by Michal Kohane

You might ascribe the following comments to my advanced age, shifting moods, raging hormones. I admit. I am not a “young adult” by any current official definition of the term. At the same time, 4 of my 6 children are still in that age bracket, so I do have a vested interest in their Jewish connectedness, and anything we do in that realm of “young adult engagement”.

I started writing this piece a while back but doubting its political correctness, (yes, and my moods), left it. Then last week, I sat at yet another meeting and someone, proudly sharing all the young adult activities their organization features in a big, respectful Jewish community, said to me, “And after 40? What can I tell you. After 40 you’re screwed”.

And I have had it.

I’ve had it with the constant song and dance around “young adult engagement” as the only promise of any Jewish life anywhere ever at all. I know, I know. How dare I. Look at Birthright. Look at Masa. Look at the service opportunities programs. Look at so many groups swarming the Land every summer. Look at the grants, requests, waiting lists! Don’t you know what research shows? Didn’t you read the studies? Here, let me show you the numbers.

Yes, I have seen it. In fact, some of these programs have been directly or indirectly run from my office. I’ve sat in countless meetings trying to figure out new, innovative strategies and solutions to just these challenges I am deeply aware of and genuinely care about. And yet, I‘ve had it.

I’ve had it with smug young people who bring little to the table short of age, whose presence leaves no room for anyone else, and the fact that they are 20 some, or 30 some does not make it cute. And surprise! Contrary to some belief, clueless dinosaurs did not roam the earth a few decades ago. There was always promise in young age. That is nothing new. But there was always more. It seems that now we have lost the “more”.

We. Yes, “we”, the “older generation”, we who placate to those younger than us and still willing to glance at us, say hi to us, never mind respond to our nagging – begging repeated requests and reluctantly agree to sit on one of our prestigious boards. We, who like young parents, bend over the carriage, cooing and making stupid faces, and when we chance a smile, just melt. We, who wait like an obedient puppy with a leash in our mouth, unable to contain the wagging tail. Oh, how wonderful it is that someone half or quarter of our age might take us out for a walk so finally we can see a glimpse of “the real world”! We, who wrote ourselves out of relevancy.

Time magazine just recently called the milennials “narcissistic, overconfident, entitled and lazy”, and you know what? I can live with it that young people are a little self-centered, a little self-focused. Also contrary to some belief (and anyone’s memory), we were like this too! It’s impossible not to. It’s what makes one travel from childhood to adulthood, from a narrow “me” to a greater “us”. What is not ok is that we let them stay there; that we allow this to become our ideal, our new god we bow down to.

Now, don’t get me wrong: being 26 or 36 is great fun. Then again, so is being six. Or 66, provided you have good health, good care and – let us not ignore – a good attitude. The rest is up for grabs. I know a 99 year old man with a witty sparkle in his eyes and a sharp mind that many 19 year olds would – and should – envy. I know 20 some and 30 some who seem more misplaced, tired and lifeless than my dead ancestors.

Because one can be young and hammered by the realities of low job opportunities, mortgage, relationships with spouse, children, parents. And one can be “old”, and much freer, able and available, professionally and spiritually, with lots of energy, insight, wisdom and knowledge about life, but guess what. If that’s who you are, the Jewish people don’t need you anymore. Oh, wait, I’m exaggerating. They do need you. You’re welcome to pay dues. And memberships. And support the never-ending campaigns. And we will call on our various phonathons, because young people need to party. And travel. And explore their identity. And you? you’re already 50, maybe even 60. Seriously? You haven’t been to Israel?? and you still date?? But that’s one leg in the World to Come! So we are not going to invest in you. Please, step aside, and hand over the keys. And your check book? Thanks. Because that is the only role we left you. You are “40 plus and – therefore – screwed”.

Yes, I’m exaggerating, but not much. At a recent meeting about the millennia generation, someone – over 45 – dared ask, what can any of us, “alter kakers”, do. Alter Kakers by the way is not a nice thing to say, but no one corrected the derogatory term. One “millennia child” answered quickly: “You can listen”, he said. Another joked: “there is really nothing you can do”. The audience nodded with pride.

And I sat there wondering.

We, the People who brought to the world “honor your mother and father”, “glorify the elderly” and “rise (in respect) before the aged”; We who value life as a long journey of endless growth and learning, honored in all its stages; We who speak about each person like a whole world, and each member of the community as a critical part of the puzzle; We who teach about Abraham, hearing God and traveling to a promised land when he was 75; Moses and Rabbi Akiva, finding Judaism in their 40’s and mastering it in their 80’s; We, who have an 89 year old youthful, forward-thinking Israeli president; what happened to us? when did we sell all these eternal, G-d given values and buy into the youth worshipping, giddy culture around us, placing money and chutzpa before wisdom, respect and kindness?

Over Pesach we read about Rabbi Azaria, one of the heros of the Hagadda: “Behold I am like a 70 year old”, he says. “Like” a 70 year old? The commentaries teach us that he was appointed as head of the Sanhedrin at a very young age, and a miracle happened: overnight his hair became white so he looked elderly and distinguished, thus gaining respect among his peers, most of them older than him in decades.

But we are living in a society that assigns old people to old people’s home, which often look worse, smell worse and are budgeted less than our prisons. We equate old age with lack of productivity, because we equate productivity with materialistic actions and achievements. We’ve been told we should all look “forever 21”, and we can’t get enough of it. When we grow up, we want to look like our kids! And what should our kids aspire to look like when they grow up?

It’s time to reverse the spiral and create a much more holistic story with a more comprehensive agenda. We should introduce programs based on content, not age, where all those participating realize the value of each person around the table; where people are not assigned “mentorship roles” by the color of the hair or the amount of wrinkles they haven’t had a chance – or the financial means – to get ironed, but rather, by what they contribute to the conversation. There should be opportunities for meetings, traveling, partying and yes, dating for those over 50, and there should be Birthright for those over 50 who never went to Israel before. It’s their birthright too.

Building a sustainable community can’t be just about paying for buses full of young people in hopes they will make Jewish babies. If anyone offered me a free trip to Germany, where my parents came from, I’d take it, and I’m sure I’d have a great time. I might even fall in love with a blonde-blue-eyed handsome German, but will that ensure my German identity? I so hope our conversation with our young adults can be deeper than that. Because don’t think they can’t see through our gimmicks. After all, we know how smart and wonderful they are, and they know that, once again, we’re trying to buy them. Like we did when we wanted them to get on the potty, or do homework, or come home early, or get the car, and even they, yes, “even they” want more than that.

We need to be what we’ve always been: a family. A whole family. We need to make sure the babies we want have respected, active, well-integrated grandparents, uncles, aunts, and nowadays, great-grandparents too.

Above all – we need to leave our young adults with a clear message, that after 40 – you’re not screwed, because they too, like us, will reach that noble old age one day, and they should know that Jewish life isn’t over then; in fact, we’ve only just begun.

Michal Kohane is Israel Center Director at the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund, San Francisco, CA.

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by David Edell

The recent articles about executive leadership raise several concerns for those who have been working on the issue. I spend my days with the people who are responsible for recruiting new executives and the professionals who are considering leadership opportunities and would like to add a “real time” perspective about the professional “pipeline” issue and its impact on the community to the discussion.

The new study by Barry Rosenberg for JPPI (Jewish Leadership in North America – Changes in Personnel and Structure) is a useful compilation of the research, writing and conversations on the subject of who will be the next executive leaders of organizations as the rate of turnover begins to increase considerably each year. While I do not think that his recommendations for action are bold enough, I appreciate his attempt to propose ways for the community to begin to address the problem rather than just reviewing the causes or becoming paralyzed by the complexity of interrelated issues that affect or are affected by the subject.

I found Dr. Kurtzer’s article (Leadership and Change in the Land of the Lost) in response to Rosenberg’s study more provocative than constructive. While I appreciate articles that critique and challenge, I believe that they must include recommendations and suggestions that add to the discussion about solutions. The article raises very important points which merit serious discussion. However, mocking the “panic” about the professional leadership pipeline, in order to raise important points about the changing nature of the Jewish community and the need for organizations to change, adapt, innovate or perhaps fail or close is not constructive.

The “panic” about the availability of executives to lead organizations is real among the volunteer leaders and supporters of large and small, established and newly created organizations and institutions throughout the community. The community increasingly looks to their professional executives to envision, inspire and lead the change and those who hire executives realize that meaningful change will not occur without professional leaders who possess the vision, courage and skills to lead the process.

In our meetings with search committees of national organizations, JCC’s JFS’s, Synagogues, Day Schools, and start-ups across the country, we hear each describe the need for a new executive who is passionate, inspiring, a creative problem solver, a state-of-the-art manager, a fundraiser and someone with the courage to lead. The problem is that they often begin each search with the belief/fear that they will not find candidates anywhere in the Jewish community’s networks with the depth and breadth of experience required to address their challenges and opportunities. Theirs is not an intellectual concern about the Jewish community’s future. They are hiring a new CEO now and the future of their community and critical services and programs their organizations provide often depend upon who they are able to recruit and hire.

Dr. Kurtzer suggests, “Young leaders already exist in the system but are reluctant to enter into a system that repels meaningful change.” Are we defining young LEADERS as those who do not seek to courageously lead organizational change that we all agree is so clearly needed? The reason that Jewish organizations and communities have succeeded in meeting challenges of each generation is that young professionals pursued the challenges and responsibilities of executive leadership. Dr. Kurtzer and all of us must play a role in making room for and encouraging young executives who are ready to lead, to step up to the work of a CEO in helping organizations to realign, reinvent and change to meet the evolving needs of the community. We need new voices and new skills to broaden our view of the possibilities for the future.

Hiring committees have the “vision of talent that focuses on inspirational capability” that Dr. Kurtzer proposes. However, as fiduciaries seeking to find new and sustainable directions to meet challenges, they struggle in interviews to listen for substance and experience as well as strategies for implementing and funding the sought after change. Often, the “antiquated style and skill-set” based upon past success in making visions happen balances the thrill of inspiration when choosing a new executive leader. The “panic” among those who hire executives is that they won’t find professional leaders who will both create new directions as well as attract new participants, leaders and funders to support them. Whether they are from established or start-up organizations, these volunteer leaders have the same “mainstream” goals to create new models that will meet the changing needs and interests of the community, manage their resources to assure effectiveness and efficiency, and secure funds to sustain their work over time. They seek a leader who will not just inspire with passion and ideas, but will inspire confidence in their knowledge, judgment and leadership as they enter into the uncharted territory of change together.

