Evolution of Jewish Young Adult Engagement

The young adult age span has grown. It was probably 22-28 when we were starting in the mid-late 2000's. Now people are settling down later. The "pre-settled down" time span has expanded another 6-10 years, which has resulted in major growth in the population that we engage. More young adults also live in more places than ever before—this is a moving and growing aspect of the work. We have Moishe Houses in 27 countries now!

We've also learned over time through evaluation, research, and constant feedback loops that there are many critical entry points to engagement. So we've evolved from a program to a platform of programs, with Moishe House, Moishe House Without Walls, Camp Nai Nai Nai, Jewish Learning Collaborative, Embark, and Base. There are so many different ways to engage.

I'll start with a constant before noting a change. Service can be a really meaningful entry point for young people. That was true when I started this work and it’s true now. Young Jews have a desire to be engaged in Jewish community that is actively engaged with their neighbors. The desire to live out Jewish values of service has remained consistent.

I think the main piece that's changed is around meaningful Jewish content. Whereas seven years ago our service was inspired by Jewish values; today our participants are really asking for and engaging with their Judaism in a much more serious way. They’re asking big questions like, “What does Jewish wisdom say about my role as a Jew, my responsibility to my community?” “How do I grapple with universal and particular commitments”? Our Jewish educational strategies go a lot deeper now to be able to engage participants in those conversations.

We’ve had a real evolution in this area. We really invest in the relationship with our Jewish educators today. The learning is one piece—and an important one. But when someone feels comfortable and a sense of welcoming and warmth in relationship with an educator, it goes so much further. And so that's led to our work with the Jewish Learning Collaborative and Base.

When Moishe House was founded, we actually had no explicit Jewish learning content; it was all community. Then we transitioned to having someone on the team who could provide Jewish learning content at certain moments. Now we make sure that Jewish learning is infused into just about everything we do, that it’s a fountain and spring for all of us. Jewish education makes our community more vibrant and stronger. There’s been a real evolution in how Jewish learning is integrated into our programs and into the lives of Mem Global participants, leaders, staff, and board members. Jewish learning is not a goal or an endpoint, but an ongoing process in which we all engage.

I'm very grateful to David and Mem Global for launching the Jewish Learning Collaborative, providing one-on-one learning opportunities for our professional team. It’s deepened our Jewish educational work and has been very meaningful for me personally. It’s also helped Repair the World make Jewish learning accessible to all of our staff, which we want to prioritize. We worked hard to develop a Jewish educational strategy with clear goals and intended outcomes. This includes investing in the professional development of our staff—from enabling them to participate in the JLC, to setting core competencies for our program team that start with Jewish education, to shifting how we conduct professional development at staff meetings and gatherings.

Certainly how we work in the field has shifted too. We make sure that every service experience with Repair includes a meaningful Jewish learning experience and, based on our Jewish educational strategy, that that Jewish learning leans into what we call a “values tension.” We don't just look at texts that affirm our service work. Now we also explore where service brings out tensions between our values, and we'll dive into that. We have much more robust Jewish learning experiences today than we did ten years ago.

We wholeheartedly believe and understand that Mem Global is a stronger organization that can better fulfill our mission and vision when Repair the World is a strong organization that does its work really effectively. We benefit tremendously from having a team member who is full time at Mem Global specifically working on service learning for all of our work.

We recently had a staff learning and service project that came about because our team member here in Charlotte, NC reached out to our Jewish Service Alliance team member to ask what we should be learning through service. The Charlotte-based team member then felt ownership to lead that for us. We had a very meaningful meaningful service experience that would not have occurred without the JSA led by Repair. In fact, we’ve seen a significant increase in our service experience participation once we joined the JSA. Our JSA representative has the background, resources, and knowledge from Repair the World to bring service—in a full-time, impactful way—to Mem Global.

I shared earlier how the JLC led by Mem Global has helped us bring Jewish learning to our staff, really making it an integral part of the Repair team. I know how much this is appreciated because the team members tell us. When I think about our collaboration it’s so much more than a transactional partnership. I get such inspiration and strength from talking to David; he's always the first to say yes to different ideas we have. We're both very collaborative people and this approach permeates through our organizations. Repair teams and Moishe House residents are always working together on local projects.

I know that we’re both grateful that through JCRIF the Jim Joseph Foundation and others made the JSA and the JLC realities. They came out of crisis moments, and they continue to have major impact today.

I’ve always said that Covid very much felt like the moment that Repair was made for. It presented an opportunity for us to create an alliance with more than 40 other organizations—the Jewish Service Alliance—to ensure that the Jewish community is mobilized to meet all the pressing needs in our communities. We expanded our existing partnerships and expanded into additional communities. It was tremendous growth for us and the Jewish service movement and, thankfully, I think about Covid and October 7th in this context. We were able to meet that moment with hundreds of thousands of volunteers.

Now, post-October 7th, we’re experiencing another surge. Our numbers doubled again as young people look to be part of the Jewish community through proud, purposeful Jewish spaces that reflect their values. They want to engage in service work and build bridges with their neighbors.

I think back to our beginning. We had some fits and starts, but it all changed when we became an independent 501(c)(3) and received our first national grants for general operating. I also think our first external evaluation was critical. We learned what activities and types of engagement we should do more of because they were working. And we learned what we could be doing that we hadn’t yet tried. This was an exciting moment for us that opened up a pandora's box—in a good way—of what we could make possible for Jewish young adults.

Since then, there have been other moments along our journey that I think of as pivotal. Like Cindy, I think of October 7th. We knew we needed to build relationships between Israeli young adults and Diaspora young adults, so we're opening six houses of Israeli residents in North America. As we learned more about Russian-speaking Jewish young adults, we saw a real opportunity there too. This was a community that I knew very little about. Today, 20 percent of Moishe Houses are RSJs.