News & Blogs Category: From the Foundation Team

My dear friend and fellow traveler in Jewish life, Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein, recently shared some commentary with me that resonated deeply. She said: “Jewish history is always this balancing act of how much energy we spend combating what’s around us versus how much we invest in fortifying and building who we are. The real question isn’t whether we’re fighting antisemitism enough — it’s whether we’re making the right call on how to allocate our limited resources between the two. The outside forces are always going to be larger than us. We can’t control them. But the inside — that’s ours to build.”

We know we are facing a significant rise of antisemitism, which has increased tremendously since Oct. 7, most visibly on college campuses. Our communal organizations have responded to these events, working to counter antisemitism with reporting mechanisms and with safety systems, people, and physical infrastructure.

Read the full piece in eJewish Philanthropy.

Barry Finestone is President and CEO of the Jim Joseph Foundation. Photo courtesy of RootOne.

One recurring learning from our research at the Jim Joseph Foundation is that Jewish people are complex and covered by a broad spectrum of identities. In our Jewish communal outlook, we sometimes default to thinking of our people in binaries when we assess Jewish institutional and organizational affiliation. Our professional community often refers to young Jews in North America as being connected vs. disconnected, engaged vs. unengaged, involved vs. uninvolved and so on. Communal professionals and stakeholders tend to utilize these simplistic categorizations to make sense of those who are “participants” in Jewish life, and those who are not — who is in, and who is out. While this shorthand approach may serve us in some contexts, we run the risk of undermining our basic idea of Klal Yisrael (the Jewish People) by relying on hierarchical labels like these.

As the Jim Joseph Foundation team delves deeper into understanding the nuances of the broad and diverse spectrum of our people (for example, this framework for how people learn), it is clear that oversimplification is unhelpful. At best, these binaries fail to capture and honor the rich complexities of individuals’ Jewish experiences, motivations and desires. At worst, it is a damaging obstacle to understanding ourselves as a people, and our work as educators and progenitors of Jewish community.

Stacie Cherner is the Director of Research and Learning at the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Read the full piece in eJewish Philanthropy.

Insights from One of the Foundation’s Newest Team Members

Last August, I stepped into my role as a Program Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation. As I’ve settled in, I’ve reflected on how my professional journey helped to shape the perspective I bring to my work.

Relationships have always been at the heart of my professional life. Prior to my time at the Foundation, I worked for a decade at Hillel in various capacities. From engaging students as an early-career Hillel professional, to cultivating meaningful partnerships with donors, and into my last job as the Director of Strategic Grants at Hillel International, the principle of centering relationships has been my guiding star. This is why I was especially pleased to learn that “Build Meaningful Relationships” is one of the Foundation’s First Principles.

Much of the relational wisdom I gained from my work with Hillel is applicable to my new job too, and the last six months have heightened my awareness about some key lessons.

1. See someone as a person and as a professional: Even in my interview process, I spoke about how important it is that people see me as Leah the human and as Leah the professional. I strive to do the same with all of my colleagues. At Hillel, building relationships meant sitting with students to hear their stories, engaging community stakeholders, and partnering with organizations to amplify impact. But I never immediately asked a student to become a student leader, nor immediately asked a donor for money. I started by simply getting to know them. The Foundation takes this approach too. From day one, I saw that calls begin with asking how people’s kids are, how their winter holidays were, and the like. People’s lives outside of work matter and certainly can impact how they are on a given day during work hours. I want to know who a person is, what brings them joy in their lives, and learn how they got to where they are. This makes the working relationship more meaningful and less transactional.
2. It’s a blessing to carry old professional relationships into new jobs: One of the most beautiful lessons I’ve learned is that professional relationships often come full circle. I’m currently in a conversation with a colleague I met 10 years ago whose organization is now a grantee-partner of the Foundation. I have known a handful of other CEOs of grantee-partners in my portfolio for about five years each. When I went on my first site visit, I spotted someone I knew well as soon as I arrived. I met my graduate school mentor from years ago for the first time in person at a conference; we rejoiced and shared a big hug upon seeing each other. At Hillel International’s Global Assembly in December, I couldn’t even make it across the room without running into people I had worked with over the years and stopping to have a conversation. These moments remind me that the relationships we build are enduring – they transcend job titles and responsibilities, and maintaining relationships is central to how I approach my work.
3. Bring more empathy into our work: While frequent communication is a hallmark of relational grantmaking, that relationship cannot just be premised on exchanging emails or reading reports. Cultivating and practicing empathy—truly feeling for someone’s situation and all that they bring into their work—is critical to maintaining a healthy funder-grantee relationship. Practicing empathy is most important when a grantee-partner faces unexpected challenges (we’ve all had plenty over recent years). I’m heartened by how the Foundation team practices empathy, both in personal interactions (including actively listening or offering support through difficult conversations) and in policy (adjusting reporting requirements and deadlines that account for challenges).