Dr. Kurtzer is a respected thinker in the community and works in an institute known for its leadership. It will be important for him, his colleagues and peers to add to the list of serious recommendations for action on this issue. Several of us have already outlined proposals for action in previous articles that were published in eJP. There are many meaningful conversations taking place throughout the community about how to address the needs for a new cadre of executive leaders in the next 3-10 years. We know how we got to this point but are struggling to develop the will to invest time and funds toward exploring solutions. With at least fifty executive transitions in Jewish community organizations each year, we must develop the group executives who will seek those positions, excited and skilled at leading them to new, responsive and impactful directions. To do so, we need a breadth of innovative thinking that will yield excitement and confidence about the possibilities of change. The time for action, not more analysis, is now and urgent.

David Edell is President of DRG Executive Search.

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Giving USA: The Annual Report on Philanthropy, issued today by the Giving USA Foundation and its research partner, Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, is considered the most definitive and prominent resource for information about directions and trends in charitable giving in the United States. The Report reviews and discusses giving by all types of donors, and while it does not focus on or feature any special groups or geographical parts of the U.S., we like to look at the Annual Report with a Jewish perspective and apply its relevant findings to our work with Jewish nonprofits across America and around the world.

GivingUSA has determined that overall giving increased slightly from 2011 to 2012; that Americans donated an estimated $316.23 billion to charitable causes in 2012. This encompassed gifts from individuals, corporations, and foundations.

Charitable giving in the United States increased in real dollars in 2012 by 3.5%, reflecting the third consecutive year of aggregate higher charitable support from donors living and dead, according to the annual landmark report that has tracked philanthropy for 58 years. Three years of consecutive increases indicate that there is some growing, albeit incremental, financial confidence by donors; that Americans may be feeling better about re-engaging or increasing their philanthropic activity.

We see this as good news and bad news, filled with challenges to nonprofit organizations seeking support from the Jewish community. While the levels of giving grew again in 2012, the numbers of tracked volunteer hours dedicated to America’s charities declined. Even with stronger levels of consumer confidence, donors are not being as generous as they once were and while the concept of charitable intent that has distinguished American donors still exists, Americans are not as generous today as they once were.

In advance of the release today of the Report, we spoke with both Dr. Patrick Rooney, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Research at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, plus several other experts involved with data gathering and interpreting the results.

“Individual giving is closely linked with income and wealth, and the willingness to give is associated with donors’ financial confidence,” Dr. Rooney observed. “Individuals are more likely to support charities when they have the resources and confidence to purchase products.”

The “best year” for giving ever was 2007, when GUSA reported $344.48 billion in charitable support. The 2012 results are the closest that total giving has been to $300 billion since 2008. Dr. Rooney estimates that it will take another six to seven years for charitable giving to once again reach that high mark (when adjusted for inflation.)

Three other critical observations about the findings have relevance to Jewish as well as non-Jewish nonprofits:

1. The slow pace of giving in 2012 possibly reflects donor attitudes about transformation and impact. Donors do not seem convinced that the cases for supporting many Jewish nonprofits are compelling enough yet, even though significant financial resources exist for more aggressive giving.
2. The percentage of household income dedicated to charitable giving in 2012 fell – again – to only about 2% of available household dollars, reflecting a reluctance of donors to give generously, even though support for Donor Advised Funds accelerated to an all-time high.
3. Support for the traditional “umbrella campaigns” (United Way, Catholic Charities, Jewish Federations, and others) continues to wane as donors increasingly state their desires to “touch” and directly impact the organizations they support.

Among the other highlights of the GUSA Report for 2012 are several key observations that may be relevant to Jewish donors and organizations serving the global Jewish community. Most notably we highlight several critical trends and implications:

Giving to Religion Goes Down Again

While giving to houses of worship in the U.S. remains the largest single category attracting donor support, this sector experienced a decline in both total dollars given and as a percentage of overall giving for the third consecutive year. Giving to religion, making up 32% of all giving, dropped by 0.2% in real dollars and 2.2% in inflation-adjusted dollars.

This decline is less concerning when compared to last year’s 4.7% decline in inflation-adjusted dollars. However, the downward trend could indicate that continuing decreases in participation in religious life are resulting in decreased giving for religious organizations, which will free up new charitable dollars for other sectors, such as education and social services. (Note: this category reflects support for all types of houses of worship only.)

Mainline Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church are cited in the report as experiencing the greatest declines in giving to religion in America, but we know firsthand that many Jewish congregations are experiencing declines in giving as a result of lower affiliation rates and a competitive philanthropic arena.

We expect to see better analyses of Jewish giving reflected in next year’s GUSA report, based on findings in a landmark study focused on Jewish giving. Indiana University is also spearheading that study.

Giving to Education Remains Strong and on the Rise

With a 7% increase in giving in 2012, Education remains the second largest sector that donors support. The majority of donations within this category (approximately 75%) are giving in support of four-year colleges and universities. Large capital and endowment campaigns continue to dominate college campus fundraising efforts in 2012. Two notable examples are Stanford University, which became the first university to raise more than $1 billion in pledges in a single year, according to the Council for Aid to Education, and the University of Pennsylvania, which raised $4.3 billion over the total of its “Making History” campaign, which concluded in 2012.

Support for America’s Jewish day schools is included in this category but the numbers are neither tracked nor segregated – yet.

Corporate Contributions Increase

Corporate giving rose 12.2% in 2012 (9.9% adjusted for inflation), to an estimated $18.15 billion. This total includes gifts from both corporations and their foundations of cash, in-kind donations, and grants. This increase in giving may be credited to the strengthening economy, as corporate pre-tax profits surged upward 16.6% in 2012, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Experts at the Giving USA Foundation posited that the 10% inflation-adjusted growth in corporate giving was driven by strong gains in corporations’ pre-tax profits and a moderate rise in the GDP.

Corporate support represents an overemphasized proportion to the nonprofit community. While corporate donations increased last year, corporate philanthropy represents only 6 percent of total giving. And hidden in these figures are significant gifts-in-kind, especially from the pharmaceutical and technology companies, where they received some tax deductions because of donated drugs and computers.

We emphasize, too, that 80% of total giving continues to come from individuals and their estates. Plus, when giving by family foundations is included in this total, it is clear to see that individuals are truly driving American philanthropy, bringing the total up to 86% of all charitable giving.

Giving to Arts & Culture Increases Significantly

Giving to arts, culture, and humanities experienced significant growth in 2013, garnering an estimated $14.44 billion in charitable contributions, a 7.8% increase from 2011 (5.7% adjusted for inflation). This is one of the sectors that experienced a significant decrease during the Great Recession! Notably, giving to the environment and animal causes saw an estimated 6.8% increase in 2012 (4.7% adjusted for inflation), up to $8.30 billion.

“Both types of organizations were impacted by the economic downturn as some donors shifted their giving toward what they viewed as essential services to help others in need,” said Una Osili, Ph.D., director of research at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

“The growth in giving to arts- and environment-related organizations may be an indicator that donors began returning to their personal giving priorities amidst an economy that they perceived as recovering,” she added.

How to Find the Annual Report

Giving USA: The Annual Report on Philanthropy has detailed America’s annual estimated charitable contributions – and how they are used – since 1956, making it the longest running study of its kind. The complete GUSA report plus an executive summary are both available at givingusareports.org.

Robert I. Evans, Managing Director, and Avrum D. Lapin, Director, are principals of The EHL Consulting Group, a prominent fundraising consulting firm located in suburban Philadelphia. They are frequent contributors to eJewishPhilanthropy.com. Mr. Evans serves on the GUSA Foundation Board and as a member of the editorial review board for GUSA. The EHL Consulting Group is one of only 38 member firms of The Giving Institute. EHL Consulting works with dozens of nonprofits on fundraising, strategic planning, leadership development, and nonprofit business practices and strategies. Learn more at ehlconsulting.com.

EHL Consulting Group Blog; on Facebook; TWITTER: @EHLConsultGrp; Pinterest

©All rights reserved.

images courtesy Giving USA Foundation

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by MK Dr. Nachman Shai

Although dozens of parliamentary friendship groups exist in the Knesset, not one of them is between Israel and the United States. Apparently it’s very hard to change a long-standing “tradition,” yet it’s time to take action. As a matter of fact, there are other relationships between the U.S. Congress and Israel, particularly when American lawmakers visit Israel. These visits are arranged by American organizations led by AIPAC and most recently JSTREET.

Visits by Knesset members to Congress are sporadic and are coincidental, rather than meticulously planned in advance. The new Knesset lobby we are launching today on the issue of Israel-U.S. relations is designed to fill, even in part, this vacuum; to connect MK’s to the American experience, first and foremost, politically, so they will have overall knowledge and understanding of the Israeli-US relationship.

It is important to constantly mention how vital the U.S. is to Israel. The U.S. has for decades stood with Israel and supported us politically, economically and provided security and defense assistance. Sometimes it seems strange that many of Israel’s actions anger U.S. leaders and yet, at the end of the day, the weight of the common interests and joint values shared by Israel and the U.S. outweighs moments of disagreement and tension between the two countries. This is how we have survived together through wars, diplomatic negotiations, economic crises and various international events so that the alliance between Israel and the U.S. today is stronger than ever.

The heart of this relationship is the American Jewish community. American Jews have one hand firmly planted on the shores of the U.S. but the other hand stretches overseas to Israel. They become the bridge between over 300 million Americans and 8 million Israelis. This intimate relationship and the foundation it’s built on strengthen the bonds between the two countries. However, the complexity of the American Jewish community, its different streams and spiritual viewpoints are not sufficiently understood in Israel. Unfortunately, the impression of U.S. Jewry is lacking – “Israel supporters” or “rich” or “Orthodox” are superficial impressions which require discussion and a deeper understanding.

We cannot take U.S. Jewry for granted and assume that our close relationship will continue forever. Relationships between countries are complex and in need of constant cultivation. The new caucus, an initiative of the Ruderman Family Foundation with the active participation of Shira and Jay Ruderman, will have activities inside and outside the Knesset to enrich the knowledge and familiarity of MK’s with the U.S., especially with the Jewish community living there. The caucus from the previous Knesset was well received and was very successful.

