning Committee of the Jewish Agency for Israel and is a Vice Chair and past Allocations Chair of the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, and member of the board of Joshua Venture Group. Seth can be contacted directly at seth.cohen [at] hklaw.com.
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Sorry to be a tit but as the resident francophile I must insist that you edit this article and replace the phrase “in mass” with the correct “en masse.” Kudos to the country lawyer from Atlanta for his attempt at a more cosmopolitan outlook. 😉
As to the substance of the post, of course the “mashup” theme resonates – I just watched the latest episode of Glee. What also resonated was the following phrase: “It was big, but it must get bigger; it was diverse, but it must become more diverse.”
Continuing with the Glee theme, three of the characters were recently on the cover of GQ. One, Lea Michele (Serfaty) plays a Jewess on the show (Rachel Berry) and in real life is the daughter of a Jewish Sephardic father and an Irish Catholic Mother. The other female on the cover is Dianna Agron who plays Quinn Fabray, the blond head cheerleader, head of the school’s abstinence club who makes out with her boyfriend, with a statue of the Virgin Mary in the room, and is, in real life an actual Jewess.
That’s a little complicated no? And it somewhat encapsulates the diversity and complexity of contemporary North American Jewish life. Bigger is good. More diverse is “gooder.” But many would not consider Lea Michele Jewish. And however you cut it, statistically one of the featured Jewesses will marry the third non-Jewish character in the shoot, quarterback Finn Hudson (Cory Monteith), or someone else similarly mosaically challenged.
The GA organizers have their work cut out for them. Their challenge is one all of us who care about the future vitality and viability of the Jewish community have to face. And it’s not a challenge that rolls around once a year. It’s happening now. It’s ongoing. The GA is merely a reflection of what’s going on in the trenches. If Seth Cohen and his buddies want a bigger and more diverse GA, then it’s time to get collective butts in gear and get out there and embrace the totality of our constituency – in other words, less chinos, more cutoff t-shirts. So to speak.
I know I make it sound easy. It isn’t. You want 600 young Jews to show up to the GA? The easy thing to do is to preach to the choir and recruit future Jewish community professionals from amongst the Hillels and JSUs across the country. But how do you get the young Jews involved who have no idea what the GA symbolizes or what a “Federation” is? We’ll keep working on it – as for the rest of you, you already have less than a year to figure it out. Get going.