Seeing the whole person; Maintaining meaningful professional connections; Expressing and practicing empathy—I already see how approaching work with these three mindsets is critical to cultivating trust with the Foundation’s grantee-partners. This opens the lines for honest communication and working together to overcome challenges— ultimately enhancing our collective impact.

As I continue to grow in this role, I remain guided by a belief that we all should feel seen and valued in our work. One of the Foundation’s staff values is b’tzelem elohim – to value each person and their perspectives as unique and deserving of respect and attention. When we support each other beyond transactional grant dollars, and approach our work with trust, authenticity, and empathy, we increase our chances to create real change. At the end of the day, I aim to be Leah the human first, just as I strive to see others as their full selves.

I’m excited to continue building relationships, learning from colleagues, and supporting the meaningful work of grantee-partners. If our paths cross in this work, I hope we can connect – not just as professionals, but as people invested in creating a thriving, inclusive Jewish future.

Leah Chakoff is a Program Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation, helping to lead the Foundation’s work in its Exceptional Jewish Leaders and Educators focus area.

What can social science and education research help us understand about how people learn?

We are asking first-principle questions about the nature of Jewish education and, even more fundamentally, how do we learn anything? The science of learning is a rich and established field of academic study that has a lot to teach us when we think about our vision for Jewish learning. Yet, for all of its rich resources, Jewish education has no theory of learning.

As part of our Emergent Strategy at the Jim Joseph Foundation, we have a desire to explore new and more effective pathways in understanding and practicing Jewish education. To this end, we looked to familiarize ourselves with landmark research and learning theory. We turned to Ari Y. Kelman, the Jim Joseph Professor of Education and Jewish Studies at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. Kelman shares a model for how people learn that we think is foundational for understanding more about how people learn to be Jewish. 

Read the full piece in eJewish Philanthropy. 

Stacie Cherner is the Director of Research and Learning and Yonah Schiller is the Chief R&D Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation. 

As the Jim Joseph Foundation aspires to enable all Jews, their families and their friends to lead connected, meaningful and purpose-filled lives, and to make positive contributions to their communities and the world, we invest in powerful Jewish learning experiences. In this investment area, BBYO, Foundation for Jewish Camp, Hillel International, Birthright Israel and Moishe House are categorized as “signature grantee-partners” in our Deliberate Grantmaking Strategy. These grantees have made evaluation an integral part of their work, informing their own efforts, the Foundation’s, and the field. More recently, the Foundation has also integrated cross-portfolio evaluation into more of our work to learn about shared outcomes across different sets of grantee-partners.

In cross-portfolio evaluation, we’re able to identify overarching trends and opportunities. Our latest cross-portfolio evaluation, for example, conducted by Rosov Consulting, covers all five of these signature grantees and identifies a set of common outcomes and ways to measure the participants they serve. When we began this evaluation, we didn’t know this would be the end result. However, as we convened the grantees and dug into their own evaluation structures and findings, we recognized the opportunity to learn about the value of participating in multiple experiences during the teen years and 20s/30s. Through a qualitative study with the alumni of programs, we came to understand the added value of the programs, the interactions between outcomes created by the programs and the pathways that take young people from one program to another.

Read the full piece at eJewish Philanthropy.

Stacie Cherner is director of research and learning at the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Over a decade ago, the Jim Joseph Foundation convened more than a dozen local and national funders of Jewish teen programming for a series of discussions on expanding teen involvement in Jewish life. We recognized that adolescents are a critical demographic and adolescence is a moment of inflection. Moreover, teens are holders of great insights and have the ability to articulate them and the realities they hope those insights can create. To paraphrase Joel 3:1, while those of us around the table had dreams, we knew it would be teens holding the vision to move us forward. We felt and continue to believe that teens are the futurists and optimists that our world needs.