Today we are embarking on a new path. The launching of the caucus will bring together two of the best experts in Israel – two former ambassadors, Professor Dan Kurtzer (U.S. ambassador to Israel) and Professor Moshe Arens (Israel ambassador to the U.S.). They were among the best representatives of their countries and actively worked to bring the U.S. and Israel closer. I’m glad they have joined our efforts to re-launch the caucus. A new group of Knesset members will join the caucus and as we begin our activities, the number of MK’s joining will grow.

See you at the starting line.

Dr. Nachman Shai is a member of Knesset (Labor) and holds a doctorate in Political Science and Communications. He is a member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee, as well as the Interior and Environment Committee. He previously served as the media liaison in the Israeli Embassy in Washington, served as press secretary of the Israeli delegation to the UN and was a vice-president of the Jewish Federations of North America.

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Yehuda Kurtzer’s important and provocative essay, “Leadership and Change in the Land of the Lost” demands a conversation. It is the conversation of the hour, and, as he notes, many have already begun this important talk. As the CEOs of many large and well-established Jewish nonprofits near retirement, the question of who will succeed them is fraught with tension. We are not our grandparents or our parents. Our organizations must evolve and maintain relevance. The leaders of these organizations must do the same. Who will lead us next?

I am probably one of the leaders Yehuda points to – if not to directly, then indirectly. I have been in the professional driver’s seat of a number of well-established Jewish organizations for the past several decades. It is work that I love, and I see many of the changes Yehuda observes firsthand. We all have.

Without being defensive, I feel a need to speak up for my generation of leadership and those a bit older than myself. We have perhaps not done a good enough job of articulating what we believe in. We are not merely holding on to our jobs for dear life or looking for miniature replacements of ourselves to succeed us. We do this work with passion and dedication because we have a philosophy of Jewish communal service that has been incrementally deteriorating, and it needs reinforcement, not because of a job but because it reflects our deepest values.

True to a special and holy Jewish number, I will make my case in seven points:

1. Choosing the right people comes first: You cannot build an organization on strategies alone. You need to identify people who not only want to lead but have the requisite skills. No one is going to become a Jim Collins’ level-five leader because of an impressive resume alone. Long-term job experience helps leaders know their communities, their mission and themselves better so they can lead from a point of influence. I am increasingly wary of young people who move from job to job and do not mature into position. We have.
2. It’s NOT about the organizations, their size or their structure: Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that if a Jewish organization is big, it must not be working. Apple – as of this writing – has 598,500 employees in the U.S., and no one thinks that they are too big or cumbersome. It’s not about the size. It’s about the mission.
3. It IS about people, vision, values and the future: What consistently matters is whether the vision is still relevant and if people buy into the vision and want to persuade others to come along. Do people feel authentically engaged in this work and do they believe that their work will better and strengthen our people? If they don’t, then they are not the right kind of people, no matter the job, no matter the skill-set, no matter the salary.
4. Enduring values last: Values that we hold dear today – community, tzedaka, servant leadership, peoplehood – were important thousands of years ago as well. These foundational aspects of our heritage should not, nay, must not be changed in the face of changing culture and circumstances. Jews have always been counter-cultural and resilient precisely because we stuck to a set of consistent, rock-solid values, incorporating the best of the new from the outside and inside.
5. Resist Market Trends: You don’t want to always be behind the times, but you also don’t want to grab onto every trend. I believe we are not attracting enough of the right new leadership because we got too trendy, too market-driven, too compliant with the “WIFM” paradigm. We allowed the profession of nonprofit management and Jewish communal service to be undervalued and under-respected (see Dan Pelotta’s TED talk). Moving with the trends sometimes helps us, and sometimes hurt us. We’ve been around long enough to have our own brand.
6. Let History Talk: Taken to an extreme, the theory of “let’s destroy the old world to build the new one” (a direct quote from the communist hymn “Internationale”) has gotten us the Soviet Union and North Korea. I am not suggesting we are moving in that direction. I ran away from that. But I am suggesting that we be very cautious and suspect of those who try too quickly to discard their inheritance for what looks like a brave new world that soon becomes a world no one wants.
7. There is Room for the Old and New: What I have always loved about Judaism is its blend of old and new. Layers of history create a platform for innovation and questioning. But we never forget what innovation stands on: the foundation of what came before it.

We need both leaders AND followers. We need both young AND old. We need innovation AND tradition. We need the Yehuda Kurtzers of the world to sit down and engage people like those he references in his article together in conversation. We need to build a new/old world of Jewish life together. We always have. And if we are true to ourselves and our values, we will again.

Misha Galperin is President and CEO of International Development for The Jewish Agency for Israel.

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My name is Ken Gordon, and I’m the social media manager at the Partnership for Jewish Education. Our friends call us PEJE. Not long ago, I read a book called The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices by former MIT Media Lab director Frank Moss. (Read this to find out why the Jewish communal world should be employing this volume.) As I paged through this lively and readable book, which makes the Media Lab sound like the most fun and productive R&D laboratory in the history of humankind, I thought, “I gotta build a Jewish day school version of this thing….”

Which is to say, I wanted, as I flipped through its amazing pages, to create some kind of organization, based on the Media Lab model and ethos, that would allow the me to work with the amazing people I knew from my personal learning network (a.k.a. my friends and colleagues from #JEDCHAT, a weekly Twitter forum for Jewish educators). I specially thought of a core group of Jewish education people – including a winner of the Jewish Futures Competition, a Joshua Venture grantee, the former executive director of LimmudLA, and the founder of Frisch’s superlative RealSchool program – all of whom I then forced to read the book. They soon become Sorcerers enthusiasts. Our conversations began in a Twitter group, we picked up members, and we quickly grew beyond it. The Twitter conversation was so exciting, and so fragmented, that we decided to have an after-hours webinar to discuss how the book would apply to our work lives.

From there, we started JEDLAB, a network of Jewish educators. It may be the fastest-growing and liveliest network anywhere in the Jewish world. JEDLAB right now exists as a robust Facebook Group (though we have bigger plans – count on that), one that went from one member on April 25th to 740 members. But it’s not just the size of the membership; it’s the quality and quantity of the conversations. The people here know and care deeply about Jewish education, and when they talk they invariably have something smart and/or challenging and/or novel to say. Our best conversations can stretch to 50, 70, even 100 comments, spanning over numerous days, and involve people from all areas of Jewish life and roles within Jewish education.

Our members are vastly diverse: they work at a variety of orgs, are planted all over the map, and they perform an impressive array of functions. Take a look:

Click image to view the Pinterest board

The denizens of JEDLAB hold all kinds of strong opinions, and are unafraid to make these opinions known. It’s all very civil and respectful – many of us learned this etiquette from #JEDCHAT – and we take the time to get to know one another and learn each other’s intellectual and spiritual contexts.

Now, we realize that, with school finishing up, many of you have been too busy grading papers, running Grandparents’ Day events, and generally closing out end-of-the-academic-year business, that you haven’t had the time or energy to engage in online networking.

We forgive you.

But now it’s time to say: School’s out, and we’re open for business. Here are four superb reasons why you no longer have any excuse to join our kehillah:

1. We are building strong relationships, 24/6. This is what Ron Wolfson says Jewish life  – and Jewish communal life – is all about. “After more than forty years of living and teaching the Jewish way,” he says in Relational Judaism, “I have come to an understanding about the essence of Judaism: It’s all about relationships.” In fact, Ron is an active part of our JEDLAB kehillah, and he takes the time to engage with our conversations and connect 1:1 with other members.
2. JEDLAB is as highly efficient means to listen in. Most of us haven’t the time or energy or schedule space to get out and mix it with the people. With JEDLAB, you can do this instantly – from you computer. It is an invaluable listening tour of the Jewish educational world.
3. JEDLAB conversations are authentic and honest and smart and in depth. The people in the LAB are know and care deeply about the issues of Jewish education. Moreover, they are working hard to improve their communities and themselves in this forum. They ask for help, float out ideas, discuss failures and successes. You can learn a tremendous about of information by dropping into the JEDLAB.
4. JEDLAB bulldozes the silos. We’re just getting started here but already JEDLAB is creating collaborations between Jewish professions who otherwise would never have met. This network promises enormous possibilities – and with your involvement, these could increase a thousand-fold.

The fact is, JEDLAB will make you a more informed and connected leader, a better leader, a smarter leader, and – weirdly enough – less lonely. We are kind of a family and you are just as welcome as the most humble teacher, or the most learned rabbi, to join us.

So consider this an open invitation.
Ken G.

p.s. If you’re interested in joining JEDLAB but harbor a doubt or two, send an email to me (ken@peje.org) and my co-instigator Yechiel Hoffman (yechielhoffman1@gmail.com) and we’ll set up a time to talk, connect you with other JEDLAB pals, and help you find your personalized way into this network. Seriously. We are in this for you.

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by Scott Copeland

Taglit Birthright Israel has become since its inception the largest arena in the Jewish world for educational tourism. In fact, Taglit Birthright Israel is the 2nd largest – the first being the Israeli public school system – Jewish educational framework in the world. Over 350,000 young Jewish adults from Diaspora communities and over 60,000 Israelis have participated in Taglit-Birthright Israel programs. Particularly in the summer, one would be hard-pressed not to notice the hundreds of buses adorned with Taglit Birthright logos traveling the length and breadth of Israel.

With all of that said, and the growth and impact of Taglit Birthright Israel is surely impressive, at the root of Taglit is the group experience of each bus and the individual experience of each participant. Although Taglit is a tourism experience it is also an educational experience. The break from the familiar and the everyday, the emphasis on group and community life, and the exploration of Israeli and Jewish topics, themes, and questions is more about transformation than it is about vacation. The educational aspiration is to provide participants with a setting where they can encounter and inquire about their own connections and unfolding understandings of themselves as members of the Jewish people. In what ways do I want to incorporate being Jewish in my life? How do I understand my connections to and questions about Israel? Taglit Birthright Israel has the potential to be a significant gateway to Jewish engagement following the 10 days in Israel, the potential to be a significant milestone in the lifelong Jewish journey of our participants.

The People on the Bus …

“Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.” Jim Collins well-known advice about how to move from good to great is literally true about Taglit, and particularly about the project’s educational staff. Each Taglit bus includes 3 staff people – typically 2 from the group’s country of origin and an Israeli tour educator. It is the educational staff – and in particular the Israeli tour educator – who will be the most significant factor in molding ten days from “time off” to “time on”, from a bus group to a community on wheels.

