Learning & Resources Category: Research

Lessons from the Pinnacle: Coordinated Innovation Shifts the Landscape of Jewish Teen Education & Engagement

Eight years after the first local initiative was launched as part of the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative, the Cross-Community Evaluation team explores in this final report what has been accomplished to date. The research team examines to what extent the Funder Collaborative’s goals were realized and the main educational lessons learned from this project. They employ a high-altitude view to search for patterns across the 10 participating communities and across the arc of multiple years. And they draw on findings already produced by local evaluators in each of the communities and on the insights gained by those evaluators, as gathered in their annual reports.

These insights have been further supplemented through structured questioning of the local evaluators by the Cross-Community Evaluation team. In this way, researchers construct a picture of the educational and engagement strategies employed, achievements reached, obstacles faced, and implications for future work in this field. Ultimately, this pinnacle report provides an opportunity to explore the extent to which philanthropic leadership and coordinated programmatic interventions can induce a largescale shift in how and for whom Jewish education and engagement is practiced.

The report covers insights in the following key areas related to strategic philanthropy, collaboration among and between funders and practitioners, and Jewish teen engagement:

  • Local Enterprises Meet Local Needs & Reflect Culture – Peer-to-Peer Learning Facilitates the Spread of Good Ideas
  • It’s All About the Teens – Shifting the Mindset of Jewish Growth and Learning
  • Development of Sustainable Models Takes Many Forms – Positive Change Tied to Structure and Innovation Strategies
  • A Common Cause: Professional Development for Teen Educators – Investing in Professionals is an Important Ingredient for Long-Term Change
  • (Re-)Setting the Communal Table – Building a Holistic Ecosystem Involves Teens, Parents, Educators and Stakeholders

Lessons from the Pinnacle: Coordinated Innovation Shifts the Landscape of Jewish Teen Education & Engagement, Rosov Consulting, December 2021

Looking Back at Seven Years of the Denver Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative: Key Outcomes & Lessons Learned

The Denver Boulder Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Initiative began in 2014 with a partnership between Rose Community Foundation and Jim Joseph Foundation. The Initiative was conceived in part in response to a research project on local Jewish teen engagement conducted in 2010 by Rose Community Foundation’s Jewish Life Committee and the Allied Jewish Federation (now JEWISHcolorado).

The Initiative began its first phase (2014–18) with three objectives and a commitment to encourage innovation in
Jewish teen programming. The Initiative’s original objectives were:

  1. Increase funding to existing innovators and new projects as a means to provide higher-quality experiences
    and achieve incremental growth in teen participation.
  2. Increase the number and quality of Jewish professionals and trained volunteers working with Jewish
    teens.
  3. Promote youth initiatives and youth-led ideas that engage teens and their peers in Jewish life.

The Denver Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative was one of the first of 10 initiatives across the US working collaboratively to create new Jewish teen programming and increase teen engagement. The Jewish Teen Funder Collaborative organized a group of national and local funders to study and explore pathways to greater Jewish teen engagement. Since 2014, each community working with the Collaborative has worked toward a common set of outcomes, expectations, and measures of success, with some additions and adaptations to address specific needs or interests of a sponsoring community. A national evaluation effort, referred to as the Cross-Community Evaluation (CCE), developed tools for this shared measurement and aggregates the data collected from the 10 communities’ evaluations to capture national-level trends and common learnings.

Over its seven years, the Jewish Teen Initiative has produced both positive outcomes for the region’s teens and an abundance of information and lessons learned that will help inform future investments in the local teen ecosystem. As our region and communities across the country consider future models and innovations for improving Jewish teen programming and increasing teen engagement, we hope this report will serve as a useful resource.
– Vanessa Bernier, Community Impact Officer – Jewish Life, Rose Community Foundation

Looking Back at Seven Years of the Denver Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative: Key Outcomes & Lessons Learned, October 2021, Informing Change

View Informing Change’s evaluations of Year 1 and Year 3 of the Denver Boulder Jewish Teen Initiative. View the Cross-Community Evaluation of the Jewish Teen Funder Collaborative.