These early conversations, which included teens themselves, taught us a lot — namely, how much more we still needed to learn. As a result, we commissioned groundbreaking research to identify and unpack strategies from both the non-Jewish and Jewish worlds are most effective in educating and engaging teens. This research ultimately gave us the knowledge to design responsive local teen initiatives in 10 communities across the country, under the banner of the Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative. United by the shared aspiration of creating and nurturing contemporary approaches to Jewish teen education, engagement and growth, this new network of national and local funders and practitioners worked side by side with teens. Together, they reimagined the youth-serving ecosystem in these communities of varying sizes and demographic composition, with a commitment to sharing whatever unvarnished lessons they would learn.

read the full piece at eJewish Philanthropy

• NOW WATCHING: Debate between former President Trump and President Biden
• BREAKING NEWS: Assassination attempt against former President Trump
• BREAKING NEWS: President Biden announces he will not seek reelection
• LATEST UPDATE: Democratic party rally around a new candidate in record time
• BREAKING NEWS: Rocket kills 12 Druze children playing soccer
• BREAKING NEWS: Assassinations of #2 of Hezbollah and head of political wing of Hamas

All of those major events occurred in a span of 33 days, coinciding with Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas, Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russia, a landmark election in the U.K., the warmest days ever in the history of our planet and countless other major events.

We are in a state of VUCA — volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity — a concept coined by the U.S. Army College in 1987 and popularized by the leadership theories of Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus. In short, the term describes the current state of our world.

Yet, as coach and facilitator Robin Sawan stated in 2020, “[w]hile VUCA may be the latest buzzword, this constant evolution is not really anything new. Businesses have been facing bold, dramatic change in their specific industries for many years.”

read the full piece at ejewish Philanthropy

This blog originally appeared in eJewish Philanthropy.

Planning a retreat for a professional team is an opportunity to create a space filled with meaning, where colleagues have a sense of belonging and each person feels they are at the center of the experience. Priya Parker is an expert on this subject, writing about the “art of gathering” and the intentionality required to do this well. She notes that “gatherings crackle and flourish when real thought goes into them, when (often invisible) structure is baked into them, and when a host has the curiosity, willingness, and generosity of spirit to try.”

“Think of what you want to be different because you gathered,” she advises, “and work backward from that outcome.”

In the Jewish professional world, the need for this intentional gathering space feels more important than ever.

Read the full blog at eJewish Philanthropy.

Recently, over morning coffee, my wife remarked to me how lucky I am to do the work I do to help the Jewish community in this moment.

She was and is 100% correct. “I know that I am so fortunate,” I said. “I have an amazing job, incredible colleagues and a brilliant and supportive board.  I am on the funder side, where true emergencies are extremely rare.”

“Even with all that,” I confided, “I very occasionally wish I was doing something else. It’s hard to be in the Red Zone all day, every day, which has been the case since Oct. 7.”

Barry Finestone is president and CEO of the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Read the full blog in eJewish Philanthropy as part of its opinion column “The 501(C) Suite.”

Over a year ago, the Jim Joseph Foundation shared with eJewishPhilanthropy readers that it would be investing in a new grant area: Build Grants (“Building something together: How our new grant category supports organizations’ growth and sustainability,” May 9, 2022).

“One of our three strategic priorities is investing in Powerful Jewish Learning Experiences (PJLE),” the foundation shared then. “Build Grants support organizations to invest in their capacity to expand their programs and operations, thus engaging more people at different life stages in meaningful Jewish life. And importantly, we utilize these grants, in part, to support offerings that engage new audiences of young Jews whom we are not reaching with our existing investments.”

Aaron Saxe is the program director of Powerful Jewish Learning Experiences (PJLE) at the Jim Joseph Foundation, and Rachel Shamash Schneider is a program officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation.

Read the full article in eJewish Philanthropy.

We are in the immediate wake of the most significant Jewish event of our lifetime. Jews all over the world will mark time as everything before October 7^th, 2023, vs. everything after October 7^th, 2023.

Still in the sheer horror of the moment, Jewish philanthropy–individual donors and foundations alike–are supporting Israel to an unprecedented degree. This is exactly what we should be doing, and it is not the only thing we should be doing.

Our actions in this moment will have a lasting impact, for better or worse, on the American Jewish community. Right now, the Jewish philanthropic community must have a “yes, and” approach toward funding. Yes, we absolutely need to support Israel and Israelis. We need to contribute mightily to the multitude of needs Israel has—for the orphans, the evacuees, the businesses whose employees are now on the front lines, the mental health of the traumatized. All of these causes need our philanthropic support. Yes, give.

Barry Finestone is President and CEO of the Jim Joseph Foundation

Read the full article in eJewish Philanthropy

We’re pleased to share reflections written before October 7th from the Foundation’s operations associate, Amanda Leal.