It is well known that Israeli tour guides receive professional training that stands head and shoulders above the training received by their professional counterparts in other countries. The tour guide brings a wealth of information and great commitment to his/her work. With that said, Taglit-Birthright Israel aspires to develop a new kind of tour guide – the tour educator. In a nut shell, the tour educator is not only source of information. The tour educator is a community builder, a staff leader, and a counselor and facilitator for Jewish identity exploration.

Initiated by Taglit Birthright Israel, the Maimonides Fund, and Keren Karev, the Taglit Institute for Tour Educators will train a new type of tour guide – a tour educator. Beyond the information and training required by Israel’s Ministry of Tourism, students participating in the training courses, seminars, and forums of the Taglit Institute will engage with areas of content and training particularly relevant to Taglit-Birthright Israel’s mission and educational platform. Training programs will engage future tour educators with the Jewish world and Israel’s place in contemporary Jewish life. Tour educators will devote time to gain a fuller understanding of their group participants and the contexts of their lives. Training participants will explore informal-experiential education and hone the professional skills needed to be inspiring and effective educators.

Training Tour Educators

Conventional tour guide training in Israel as overseen by the Ministry of Tourism is a nearly two year program including 650 hours of classroom work – Archaeology, Flora and Fauna, History, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Zionism. An additional 85 days are devoted to study tours from Metulla to Eilat, from Hebron to Herzliya. Very little time is dedicated to method or pedagogy, and education is not part of the study program. The tour educators course at the Taglit Institute includes all of the elements of the Ministry of Tourism program plus an additional 100 hours on topics related to Jewish life and identity, to informal and experiential education, to the vision and goals of Taglit Birthright Israel, and to teaching method, pedagogy, and facilitation skills. Throughout our tour educators course, consideration of the translation of information for education is woven throughout classroom and study tour time.

Additional training tracks aimed at more veteran tour guides – a three week seminar and week-long forum – offer a new gateway to Taglit Birthright Israel and focus on building the professional community. Taglit Institute training includes a Shabbat program as well as opportunities for students to observe Taglit groups in action, and to discuss relevant best practices and professional challenges.

In cooperation with a fine team of experienced educators at Jerusalem’s renowned Yad Yizhak Ben Zvi, 120 Taglit Institute grads have entered the field over the past year and are working with Taglit participants and groups. An additional 120 are currently in training. All Taglit Birthright Israel organizers are obligated to hire Institute trained tour educators as part of the educational standards of Taglit.

Some of the central elements of training include:

• Recruitment and screening aimed at bringing to Taglit Birthright Israel young Israelis who have both practical background in informal education and are motivated by questions of identity exploration. (Graduates of the pre-military leadership programs, former Jewish Agency and Avi Hai community, Hillel, and summer camp shlichim, youth movement leaders, etc).
• An emphasis on questions of personal and professional identity of the educator. Who am I as an Israeli and a Jew? How do I begin to formulate my own educational credo? What is our educational mission with Taglit participants?
• An exposure to elements of Jewish life and community outside of Israel.
• Contending with key issues from the field – dealing with Israeli current events as education rather than advocacy, marking Shabbat as a time of Jewish meaning, celebration, and community building, emphasizing the importance of talking with and listening to Taglit participants, and encouraging them to voice their issues, concerns, and questions about their own sense of being Jewish.
• Acquiring new skills, tools, and competencies in building staff, in facilitation, in using varied implementations (game, music, text, etc).

Our work is not only focused on the individual educator. The Taglit Institute seeks to encourage an ethos of professional camaraderie. We think better and perform more competently when we work as a team, when we strive to cooperate and collaborate. If the typical tour guide is a lone wolf; the tour educator is a member of a professional pack.

Alongside the Taglit Institute for Tour Educators, a similar training facility is under consideration for the non-Israeli educational staff in North America. Such a facility has the potential to grow a cadre of para-professionals for Taglit; people who can mark their mark at Taglit and continue to contribute to Jewish education as volunteer leaders and professionals throughout the community.

Our work is still at the beginning. We are constantly incorporating feedback and evaluation to help us sharpen our own work. We are constantly examining and fine tuning our programs. Our plan is to create a new reality at Taglit – where a new generation of highly motivated, trained, and committed educators – can contribute their efforts to the already fine work at Taglit and to engaging young Jewish adults with Israel and with Jewish life.

Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote:

“Everything depends on the person who stands in front of the classroom. The teacher is not an automatic fountain from which intellectual beverages may be obtained. The teacher is either a witness or a stranger. To guide a pupil into the promised land, the teacher must have been there themselves. When asking themselves: Do I stand for what I teach? Do I believe what I say? The teacher must be able to answer in the affirmative. What we need more than anything else is not textbooks, but text people. It is the personality of the teacher which is the text that the pupils read: the text that they will never forget.”

The Taglit Birthright Israel Institute for Tour Educators strives to fulfill Heschel’s words – to raise up educators who know that the essence of Taglit is the shared experiences of the participants with a staff poised to listen and prepared to continue the conversation.

Scott Copeland is Director of the Taglit Birthright Israel Institute for Tour Educators.

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In the American synagogue, dissatisfaction with the standard dues-for-membership financial model is growing more widespread. Dan Judson (“Scrapping Synagogue Dues: A Case Study,” eJewishPhilanthropy, Jan. 12, 2012) has written about one synagogue in the Boston area that eliminated membership dues. More recently, Beth Cousens and Adina Frydman (“Connected Congregations: Moving from Courageous Conversations to Courageous Actions,” eJewishPhilanthropy, June 10, 2013) have written about the New York Federation’s efforts to help local synagogues develop alternatives to the dues-for-membership model.

As a contribution to that conversation, we offer the example of our synagogue, The New Shul in Scottsdale Arizona. The New Shul is an independent (traditional-egalitarian) synagogue of approximately 150 families, which supports itself entirely on voluntary contributions. My wife Elana Kanter and I, both of us Conservative rabbis, founded The New Shul in 2002, and have co-led it for the past eleven years. Our goal in founding the shul was to create a deeper, more authentic sense of community than we had experienced in mainstream synagogues, in part by re-defining the meaning of money in the member-synagogue relationship.

It has become the norm in American synagogues to take the dues-for-membership model literally, to think of membership as something that one buys, much like a health-club membership. When paying dues, congregants ask themselves what they are getting for their money, and synagogues try to make their services and programs worth the price. The implicit paradigm – and sometimes the explicit one – is the consumer market.

But the consumer model, even at its best, is incompatible with true spiritual community. To conceptualize the synagogue as vendor and the congregant as customer erodes the sense of shared responsibility on which all true community depends. Consumerism is a very poor foundation on which to build a sense of meaning.

Our intention in founding The New Shul was to use structural change to generate a different kind of synagogue culture, in which members would see themselves not as customers but as partners in the work of community building. One of the shul’s founding principles was that membership would not be for sale. We would break with the consumer model by removing the price tag from membership.

How does voluntary giving work in practice? Every August, the shul sends a letter to all those who have defined themselves as members. The letter outlines the shul’s financial position, explains how much money the shul will need to operate for the coming year, and asks everyone to do their part. Each family responds by pledging an amount of their own choosing. Attendance on the holidays, for those who have not defined themselves as members, is similarly based on voluntary contributions. There are no tickets, only a request on the shul’s website that those who are not members send a contribution.

Giving, both by members and non-members, is broad-based and supports an operating budget of approximately $250,000 per year. That includes debt service on a building that the congregation purchased in 2007.

The effect of The New Shul’s financial structure is a profound shift in psychology. Its members do not see themselves as buying anything. They do not ask what they are getting for their money, because no one ever told them what to give. The spiritual consumerism that takes such a toll on mainstream synagogues is absent. As a result, the path is clear to build a deeper sense of community based on shared responsibility. As one member put it, “there is no ‘they’ here, only ‘us.’”
Criticism of the dues-for-membership model tends to focus on the issue of affordability.

Frequently, the challenge is defined as bringing down the cost of membership. But there is a more fundamental critique: that selling membership regardless of the price degrades the meaning of belonging. As long as synagogues are willing to define themselves as spiritual vendors – no matter how affordable their wares – they will find it difficult to generate the sense of meaning and belonging that contemporary Jews are seeking. Removing the price-tag from membership is not just a matter of increasing access – though it is that too – but a matter of transforming what we offer access to. By breaking with the consumer model, treating members as true partners rather than as customers, synagogues have the potential to attract and cultivate new energy, creativity, and commitment.

Michael Wasserman, a graduate of Harvard University and the Jewish Theological Seminary, is a founder and co-rabbi of The New Shul in Scottsdale Arizona.

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TOWF’s grant recipients include local Jewish organizations, programs focused on local low-income immigrant women, and Israel-based nonprofits. The grantees affect change by addressing issues such as social justice and political training for emerging leaders, prevention of gender-based violence for African refugees, economic empowerment through small business training, abusive relationship prevention through teen education and advocacy for women’s rights during Jewish divorce.

The grantee organizations can be found here.

The Tikkun Olam Women’s Foundation is the only Jewish giving vehicle in the Greater Washington area that offers women a voice and a vote in supporting causes that impact the lives of women and girls. They achieve this by pooling their charitable donations and then, together, deciding how to allocate funds.

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We write to correct a misconception about what matters when deciding which charity to support.

The percent of charity expenses that go to administrative and fundraising costs – commonly referred to as “overhead” – is a poor measure of a charity’s performance.

We ask you to pay attention to other factors of nonprofit performance: transparency, governance, leadership, and results. For years, each of our organizations has been working to increase the depth and breadth of the information we provide to donors in these areas so as to provide a much fuller picture of a charity’s performance.

That is not to say that overhead has no role in ensuring charity accountability. At the extremes the overhead ratio can offer insight: it can be a valid data point for rooting out fraud and poor financial management.

In most cases, however, focusing on overhead without considering other critical dimensions of a charity’s financial and organizational performance does more damage than good.

In fact, many charities should spend more on overhead. Overhead costs include important investments charities make to improve their work: investments in training, planning, evaluation, and internal systems – as well as their efforts to raise money so they can operate their programs. These expenses allow a charity to sustain itself (the way a family has to pay the electric bill) or to improve itself (the way a family might invest in college tuition).

When we focus solely or predominantly on overhead, we can create what the Stanford Social Innovation Review has called “The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle.” We starve charities of the freedom they need to best serve the people and communities they are trying to serve.

If you don’t believe us – America’s three leading sources of information about charities, each used by millions of donors every year – see the back of this letter for research from other experts including Indiana University, the Urban Institute, the Bridgespan Group, and others that proves the point.