 

 

 

Cultural Experiences of Jewish Americans

This 2021 study utilized a research methodology fine-tuned by Harmony Labs using opt-in internet panel data to explore the cultural experiences and media preferences that make the Jewish American community unique. Researchers identified over 2000 research panelists who engaged with Jewish life on the internet over a period of a year. (Note: the terms “mapped and unmapped” were placeholders and not terms we use now to describe people who are not served or are underserved by Jewish institutions and organizations)

Key insights:

  • Jews are avid information-seekers, consuming news to make sense of the world.
  • When not consuming news, top content still features information and learning.
  • Jewish users are distinctively associated with movies and unmapped Jews in particular are uniquely drawn to the fantastical, especially superhero content from Marvel and DC.
  • Finally, unmapped Jews are drawn to “cozy” content – related to food, home and comfort.

“Cultural Experiences of Jewish Americans,” Harmony Labs, December 2021

The Gender Gap in Jewish Nonprofit Leadership: An Ecosystem View

Qualitative research into people’s experiences and expertise helped Leading Edge and The Starfish Institute posit 71 causes to the persistent gender gap in top leadership at Jewish nonprofits; quantitative network analysis suggested five “keystones” among them. “Keystone” is a technical term, short for “keystone species.” The Starfish Institute borrows this term from the science of ecology, in which “a keystone species is an organism that helps define an entire ecosystem. Without its keystone species, the ecosystem would be dramatically different or cease to exist altogether.” (National Geographic.) In the ecosystem of factors mapped in this report, keystones are factors that have high “reach,” which means they affect many other issues, and high “leverage,” which means they are influenced by few others. Solving them may be difficult, but doing so could create a large ripple effect on other causes of the problem.

Most people working at Jewish nonprofits are women. But most CEOs of Jewish nonprofits— especially at the largest organizations—are men. In 2019, Leading Edge launched an investigation to better understand why that is, and how the field might begin to change it.

In this exploration, Leading Edge partnered with The Starfish Institute, an organization that has developed a methodology for applying network science to understanding complex social problems at a systemic level. Together, over the course of 18 months, Leading Edge and The Starfish Institute engaged over 1,200 people to define as many distinct causes of the persistent gender gap in top leadership at Jewish nonprofit organizations as they could identify. They then mapped how those causes likely interact with one another as an ecosystem.

“The Gender Gap in Jewish Nonprofit Leadership: An Ecosystem View,” Leading Edge in partnership with The Starfish Institute, August 2021

Read more insights about The Gender Gap in Jewish Nonprofit Leadership: An Ecosystem View.

Career Trajectories of Jewish Educators Study

It has been more than ten years since the last systematic effort to collect data about the Jewish educator workforce; in some areas of Jewish education no large-scale data have ever been collected. The CASJE Career Trajectories of Jewish Educators Study was designed to provide usable knowledge about the recruitment, retention and development of Jewish educators. Beginning July 2021 CASJE released a series of reports and briefs highlighting findings from the study.

This study is animated by the belief that research-based knowledge is a critical resource in tackling complex problems in Jewish education. Insights generated through research can inform planning strategies for the field, guide philanthropic investment, and frame the design of well-conceived programmatic interventions. In this case the focus is on increasing the capacity to support Jewish educators at all stages of their careers.

CASJE identified ten key findings that are explained in greater detail (along with other findings) in the research reports:

  1.  Jewish educators are mission driven, love Jewish learning, and share an abiding commitment to serving others. For many, especially those who participate in university-based pre-service programs, this sense of mission is a source of resilience in overcoming challenges they face in the field.
  2. The perceived low status of Jewish educators, the perceived parochial nature of Jewish educational settings, and limited or outdated perspectives on the kinds of work Jewish educators do, are barriers to enticing entrants to careers in Jewish education.
  3. Almost half of current Jewish educators report entering the field in response to a job opportunity rather than proactively choosing to enter the field; fewer than half of new educators have participated in formal pre-service preparation.
  4. In many sectors of Jewish education there is no clear career ladder for educators; often the only pathway to advancement is in taking on administrative work.
  5. Continuous and high-quality professional development opportunities that correlate with improved outcomes for educators are not accessible to enough Jewish educators.
  6. Although Jewish educators tend to report good relationships with supervisors, mentorship and support for ongoing professional development are generally viewed as inadequate.
  7. Most Jewish educators are dissatisfied with the compensation and benefits they receive. Female respondents are typically paid less than their male peers, and early childhood education lags in salary and benefits.
  8. The popular narrative of a personnel crisis in Jewish education is fueled by trends in the supplementary-school labor market. Programs such as camping or social justice and innovation report a large pool of talented candidates from which to recruit educators, while day schools and early childhood programs face somewhat tougher supply-side challenges.
  9. There is a lively and growing market for independent providers of professional learning, in part driven by employers who do not demand formal degree completion or certification. Independent providers generally emphasize the personal growth of the educator and relationship building skills; degree-granting university based programs emphasize professional knowledge and technical skills.
  10. The number of educators enrolled in degree-granting programs has increased during the last thirty years, a trend driven by growth in specialty programs and dependent on availability of philanthropic support.