I told myself in July of 2022 that I would find a job that helps serve a greater purpose.

I had worked in the semiconductor manufacturing industry for a couple years, as my first “big girl job.” I acquired incredible experience and worked with people of all different backgrounds, ethnicities, and skills. I scrubbed the floors of a manufacturing floor in order to “5S” the place to create a more productive workspace. I loved it. It was fun and dynamic, but at the end of the day I felt like I did very little to better the world. Just a cog in the machine…you know all the sayings. I decided to begin a job search to work for a nonprofit organization that makes a difference to people’s live—even if I would not directly be hands-on in that work.

I was stoked to find out I had an interview for this “Jewish foundation.” Then after one interview… and another one.. and another one…I got the job! I felt incredibly happy and proud; my hard work had paid off, I prayed/manifested, and it happened. I admit, I was incredibly ignorant to Jewish culture and practice, but I knew that the Jim Joseph Foundation made a difference in the education of youth, and I loved that alone. Interestingly (or maybe not), I am a Christian and was incredibly honored that I would be able to catch on to little things here and there. However, beyond that, I did not completely understand what I was walking into. I guess that’s what happens when you grow up in Central California and as a Christian where church is your whole world. You just don’t meet Jewish people, or even know such a community exists in your own backyard.

In fact, as I told family and friends back home about my new job, I was met with interesting comments from Christians and from self-identifying progressive, young left-leaning people. One interaction: When my parents shared with friends at church that their daughter would be working for Jewish foundation, one person exclaimed that I could be a “beacon of light” at the foundation and help convert every Jewish person there to Christianity. This statement never fails to make me laugh. Another person asked, “Why do Jews need a foundation?” Now listen, I went into this ignorant but not that ignorant. The fact that someone would ask that question truly threw me for a loop. Yet, as I  answered the question, I realized I had a pretty surface level response. I recognized that I needed to acquire more knowledge to answer this question to the best of my ability.

It’s been almost a year since I joined the Foundation team and I can answer this question in so many ways. I see how Jewish learning encompasses such a wide range of experiences and opportunities that help young people throughout life. I see how Jewish values inform actions to help others and to improve communities. I see the efforts being made to better welcome BIPOC Jews, LGBTQ+ Jews, and more marginalized communities into Jewish life. The way I think about it in my worldview is this: Some children feel forced by parents to go to their religion’s place of worship. I would have felt so much safer and more loved if I had the same kinds of safe spaces I see the Foundation’s grantee-partners create. I have friends on friends who would have been saved from a lot of misery and could still benefit from those safe spaces, at their big age. It’s all so important, and the journey of “learning how to human,” as I like to say so eloquently, is tough.

I also appreciate the culture of the Foundation, in which all members of the professional team are encouraged to learn about Jewish culture. As I learn more, I also have more questions. Thankfully, the Foundation enables any team member to participate in the Jewish Learning Collaborative, which is one-on-one personalized Jewish learning. I jumped at this opportunity and was thrilled to meet my teacher, Rabbi Dusty Klass. Dusty grew up in an interfaith home with one Catholic parent and one Jewish parent. In wanting to feel seen, I chose Dusty because of the interfaith background, and hoped that she would be open-minded when it came to my inquiries.

Dusty has made clear to me that no question is off limits (something I absolutely adore about Judaism) and provides beautiful responses that lead to about a thousand more questions. Some of the questions I have asked: “Under Judaism, how do we feel about the LGBTQ+ community?” (this was a major item I looked into prior to accepting the job) “How are young adults so involved in the Jewish community?” “What do y’all believe about the afterlife?” “What does Judaism/Jewish text say about periods?” Sometimes a question will lead to another question right out of left field. It is so fun and informative and endless. Most importantly, the JLC makes my learning possible and connects me even more to the work and beneficiaries of the Foundation.

Now, that was a ramble about many things and I hope at the very least, you are not offended by how ignorant I was and still continue to be. I am still learning! Bear with me. As my first year at the Foundation wraps up, I feel incredibly thankful. I feel blessed to feel embraced by my colleagues, and also to be learning about a community that I previously knew nothing about.  I am blessed to have coworkers that are patient with me while I pronounce Hebrew words or attempt to drum up excitement for a Jewish based meditation. And most importantly and not at all corny, I feel blessed to continue learning day by day.

Amanda Leal is an Operations Associate at the Jim Joseph Foundation.