So when you are making your charitable giving decisions, please consider the whole picture. The people and communities served by charities don’t need low overhead, they need high performance.

Thank you,

Art Taylor
President & CEO,
BBB Wise Giving Alliance

Jacob Harold
President & CEO
GuideStar

Ken Berger
President & CEO
Charity Navigator

for more, visit The Overhead Myth

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by Stephen G. Donshik

After two years of planning, the Global Planning Table (GPT), which was developed by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) with the participation of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, The Jewish Agency for Israel, and World ORT, recently held a series of meetings with the JFNA board. According to the GPT Executive Summary on First Year of Work, the GPT “is designed to provide a structure for examining the challenges and opportunities of today and igniting action to address them.” After reading the full report of the GPT’s first year and consulting with people involved in the planning process, I would like to make a few comments and raise a number of issues about the GPT.

First, reading through the report and its executive summary I was struck by the fact that it took the federation system and its partners more than two years to develop the Global Planning Table. Obviously the most important part of the process was reaching a consensus among the member federations so there would be both buy-in among the constituent members and an investment in making the system work. Building such a consensus takes time.

One of the critical questions is whether the concept of collective responsibility is still viable in federated Jewish communities. The strength of the North American Jewish community has always been the combination of strong local Jewish communities and an overarching umbrella organization that has functioned as both a convener of the local federations and an advocate for the system itself and the needs of Jewish communities in the United States and overseas. By bringing the federations together, this umbrella organization – today the JFNA – enabled the system to speak with one voice, when necessary, and to explore the need and viability of responding as the overall representative of the Jewish community. However, given the significant changes in both the JFNA and in the way local communities function today, one must question whether a process such as the GPT is at all relevant and whether the last two years of “process” have made the case for the relevance of the JFNA, in its present form.

For example, for many years a local community’s dues for the Council of Jewish Federations, one of the precursors to the JFNA, were based on the amount of money the community raised in its annual campaign and the number of Jews living in the community. At the present time, there is one dues structure for all communities: 10% of the funds raised by the local community for its overseas allocation through the JFNA system. There are quite a number of federations that have decided not to meet this requirement.

What does this present formula imply about the status of the JFNA in both domestic and international Jewish philanthropy? What is the message given to federations that allocate 30-40% of their funds raised on an annual basis for overseas allocations? Thus, when representatives from communities that vary greatly in the amount of funds they raise and allocate to overseas programs come together to make decisions, is this really an example of collective responsibility?

An effective GPT cannot be built on the weaknesses of the present system. For the federation system to speak meaningfully of collective responsibility, the communities must make a commitment to provide the resources needed to enable a meaningful implementation of the strategic plan. If the resources are not available because there is not sufficient buy-in, then even beginning to implement the first three of the strategic initiatives will not have an impact. Included in the six major signature initiatives are:

1. Cross-Border Immersive Experiences
2. Breaking the Cycle of Poverty for Children and Families 3. Civil Society and Religious Diversity in Israel
3. Global Jewish Leadership Development
4. Global Emergency Preparedness, Security, and Advocacy 6. Global Jewish Platform

Perhaps this is a wakeup call that there is something very wrong with the system. If these first efforts are not successful then the years invested in planning and developing these ideas will just be another example of the federated system’s demise.

During the last twenty years we have seen all too many reorganizations and launchings of new initiatives. It appears as if the reorganization of the United Jewish Appeal and the Council of Jewish Federations into the United Jewish Communities and now the Jewish Federations of North America has not strengthened our communities nor enhanced the umbrella organization’s ability to speak in one voice on behalf of the system. Campaign revenues in many communities continue to fall, having a deleterious impact on both the local communities and on the resources available to meet overseas needs. Thus, we return to the central concept of collective responsibility.

We should remind ourselves why the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, the precursor of the JFNA, was created three generations ago, and we should recognize that the GPT may not be the answer but rather be part of the problem. It has taken two years to come up with the GPT’s first initiative, and it has evoked less than an enthusiastic response. There was a great deal of urgency several years ago when the GPT was first proposed, but the development process should have been designed to bring other partners to the table and to produce a series of progress reports to invite feedback from players and members in the system. Given the rise of independent Jewish family foundations and philanthropic funds, it is striking that the GPT process did not invite them to the table nor expand the concept of collective responsibility to include these entities.

I am a proponent of collective responsibility. Based on more than 40 years of working and studying the organized Jewish community, I believe it is the only way for us to continue to build and strengthen Jewish communities around the world while working together with them. Today’s Jewish world has more independent Jewish communities than ever before. However, we have not found a way to maintain the unique organization of the North American Jewish community that was a hallmark of success from the 1930s to the 1990s and to reach out to work together with communities around the world. If we do not find a way to reimagine our structure and function to meet the demands and the needs of the 21st century, the community will devolve into being a conglomerate of independent functioning communities and not be able to retain its historic role that it fulfilled in the 20th century.

The members and affiliates of JFNA have to recognize the dilemma they are living through and make a decision to be less concerned with the preservation of JFNA and more focused on meeting the needs of the continental and international Jewish communities. We have met other challenges in the future, and I hope our system can retool to meet this one. Something has to change, and it isn’t just the acronym used to signify the loose connection between the communities.

Stephen G. Donshik, D.S.W., is a lecturer at Hebrew University’s International Nonprofit Management and Leadership Program. Stephen was Director of the Israel office of the Council of Jewish Federations (CJF), 1986-94, and Director of the Israel office of UJA Federation of New York, 1994-2008.

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Programing included ROI Community’s signature sessions such as Open Space, Community Case Studies and inspiring Morning Motivation (led by MK Ruth Calderon and author Joshua Prager, among others). But it was two new programs that set this year’s Summit apart from the past: 1) the addition of discussion groups led by leaders of major Jewish organizations in Israel and abroad, including Natan Fund’s Felicia Herman, Taglit’s Gidi Mark, Keshet’s Idit Klein and Teach First Israel’s Asaf Banner. And, 2), a two-hour panel discussion titled “The Global Jewish Community & Israel” that raised serious, and controversial questions about Judaism and Gender, the Kotel, and Identity.

The panel which included Rabbi Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi (Shalom Hartman Institute), Lisa Eisen (Schusterman Foundation), Micah Goodman (Ein Prat) and Gidi Grinstein (The Reut Institute) and was moderated by Shlomit Naim-Naor (MAKOM/Jewish Agency), dove right in to tackling one of the hot issues of today, gender equality in Israel (note to President’s Conference planning committee – when you plan a panel titled ‘Judaism and Women’s Equality‘, it is not acceptable to have a male chair). Rabbi Sabath Beit-Halachmi framed the early discussion by raising the questions, “can women play all roles in the public sphere?” and “is non-Orthodox Judaism legitimate in the State of Israel?”. The panelists, and the ROI questioners, tackled the issues both pointedly and respectfully. Both ROI Community and the Schusterman Foundation should be commended for rising to the occasion and allowing this extremely important discussion to take place, uncensored, in the public sphere.

We encourage all to watch the panel video (above).

The Summit was not without entertainment and socializing, including [on the last night] a dinner celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation held at the Israel Museum. Addressing those present, and speaking to the continued funding direction of the Foundation, president Sandy Cardin said, “what we see in you is the potential for the future – that is why we are investing in you.”

As we began dinner, I turned to the ROIer sitting across from me – the CEO of a European-based family foundation – and asked his thoughts on the week. He paused only briefly, and replied, “finally a conference with substance.”

The bar has been raised. The question is which of our communal organizations will have the courage to take it to the next level?

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by Ahuva Ron

For the last eight years, I have directed the School Twinning program between Los Angeles and Tel Aviv for the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. I am writing this in response to the Jim Joseph Foundation Report on “Effective Strategies for Educating and Engaging Jewish Teens: What Jewish Communities Can Learn from Programs That Work”, as I would like to highlight our highly effective and impactful model of teen engagement.

The School Twinning Program started with four twin schools. Currently, we have 41 schools including 20 in Los Angeles, 20 in Tel Aviv, and one in Vilnius, Lithuania. The main goal of the program is to create relationships between the Jewish students and families in Los Angeles and Tel Aviv. There are several core elements of the program that make it impactful and unique: exchange of student delegations and face-to-face meetings in each other’s communities, home hospitality, joint curriculum/projects with the twin school, community involvement, and local and joint teachers’ seminars with all the American and Israeli educators. The schools that take part in this program are Jewish day and afternoon schools from all denominations. The delegation exchanges are in either sixth, eighth, or tenth grade.

The Jim Joseph Foundation report looked at different teen programs and gave us an overview of effective strategies to engage teens. I would like to suggest the School Twinning program as a way of engaging pre-teens and teens, together with their families, as a wider view of engagement for Jewish youth. While unique in its scope, the School Twinning program is not branded as its own entity; it is embedded within schools and is part of the Jewish Federation. Today, there are 500 schools around the world in this program that are part of The Jewish Agency’s Partnership2Gether initiative.

In this article I would like to focus on three of the key themes mentioned in the JJF report and to look at the School twinning program: 1) as a model of teen involvement, 2) as a pedagogical approach, and 3) as a partnership model.

School Twinning as a Model for Teen Involvement

The JJF report speaks about peer-to-peer engagement. In this program, the framework we use is people-to-people relationships. The relationships are multidimensional; relationships are created between the American teens as a group, the Israeli teens as a group, and between the Americans and Israelis when they come together. Relationships are also created between the families in the local communities and across the ocean, between educators and the schools communities as a whole.

The teens in this case are students in Jewish day and afternoon schools. Through this program, they create deep relationships with Israeli teens and discover that the Israeli teens are just like them in many ways. The exchanges of student delegations involve home hospitality, which creates life-long and reciprocal relationships. We learn from the students that the relationships are not only with their friends from Israel, but also with their classmates. Traveling to Israel together and hosting creates experiences that bond the students in a very special way. This is potentially even more impactful in an afternoon school where the students do not know each other as well. The School Twinning Program is so impactful that it now serves as a recruitment tool for Jewish day and afternoon schools. Teens choose to stay in Jewish day schools so they can participate in the Twinning program, and students continue in afternoon schools beyond their bar/bat mitzvahs in order to travel to Israel and to be able to host an Israeli teen in their home.