Additional Info and Analysis

Read the Reports

An Invitation to Action: Findings and Implications across the Career Trajectories of Jewish Educators Study
An Invitation to Action weaves together learnings from the previous strands and draws on the learnings produced to address the questions that have animated this work from its start. Summaries of the main findings from each strand can be found in the reports and briefs previously released. Here, researchers bring these findings into conversation with one another.

Mapping the Market: An Analysis of the Preparation, Support, and Employment of Jewish Educators 
Mapping the Market looks at the labor market for Jewish education in the United States, analyzing both supply-side and demand-side data to understand what employers look for in Jewish educators and how pre-service and professional development programs prepare educators to meet the needs of the learners and communities they serve.

On the Journey
On the Journey is designed to elucidate the career pathways of Jewish educators, including their professional growth, compensation, workplace conditions and lived experiences. In 2019 CASJE published the white paper On the Journey: Concepts That Support a Study of the Professional Trajectories of Jewish Educators, which lays out the framework and key questions that underlie this inquiry and serves as a companion to these research briefs. On the Journey will be published as four research briefs that address career paths, professional learning, workplace environments, and compensation.

Preparing for Entry: Fresh Perspectives on How and Why People Become Jewish Educators
Preparing for Entry is designed to understand the pathways by which people enter the field of Jewish education and identify factors that advance or inhibit launching a career in Jewish education. In 2020 CASJE published the white paper Preparing for Entry: Concepts That Support a Study of What It Takes to Launch a Career in Jewish Education, which lays out the framework and key questions that underlie this inquiry and serves as a companion to this report.

 

Beyond the Count: Perspectives and Lived Experiences of Jews of Color

This research presents an intersectional account of American Jewish life by exploring the ways in which the ethnic, racial, and cultural identities of Jews of Color (JoC) influence and infuse their Jewish experiences. Beyond the Count was commissioned to inform the work of the Jews of Color Initiative (JoCI), a national effort focused on building and advancing the professional, organizational, and communal field for JoC. This study provides valuable insights to help Jewish communities and organizations reckon more directly and effectively with the racial diversity of American Jewry.

In this research, “Jews of Color” is understood as an imperfect, but useful umbrella term that encompasses a wide range of identities and meanings. Those who self-identified as JoC in this study used the term in a multiplicity of ways: as a racial grouping (e.g. Black, Asian, and multiracial Jews); to indicate national heritage (e.g. Egyptian, Iranian, and Ethiopian Jews); to describe regional and geographic connections (e.g. Latina/o/x, Mizrahi, Sephardic Jews); and to specify sub-categories (e.g. transracially adopted Jews and Jewish Women of Color).

This study, which was housed at Stanford University, collected the largest ever dataset of self-identified JoC to date. Survey data from 1,118 respondents present a broad portrait of respondents’ demographic characteristics, backgrounds, and experiences. Sixty-one in-depth interviews provide texture and bring respondents’ own words to the forefront.

“Beyond the Count: Perspectives and Lived Experiences of Jews of Color,” commissioned by the Jews of Color Initiative, Tobin Belzer, PhD, Tory Brundage, PhC, Vincent Calvetti, MA, Gage Gorsky, PhD, Ari Y. Kelman, PhD, Dalya Perez, PhD, August 2021

Read more insights about Beyond the Count.

 

Illuminate, Connect, Inspire: The Jewish Outcomes of 70 Faces Media

Created in 2015 out of the merger of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) and My Jewish Learning (MJL), 70 Faces Media is the largest Jewish digital media organization in North America. 70 Faces Media takes its name from the ancient rabbinic teaching that there are 70 faces to the Torah — “that the creation of Jewish knowledge and narrative is the product of diverse insights, perspectives, and personalities.”1 It operates five digital media brands reaching over 3 million average unique users per month. Collectively, these brands are envisioned to serve as a virtual town square that illuminates the multiplicity of Jewish life today, connects people to each other and to the Jewish story, and inspires them to renew this story for our time.

At the end of 2019 and throughout most of 2020, 70 Faces Media partnered with Rosov Consulting to measure the Jewish impact of its brands. Previous research suggests that Jewish digital media may indeed have profound impact on its users. Studies have shown that some people in the developed world spend more time engaging with digital media than they do sleeping. Digital media consumption affects how we do our work, meet our life partners, and even our physical health; and American Jews are affected by digital media no less than anyone else. What has not been known is what impact Jewish digital media have on users’ Jewish lives — on how they think and feel about their Jewish identity, what they know, and how they behave as Jews in the 21st century.

“Illuminate, Connect, Inspire: The Jewish Outcomes of 70 Faces Media,” Rosov Consulting, May 2021

Read 70 Faces Media CEO Ami Eden’s insights on the key findings of the study.

 

The SVARA Teaching Kollel: Constructing a “Place” of Learning, Teaching, and Transformation

The words in the image on the left—among them “community,” “supportive,” “Talmud,” “queer,” “learning,” “teaching,” and “practice”—are a distillation of SVARA’s Teaching Kollel, a two-year, cohort-based learning and teacher training fellowship. The word cloud was created by SVARA, which asked the Teaching Fellows to share their hopes and expectations for the Kollel experience and the community they would build together. At the center is “place”—not really itself a descriptor of the Kollel, but rather a container for the evocative concepts that surround it in the word cloud and follow it in the text that generated the graphic. As they shared with each other, Fellows wish the Kollel to be:

  • A place to experiment
  • A place to have fun
  • A place to build skills and confidence
  • A place of growth and stretch
  • A place to be held in learning
  • A place of reciprocity
  • A place of friendship
  • A place where I (we) can frolic in text
  • A place to develop long term relationships with colleagues
  • A place of deep curiosity and co-nerding
  • A place where each of us can bring questions, doubts, challenges to think about together
  • A place to support each other in cultivating/practicing liberatory pedagogy and support/hold one another accountable in that practice
  • A place where each of us can show up as exactly who we are, and that will be enough

There is a particular poignancy in the prominence of “place” in these aspirations given that, like nearly all such programs, the Teaching Kollel became entirely virtual with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. While SVARA did offer some pre-pandemic online programming, one of the unique impacts of its signature programs has long been the opportunity for participants to gather together with so many queer co-learners, often for the first time ever, and the joyous energy that created. This cohort of the Teaching Kollel experienced this in their Year One retreat and anticipated the same for Year Two. Having this opportunity taken away so unexpectedly was a profound disruption and disappointment.

In 2018, SVARA received funding along with nine other educator training programs from the Jim Joseph Foundation to create professional development opportunities. As part of the evaluation work for the initiative, Rosov Consulting is producing a series of case studies of the peak moments–some form of intensive, residential, or retreat component–of each program. This case study explores the aspirations and goals of SVARA’s Teaching Kollel, a two-year, cohort-based learning and teaching fellowship.

“The SVARA Teaching Kollel: Constructing a ‘Place’ of Learning, Teaching, and Transformation,” Rosov Consulting, June 2021

COVID and Jewish Engagement Research

Among the many ways that the pandemic profoundly changed Jewish engagement, the High Holidays of 2020 stands out as a particularly fascinating case study. It was a kind of controlled experiment; essentially no one was able to celebrate or observe the holidays in the ways they were used to, so everyone was doing something somewhat different than usual.

Institutions of all kinds innovated to adapt to the restrictions, and new ways of engaging emerged and spread more broadly than could have been previously imagined. In an effort to understand the ways in which people’s engagement with the High Holidays changed during this past year, and what it might reveal about Jewish engagement more broadly, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Jim Joseph Foundation and Aviv Foundation funded research through the Jewish Community Response and Impact Fund (JCRIF) to illuminate new patterns of participation and motivations. In the winter of 2020-2021, Benenson Strategy Group surveyed 1,414 American Jews nationwide about their experiences of the High Holidays and the ways that those experiences compared to previous years.