I could not agree more with Robyn Faintich, who in her article from May 13, 2013 writes about the importance of engagements with pre-teens. We have 16 schools (eight twins) that send and host sixth-grade delegations. These students are 11-12 years old and are pre-bar/bat mitzvah age. The School Twinning program connects them to Israel and Israelis in a meaningful way. As one of the sixth graders from Temple Israel of Hollywood told us, this program brings to life all what she has learned in school over the years. With pre-teens, we plant a seed that we can see grow over the years. They form relationships with their American peers and with their Israelis buddies like no other age group. At this age, they are still open to new friendships without judgment and they experience it emotionally and from their hearts.

School Twinning as a Pedagogical Approach

The JJF report speaks about pedagogical approaches and educational opportunities for teens. Our educational approach is through experiential Jewish and Israel education. Traveling to Israel and hosting in their home communities give students the opportunity to experience firsthand what we teach in the schools. Each year participating schools have a theme for their delegations and the program coordinators develop itineraries around this theme. Examples of themes have included Tikkun Olam, Leaders and Leadership, or Zionism Today. For the topic of Tikkun Olam, the students read texts about Jewish values and then participate in social action activities. In Leaders and Leadership, the students explore together personal, community based, national and historic examples of leadership and meet with inspiring leaders. For Zionism, the students learn the history, visit significant places, and engage in discussions about what it means to be a Zionist today. Because the delegations are for the Israelis and the Americans together, the discussions are insightful and eye-opening as they include perspectives from both sides. For example, the Israelis come to Los Angeles and see pluralistic Judaism in action and learn about how American Jews live as minorities, a foreign experience for Israelis. In Israel, Americans learn about life in Israel, their counterparts’ army expectations, and what it means to be Jewish and Zionist in Israel, a completely different experience than simply learning about Zionism in the classroom.

To twin with a school in a different country opens the door for teens to be interested in learning about and engaging with Jewish life in a broader world. They get a greater sense of Peoplehood and they become interested in the concept of belonging to a larger Jewish world.

School Twinning as a Model for Partnerships

The JJF report speaks about organizational partnerships. The language we use in this program is community involvement along with partnering and networking between organizations. The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles provides staff and financial support for each school that is a part of this program. The Federation staff creates the match between the twin schools and assists with the development of the program, curriculum, joint projects and delegations. A few years ago we started Local Educator Workshops in both Los Angeles and Tel Aviv for the program’s coordinators where we meet five times a year to study the theme for the year and also to share best practices between school coordinators. Over the years, we have developed a strong network among the participating schools, and it has become a prestigious position to be part of this network. Schools help each other and communicate about this program. Teachers from a variety of day and afternoon schools, and from all denominations, come together to share ideas and work through issues together. As a result, they develop relationships that would not happen otherwise. This network of twin schools is important as the JJF report emphasizes that no program can stand alone.

The School Twinning program also builds relationships beyond the parents and families. The program fosters relationships that involve the entire synagogue and school communities. Over the years, the program becomes an integral part of the community as visiting delegations are introduced as guests to the community on Shabbat morning in front of the entire congregation; they also participate in large community events. Synagogue mission trips visit their Tel Aviv twin school, and families in Tel Aviv and Los Angeles often remain connected for life.

The role and support of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles enables the program to be affordable for schools and families. The Federation partners with the parents and the schools in funding the program. While the Federation funds the educational components and ground expenses, the parents on both sides pay for the students’ flights. If needed, the Los Angeles schools add money for any additional budget needs related to their delegations and/or programming.

The School Twinning program engages all participants in the community, including teens, with the Jewish Federation, and through this program, the Jewish Federation is connected to 20 communities in Los Angeles and with Israel.

Conclusion

After working in this program for 16 years, I see the School Twinning program as a vibrant and effective model for teen engagement because it builds relationships between Jewish teens around the world through experiential Israel education. And the program is only growing. About a year ago we developed a new triangle program, adding the Shalom Aleichem School in Vilnius, Lithuania, to a partnership between an afternoon school in Los Angeles and a school in Tel Aviv. Eighth graders from all three countries met in Israel in December 2012 for a 10-day delegation. I believe that, for them, it was an experience that they will never forget. There was nothing else to connect them other than being Jewish teens, and yet, they found so many things in common. This, in my opinion, is teen engagement in action!

Ahuva Ron is Senior Education Director at The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. She can be reached at aron@jewishla.org.

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It seems that the idea of making supplemental schools more “camp-like” has gained even more momentum over the past year. In that time, I have engaged in many conversations with practitioners and researchers who shared my mix of hopefulness and skepticism about the idea. The hopefulness often springs from the freedom to think creatively about education while at the same time maintaining a developmental-growth framework to inform new initiatives. Skepticism, on the other hand, often emerges from pointing out the ways in which schools were not like camps (camps being seen as voluntary, having more contact hours, etc.).

I have come to wonder about the camp:school analogy, specifically in the instance of overnight camps and congregationally-based schools, as being flawed on a more fundamental level. The comparison of apples to oranges in this case has to do with comparing a part to a whole. Overnight camps are multifaceted settings that encompass many aspects of youth experience. They can be seen as a “whole” made up of many component parts, a well-bounded organizational system. While congregational schools may also have many components (classes, trips, etc.) they are, by definition, a “part” of the greater whole of the congregation; it is an organizational subsystem. I believe this unbalanced comparison leads us to begin the “congregational-school-like-camp” conversation at the wrong point.

In the bounded system of a camp, or at least in our hyper idealized image of it, all subcomponents of the organization (the formal education program, but also the sports program, swimming, dining, etc.) are geared to maximize the growth – socially, emotionally, Jewishly – of the youth participating therein. Starting our discussion with a comparison to the congregational school already assumes that the Jewish growth of youth will be relegated to only one part of the synagogue. The reverse analogy would be to imagine that Jewish education only happens during the times at camp designated as “class” or “learning group,” a notion regarded as heretical by camp professionals. Rather, camp becomes a holistic learning environment because of coordination of a variety of elements to suit the developmental needs of campers. Drawing the analogy to a congregational school implies that there is a designated place, time, and subset of personnel with primary responsibility for youth outcomes. There is a danger, to put it bluntly, of letting the rest of the congregation off the hook in terms of youth development.

It is tempting to hone in on the real and significant differences between congregations and camp and abandon attempts to learn from the camp context. However, we might also benefit from switching the parameters of the discussion. Rather than asking how a piece of one organization can be like the entirety of another organization – “how can congregational schools be more like camps” – a better question may be “how can congregations be more like camps?”

A Voice for Youth

At camp, there is no question that the developmental interests of youth are accounted for. What should the curfew be for counselors? Should we hire non-Jews to work as kitchen staff? Sports staff? Bunk counselors? Should we change the clocks to “camp time?” Decision making around these issues is complex and certainly frought with compromises having to do with finances, multiple constituents, logistics, and such. However, the campers’ voice is strongly represented. While the same is likely to be true for the subsytem of the congregational school, it is less clear how the voice of the youth is represented in the decision making of the broader organization. When should services start? When should they end? What spaces are used for youth programming? How do hiring practices – again, beyond the school – reflect staff competence with and enthusiasm for youth work? It stands to reason that making changes for the betterment of youth will require the enfranchisement of this group. Some synagogues may consider including members of the youth community on committees or even on the board (at least in an advisory capacity). Another model would be for each synagogue committee to have a member designated as youth-gadfly, tasked with the responsibility of repeatedly asking how any given decision or policy would impact the youth community of the synagogue. At camp, it is acknowledged that everyone – from the bunk counselor to the van driver – has the potential to impact, positively or negatively, the Jewish experience of youth. A lesson we learn from the congregation:camp analogy is that everyone – those in the office as well as on the bimah – must see themselves as part of educational team.

Legitimate Peripheral Participation

It is sometimes said that through providing the experience of living in a Jewish community, camp provides the skills and/or motivation for campers to participate in “real” Jewish communities back home. While this may be true, it is certainly the case that through providing the experience of living in the camp’s Jewish community, camp provides the skills and/or motivation to continue to participate in the camp’s Jewish community year after year. Each age group is excited to step into the shoes of those ahead of it. Age-appropriate “real” Jewish opportunities are planned at each level. This year, campers learn to sing X, Y, and Z prayers, next year they get to help lead those prayers, while learning a bunch of new ones. This process, which psychologists and anthropologists refer to as legitimate peripheral participation, is similar to an apprenticeship and is a modality of initiating members into a community. Learners take on increasingly complex roles and responsibilities, moving in an incremental way from the periphery of the community to the center. In many synagogues, however, it often seems that the expectation is for youth to remain at the periphery until they land, fully formed and ready to lead, at their bar or bat mitzvah, taking on the yolk of responsibility for a set of communal responsibilities that has been, for all intents and purposes, opaque up to that point. At camp, there are many ways to be meaningfully involved in the community. Those who do not excel in their Judaica studies or Hebrew (for those camps for which this is a focus), those who sleepwalk through prayer and mouth the words to birkat hamazon - all have the opportunity to be stars elsewhere. At camp, the gardeners, artists, jocks, and thespians are celebrated, even when the “Jewish” connection of their activity is tangential at best. To me, this is perhaps the most complicated issue for congregational schools to tackle, and I welcome posted comments and input about this (and anything else, of course): When we demand that our congregational schools promote “synagogue skills” or tools for Jewish participation, have we narrowed the parameters so far as to exclude many who have much to give to the community?

Conclusion

Noted Community Psychologist Seymour Sarason proposed a thought experiment involving an extraterrestrial visitor, which I adapt here to our discussion: Imagine that a friendly but naïve traveler from another planet dropped by to observe your congregation. What would this visitor infer about the place of youth and the centrality of youth development? What are the spaces that seem to serve youth best? Worst? What times during the week seem to provide a rich experience? A weak experience? Such an inventory may provide a productive starting point for discussion. Thinking holistically about creating positive settings for youth may mean taking youth education into account even in venues often excluded from the discussion.