The research explored not only what people did in 2020, but also compared it to what they had been doing before and explored what they might do in the future. The results provide important insights that have meaningful design implications not only for the upcoming High Holidays, but also for engagement efforts much more broadly.

A major insight is the difference in behavior and attitudes between “Regular High Holy Day Observers” (those who typically observe both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) and “Infrequent High Holy Day Observers” (those who participate sporadically or only in one of the
holidays). Remarkably, approximately half of the Infrequent Observers participated in High Holy Days during the pandemic, when it would have been very easy to opt out. Their robust participation leads us to explore both their motivations for participating and how their
participation this year may impact their future decisions and behavior as well.

COVID and Jewish Engagement, Benenson Strategy Group, January 2021

Access the data files to COVID and Jewish Engagement from the Berman Jewish Databank.

Read New research on High Holiday participation illuminates critical themes for future design, by Lisa Colton, Tobin Marcus, and Felicia Herman in eJewish Philanthropy

An Experiment in Learning Two New Languages: JFNA’s Next Gen Jewish Federation Fellowship

On a sunny morning in January 2020, the 19 participants in The Jewish Federations of North America’s Next Gen Jewish Federation Fellowship sit in a boardroom overlooking Leichtag Ranch just outside San Diego. They’re discussing the power and importance of productive conflict with their guest speaker, Chaya Gilboa. Gilboa deftly guides them through a Torah source to unpack the complexity and challenges of contemporary leadership in the Jewish world. Serendipitously, with the statement above, she illuminates both the ingenuity and complexity of the Next Gen program structure.

The Fellows, hailing from 17 Federations across North America, fill a variety of roles, typically intended to engage young adults like themselves in their local Federation communities. Most Fellows work in the areas of donor cultivation and relationship building. Others serve as direct engagement professionals, stewarding and encouraging their local Jewish community members to find and participate in Jewish experiences that make sense for them. The great majority have been Jewish communal professionals for more than five years and are participating in their first ever intensive cohort-based experience of professional development.

In 2018, JFNA received funding along with nine other educator training programs from the Jim Joseph Foundation to create professional development opportunities. As part of the evaluation work for the initiative, Rosov Consulting is producing a series of case studies of the peak moments–some form of intensive, residential, or retreat component–of each program. This fourth case study explores the Next Gen Fellowship, which was created to jumpstart innovation and leadership in the field of young adult Jewish engagement. The program functions as a kind of grand experiment. It is the first time JFNA has undertaken a professional development initiative of this scope, and its leaders have been ready to make mid-course corrections if needed, especially between one cohort and the next.

“An Experiment in Learning Two New Languages: JFNA’s Next Gen Jewish Federation Fellowship,” Rosov Consulting, January 2021

 

Virtually Developing: Exploring the Potential and Pitfalls of Online Professional Development and Adult Learning

During summer and fall 2020, Rosov Consulting engaged in a multifaceted study of 13 Jewish adult learning and professional development programs that shifted their offerings online due to COVID-19 (nine are part of the Jim Joseph Foundation Professional Development Initiative, four are from other Jim Joseph Foundation grantees). In the first stage of our research, they interviewed program providers about the challenges they faced in moving to online learning, the positive “silver linings” of the virtual experience, and the longer-term impacts of reimagining how they do their work. In the second stage, they explored the experiences of and impacts on program participants through a survey of more than 1,600 participants and follow-up interviews with 14 of them.

The programs included both those specifically for educators and Jewish professionals as well as general adult Jewish learning open to all. Rosov Consulting sought to understand the personal and professional impacts of online learning; the strengths and limitations of the experience, particularly as compared to in-person learning; and what facilitates and impedes learning through virtual modalities.

“Virtually Developing: Exploring the Potential and Pitfalls of Online Professional Development and Adult Learning” (executive summary), Rosov Consulting, January 2021

“Virtually Developing: Exploring the Potential and Pitfalls of Online Professional Development and Adult Learning” (full report), Rosov Consulting, January 2021

View a webinar on these learnings hosted by Jewish Funders Network with Mark Horowitz of Jewish Community Centers of North America (JCCs), Meredith Woocher of Rosov Consulting, and Stacie Cherner of the Jim Joseph Foundation.