There is clearly far more complexity to the issue than discussed here. For example, we might wonder about how parents can be brought into this discussion as a way of expanding the systemic reach of the congregation. And, there are questions about how congregations balance the needs of multiple constituencies. However, a fundamental principle of many successful, large scale interventions for positive youth development is that focusing only “improving” the youth and their most proximal educational settings is insufficient. Head Start, for example, is about far more than just good pre-schools. Successful models are holistic, or, to use a developmental term, “ecological,” encompassing as many aspects of a child’s experience as possible. Making synagogue schools more like camp is too low a bar. Having the congregational rabbi “on board” (a term I have often heard used to indicate the tacit support of a rabbi for new initiatives in the school) is insufficient. The question of how to make synagogue school more like camp already sets us up for communal failure. The answer – however complex it might be – relates to making our synagogues more welcoming to youth, and in developing the types of authentic and diverse rituals that allow all youth to become meaningful parts of a community

Jeffrey S. Kress, PhD is Associate Professor of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

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Parent’s e-mail message: “This is all surprisingly more emotional for all of us than I could have imagined. For myself and each other parent that I’ve talked to, the topic of Jewish education really tugs at our heart strings and it’s hard to feel like we can do right by our kids and our pocket books and our commitments to school and other activities. ooph. I haven’t heard about any families where the kids are driving the want to be at something Jewish after-school. The kids seem to want to veg out at home or with their friends or be at a specific sport practice; and the parents are working so hard to set up a good Jewish learning and community experience; but it’s all so much effort in terms of encouraging kids and schlepping and paying for it that it exhausts us parents.”

Rena’s response: “Interestingly, it is exactly the trend that you are reflecting on that we set out to change. The kids in our program are often asking for more Edah. They are having a very positive experience that they connect with their Jewish selves. We are trying to turn the tide so that kids will drive the want … we’re looking for the sweet spot of will and skill. It may be only because of the types of Jewish learning experiences they had that the children you are referencing currently don’t have the will.”
(excerpt from an email exchange)

Research regarding the impact of Jewish education contextualizes this parent’s experience. Cohen (2006) notes that (1) some dosages of supplementary school (in particular the once-a-week format) may actually have a negative impact; and (2) participation in 3 informal educational experiences (including camp, youth group, and Israel) during one’s teen years actually surpasses the impact of day school.

Data like Cohen’s and others suggest that camp makes a difference for children’s short and long-term Jewish identity and commitment. Persistent discontent with the experience and outcomes offered by Jewish supplementary education has led to a barrage of educators calling for the “make religious/Hebrew school like camp” solution. “Hey, if we make supplementary Jewish education like camp then they’ll like that too, right?” When educators suggest this solution it is with the hope that we can make the afterschool setting as powerful as the best outcomes we’ve seen from Jewish camps. Yes, I’m sure you’ve heard the same compelling stories I have: the child who comes home from camp and tells her parents she’s keeping kosher; the young adult that marries within the faith because of a relationship that began at camp; or the camper who decides to become a Jewish leader because of an incredible counselor, teacher, role model she met at camp. Don’t we want that from our supplementary school education?

Sounds great! Yes? But, alas, it is too good to be true.
It’s time to change this conversation.

We must recognize the complexity of developing high quality afterschool learning experiences. Camp has a very different set of affordances than afterschool spaces. And, one of the most important of these features is that camps can be totally immersive experiences for extended periods of time (days, weeks, months). In fact, it is noticeable that this feature is also present in each of the types of experiences that Cohen et. al. (2006) mention (Israel trip, camp, youth group).

Afterschool experiences face several particular challenges. First and foremost, they are after school. Think about it from the child’s perspective. I’m 6, 8, 10 years old. I’ve sat (yes, mostly sat) quietly (yes, mostly quietly) in school for 5, 6+ hours already today. I’ve read, behaved, written, behaved, computed, behaved, discussed, behaved, self-regulated, behaved, focused, behaved already today for 5, 6+ hours. And did I mention that I’m not even allowed to lie down or touch anyone else during rug time at school. And I hardly get any recess and when I do I spend half the time trying to figure out who to play with today or waiting in line to play wall ball. Now its 2:30 or 3:30, bell rings, schools over. I’m HUNGRY. No, not hungry – I’m STARVING! It’s been at least 3 hours since I’ve eaten lunch – that cold floppy cheese sandwich someone packed me that I didn’t really like (gosh I’d trade my favorite toy if I was allowed to have peanut butter at school). And, I can’t believe there were carrots and apple slices in my lunch box, uh-gain! Even though I’ve made it very clear to my parents that I DON’T WANT ANYMORE CARROTS IN MY LUNCH! What do they think I am, a rabbit?

Does this sound like the frame of mind of a camper?

It is for this reason that many afterschool programs don’t even try to attempt any “serious” or “academic” learning. Supervised play, fun activities, homework help, clubs, enrichment, and sports are the usual suspects in afterschool offerings that are popular choices for parents. Further, I’ve seen several religious/Hebrew schools follow this path using the idea of “camp” or “experiential” learning to provide cover for substituting substantive Jewish learning experiences with decontextualized activities like gaga, planting a garden, and Shabbat-o-Grams.

So, how can we renew Jewish learning after school … yes, in particular, during the hours that happen after school? What role can the lessons learned from camp education as well as education in other contexts play in supporting this renewal? What can we learn from other afterschool programs that successfully meet “serious” learning goals (e.g. science, mathematics, arts, etc.)?

At Edah in Berkeley, California we are tackling this complex challenge head on with the generous support and wisdom of the Covenant Foundation, UpStart Bay Area, and both local and national advisors and donors. Edah’s mission is to inspire and engage children and their families through experiential, Hebrew-infused learning in order to nourish collective commitment to Jewish life and learning. We are guided by a central principle: authentic, immersive experiences provide powerful learning opportunities through which people create meaning, develop Jewish identity, build strong relationships, and nurture community. We marry features of camp that are known to be effective with powerful elements of other relevant learning spaces. It is in the intersection of these multiple spaces that we designed Edah.

The Edah model builds upon the best of several existing program structures as depicted to the right. Drawing on elements of several existing educational and enrichment structures, Edah is designed as a community of Jewish doing and learning. Edah builds on the existing structures and youth development goals of afterschool programs, the experiential, immersive, free-choice learning environments fostered at high quality Jewish summer camps, the commitment to daily Jewish learning and Jewish chevreh that characterize Jewish day schools, and the value of families learning and practicing together embodied in high quality family education programs. Edah meets daily, offering participants the option of as many contact hours for Jewish learning as available in day schools. Edah also meets for full days or weeks when school is out AND we also has an annual retreat – yes, a little bit of that camp magic!

Working within this framework, we developed Edah as a program for children in Kindergarten through 5th grade that would both offer amazing Jewish learning for children and their families AND provide a national model for extensive and intensive Jewish education. The following diagram summarizes the theory of action that underlies this program:

The program is designed to include Jewish learning experiences that are: experiential, Hebrew-infused, immersive, learner-centered, and project based. These experiences will operationalize the concept of na’aseh v’ nishma – we will do and we will understand[1] – by providing participants and their families with opportunities for doing Jewish practice, learning Jewish content and values, and being Jewish.

These opportunities support participants to become curious about, interested in, motivated towards, engaged in, and skillful in Jewish learning and practice. As a result, these participants develop both the will and skill to engage in Jewish living and learning and realize our program’s learner outcomes in age appropriate ways. These outcomes include: (1) positive Jewish identity; (2) knowledge of Hebrew, Jewish tradition, and values; and (3) capable of engaging in Jewish ritual and communal life.

We at Edah are not alone in the effort to reinvent Jewish learning experiences for children after school. The Edah pilot was conceived of and developed by a group of parent volunteers (of which I am one) who were seeking to create a new model of afterschool Jewish learning experiences. From its inception, the creators of Edah received requests to share their insights with other communities in North America. As a result, the leadership of Edah catalyzed and lead the Nitzan Network with the generous support of the Covenant Foundation. The purpose of the Nitzan Network is to support the renewal of Jewish learning after school.

Through this budding network, Edah leaders and Nitzan affiliates are actively engaging in changing the conversation about what it takes to renew Jewish learning after school.

Being “just like camp” is not enough.

[1] Na’aseh is translated as “we will do” and nishma is translated literally at “hear” but interpreted as understand. This biblical concept is very much in line with Edah’s constructivist pedagogy.

Rena Dorph, Ph.D. is Co-Founder of Edah (Berkeley, California) and Nitzan Network (North America) and also Director of The Research Group, University of California, Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science.

This article first appeared on JESNA’s InnovationXchange.

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I was interested to read Billy Planer’s blog post “I Have Met The Enemy of Jewish Teen Engagement and It Is US” and the conversation it has inspired. I’ve known Billy for years and have always been impressed with his work and the incredible programs he runs, including Etgar 36.

Billy makes an excellent argument about appreciating new “non-traditional” programs and seeing them as worthy recipients of funding, scholarships, and grants. I’m hopeful that he will help open the eyes of some the incredible philanthropists in the Jewish community who are looking to invest in programs that are different, exciting and impactful.

As one of the “gate keepers” that Billy refers to, however, I do see things a bit differently in terms of how we “guard the borders.” Though I can only speak for myself, I do not consider it a failure when teens from my congregation involve themselves in Jewish activities outside of our congregational walls, whether it be in BBYO, at Alexander Muss High School in Israel, or in programs sponsored by the JCC, Federation, or our local Jewish Education Agency. Rather, I try to support and celebrate our teens’ Jewish involvement wherever it takes place. When our teens are elected to their BBYO Chapter boards, I congratulate them just as I do when they are elected to the board of our temple youth group. When our teens visit Israel, even if not on a NFTY or Reform Movement program, I am simply thrilled that they have made the choice to visit their Jewish homeland.

As a congregational youth worker, the challenge is to determine which programs are excellent and which are not; which are well-planned, well-supervised, well-organized, and which are not; and, for Reform congregations, which programs are open and accepting of liberal Judaism, where our students will not be chastised or criticized or made to feel “less” Jewish because of their religious choices. The moment I put a brochure out at temple for a program, the families at my congregation believe I am endorsing it. The day a table appears in our front lobby with a representative from an outside organization, my community believes we are partners with them.

Unfortunately, no formalized process exists for outside programs to earn a stamp of approval. Multiple times a month, congregations are contacted by representatives of “other” programs that do not fall within the typical gates of a congregation or movement. Some of them may be incredible, and we may be missing out – but it is simply not possible for us to be well-informed on each of them. To determine which programs do meet our standards and which do not is an incredibly challenging, if not impossible, task. Perhaps now is the time for a national Jewish organization to create an accreditation process to let those truly outstanding programs be recognized rather than restricted by this dilemma of missed opportunities.

At the same time, if the goal of independent programs is to reach under-engaged youth, I find it interesting that those who run these programs rely so heavily on recruiting through congregations. If Etgar 36 came to my congregation to advertise their program, I know exactly which kids would flock to the table – the same ones who come to my youth group events and never miss a week of confirmation classes. There may be other kids in the room who would be interested in this type of program, but because they are not as involved in congregational life, might perceive it as too “institutional.”

My hope is that in addition to strengthening relationships with congregations and existing institutions, providers of independent programs will also explore new ways to engage Jewish teens and reach beyond congregational walls by expanding their marketing to websites, schools, community newspapers, and elsewhere. Pushing more product through the overstuffed pipeline of congregational recruitment efforts will not allow us to engage more teens. It will simply allow us to re-engage the same teens over and over again.

Ira Miller has worked at Washington Hebrew Congregation since 2002, first as Director of Youth Programs and more recently as Director of Informal Education.

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Are you seeking to create innovative approaches in the communal aspects of Jewish worship and education or generally in your nonprofit organization? Have you grappled with the challenge of making this a sustainable endeavor?

I recently read an informative report by Beth Cousins on behalf of UJA New York. This report dealt with approaches to dues in synagogues. It came up with three models: the Mishkan, Journey and Hybrid models. These models are described in the report that is available here.

The discussion of dues in this report leads me to the conclusion that having a sustainable business model is important to our Jewish worship communities. The history of business models is an interesting one. Having a conscious, deliberate model of how one will operate a sustainable and profitable business did not automatically arrive as an aspect of doing business. The application of business models to nonprofits has been a more recent development that is still in progress. The next leap is to apply the idea of sustainable business models to our worship communities.

Admittedly, it is a challenge to hold the idea of a worship community and business model in one’s head at the same time. It seems to require a sentence like “the worship of HaShem is a money making enterprise.” However, that is what we have been about all of these years when we sought to sustain our traditional bricks and mortar congregations and their various programs through dues, dinners and donations. The role of a business model only becomes noticeable when we start changing the model of the traditional synagogue and asking how to financially sustain what we come up with.

There are, as the report made aware, a variety of experiments with different dues models around the country. While a sustainable revenue or funding stream is important to a worship community, a business model deals with a number of other factors. It deals with the purpose of the enterprise, clearly defined services or products being provided, who is providing them, the required competencies of those providing them and the characteristics of those being served. It deals with the delivery mechanisms of how services are provided. I believe that it should deal with the critical issue of how members are connected. It deals with how all of this fits together in a congruent, workable manner.

Revenue and funding streams and worship experiences need to be thought of in the same breath as part of this sustainable and workable system.

In the nonprofit sector, there are experiments with social impact bonds which are attempting to re-orient how services from nonprofits are funded. In the case of social impact bonds, investors invest in the provision of services of which government is also a funding partner which if these services attain certain specified levels of benefit provide a return to the investor. The point here is that our current investment, funding and business models even of our worship communities can be deconstructed and then rebuilt in highly imaginative ways.

Though I do not think we could measure increased kedusha, we could say with some comfort that the process of creating such a sustainable business model in the service of HaShem does produce increased kedusha. In the process, we may find other ways of defining the things that we value and financially supporting them.

What have been your experiences with regard to the question raised at the beginning of this post?

Barry Camson helps organizations and people utilize network approaches as a means of achieving their desired purposes in effective and humane ways. He can be reached at BCamson@aol.com

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Communication therapy; photo copyright ALEH.

by Doron Almog

It was on Thursday, June 12, 2003 that we gathered in a white tent erected in the midst of a barren stretch of desert just south of Ofakim. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was there together with a group of children in wheelchairs who were surrounded by a diverse crowd of people from all across the stratum of Israel society.

Yair Lapid served as de facto master of ceremonies for the special event. Raising his arm above his head in a crooked manner, much like one of the disabled children sitting nearby in wheelchairs, he fired off a rhetorical question to those assembled: “Does anyone here know what it’s like to live every day of your life with your hand held above your head, like this?”

Following the laudatory opening remarks and speeches, the Prime Minister was invited to speak, and to place a symbolic cornerstone rock into a barrel that was placed in the center of the stage.

Thus ended the cornerstone laying ceremony for the establishment of ALEH Negev, a rehabilitative village unique in its scope both in Israel and worldwide, designed for severely disabled people whose only alternative until that point had been placement in hospitals or nursing homes.

Four years later, a year after the village opened its doors to my son Eran and another 10 residents like him, Eran passed away. In his memory, the name of the village that was his beloved home was changed to ALEH Negev-Nahalat Eran.

I would like to highlight the following words from the remarks of Ariel Sharon at that ceremony, since they are as applicable today as they were then:

“Even in good times, the State of Israel cannot give the population of disabled children everything they need. All the more so, we cannot provide all that is needed during a time of financial crisis and budgetary cuts. Therefore, the work of organizations like ALEH is so important. They fill the void where government assistance is lacking, and they provide what is needed – with love, dedication and complete devotion. “

Eran, my beloved son, who never called me Abba and never made eye contact with me, was the greatest teacher of my life. He taught me the meaning of unconditional love. He taught me to hear the soundless cries of the hundreds of children like him. He taught me that the focus of our actions should not be the glorification of one’s ego. Rather, we should be focused on helping people like him.

They are as human as we are, but they lack the ability to advocate for themselves and even to function independently. Their entire existence stands as a test of our values and the essence of our humanity. They are here to make us into better people, to forge into our daily lives the axiom that “All of Israel is responsible for one another.” They are here to challenge us every day to strive towards “Tikun Olam,” humanity’s shared responsibility to heal, repair and transform the world into a better place.

Today, ALEH Negev-Nahalat Eran is a home for life to some 130 young adults with severe physical and cognitive disabilities. Over 230 staffers and 120 volunteers dedicate their time and energy to the welfare of the residents.

In addition, the village offers services and outpatient care to thousands of people from Israel’s southern region, including rehabilitative treatments and therapies, dental care, physiotherapy, hydrotherapy, communication and speech therapy, and much more.

Two kindergartens on premises integrate disabled children alongside their ‘regular’, non-disabled peers. Volunteer programs include rehabilitated prisoners, high school students who come weekly to work with their ‘adopted’ village residents on an individual basis, workers from hi-tech companies, high-level security officers, IDF soldiers and more. It is the only place in the world where tourists come to visit and learn how to care for the most vulnerable members of our society.

A visit to ALEH Negev-Nahalat Eran is an incredible life lesson that shakes one out of complacency and gives a sense of perspective to everything we do.

As a graduate of the Reali School of Haifa, now celebrating its 100th year, I was asked by one of its students if I would change anything in the curriculum. I replied that I would convert one day of learning each week into a day of working with special needs children. They are the weakest yet purest of souls. While they are at the greatest disadvantage, they pave the way along obscured paths towards the healing of the world. If only we can learn how to listen to them, we would surly make the world a better place.

Major General (Res.) Doron Almog is the founder and Chairman of ALEH Negev – Nahalat Eran, a village named in memory of his son, that provides a continuum of residential care for children with severe disabilities as they grow from adolescents into young adults. Learn more about ALEH at aleh.org.

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If Amazon was selling a book based on the premise that Jews care unconditionally for and about each other – what we are calling Jewish Mutual Responsibility or Areyvut in short-hand Hebrew – how would they classify it? Non-fiction or fiction?

Areyvut has sustained our global Jewish people for millennia. Jewish communities in the diaspora have always supported the Jewish community in Israel; Jewish educators and learners traveled the world to engage with each other; Jews from one country surrendered fortunes to ransom Jews in another country. And today, yes, it is still a fact that Jews in New Jersey provide funds to feed a Jew in Minsk whom they will probably never meet; they also sustain a Jewish child in Ethiopia while she waits to leave for Israel.

But this tightly woven, interdependent communal fabric is coming undone. Here is one example – a study comparing attitudes of generally older Jews with generally younger ones:

Interactive Whiteboards by PolyVision

And who are the Jews in this study? They are professionals who build and sustain our Jewish communal organizations, the very infrastructure that serves as the interconnecting network among Jews and Jewish communities. The modern iteration of an infrastructure through whose arteries the pulse of Areyvut beat for thousands of years.

Much has been written about the decline of Areyvut on these virtual pages. The Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life has decided that more needs to be written, but not by us.

In our first public-private endeavor we have engaged with JewishStoryWriting.com to produce an attractive and engaging illustrated children’s book on the theme of Areyvut. Offering cash prizes of up to $2,500, we seek the insightful imaginations of English-language writers around the world to tell a story that brings the concept of kol Yisrael areyvim zeh la’zeh* to life in a meaningful, relevant way for a child and his or her parents.

Every thoughtful Jew seeks to find a balance between helping the world and helping other Jews; it is not easy. It’s never been easy. Hillel taught us long ago that we should be neither self-absorbed nor selfless. Having acknowledged the struggle, though, he admonishes us to find the right balance and get to work, “Eem lo achshav, eymatai? If not now, when?”

We can balance and even blend the two values of helping others and helping ourselves – if we hold both values. But with Areyvut disappearing as quickly and as surely as the polar ice caps, our grandchildren may not know that there once was a profound pride and a sacred obligation of Jewish interdependence; if they read about Areyvut one day, they may wonder if it ever really was true.

That is why we seek a new story now for a new generation of children and parents, a story that is based on our tradition of Areyvut and embeds inspiring ideas that may affect our destiny. We invite novice and experienced writers to contribute their words to create a future where the impulse of Jews helping Jews remains fact, not fiction.

*Don’t know what this means? Ask around and start a conversation.

Robert Lichtman is the Executive Director of The Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life, the Jewish identity-building organization in Greater MetroWest NJ. 

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AVODAH will pilot its first Fellowship program for 25 – 35 fellows beginning January 2014 in New York. The Fellowship curriculum will provide a Jewish context for understanding and approaching the growing problem of poverty in the United States.

In addition, fellows will have opportunities to network together, while mentors will provide guidance on navigating professional challenges, such as burnout. Ultimately, AVODAH seeks to provide participants with the communal and spiritual resources they need to sustain themselves in this important and difficult work for the long-run.

To learn more about the fellowship, or apply, contact Suzanne Feinspan: sfeinspan@avodah.net.

Major support for AVODAH is provided by the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation, Crown Family Philanthropies, The Dorot Foundation, The Joyce and Irving Goldman Family Foundation, The Goldring Family Foundation, The Irving B. Harris Foundation, The Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, The Polk Bros Foundation, A Private Family Foundation, Repair the World, The Righteous Persons Foundation, The Samberg Family Foundation, The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, and The Woldenberg Foundation.

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