News & Blogs Category: Guest Blog

In late 2024, a research team set out to understand the unmet needs of unaffiliated Jewish families with school-aged kids. Conducted by Sense Worldwide (SWW), the research was commissioned by the Emergent Strategy Team at the Jim Joseph Foundation, inspired by a stark reality: Hebrew school enrollment has plummeted in the last several decades. While the research project was known as “Reinventing Hebrew School,” the clearest takeaway was simple: families today want individualized and varied opportunities to engage in Jewish life.

Even as many congregations have worked to improve their Hebrew school, with many making real strides toward positive outcomes, the findings show that for Jewish families like those in our study, even a reimagined Hebrew school isn’t the answer.

Understanding the audience

Through a literature review, a series of expert discussions and ethnographic interviews with families, the researchers were able to learn about families who are Jewish but, according to them, are not served by Jewish communal institutions. To be clear, these unserved Jewish families — about 70% of American Jews — aren’t a monolith. They are diverse in terms of upbringings, family makeup, socioeconomic status and sense of Jewish identity. But the research does show that they tend to fall into three broad groups.

Read the entire blog at eJewish Philanthropy.

In May 2014, rabbis and professional leaders from our seven organizations — IKAR in Los Angeles, Kavana in Seattle, the Kitchen in San Francisco, Lab/Shul and Romemu in New York, Mishkan in Chicago and Sixth & I in D.C. — came together for the first time at the Leichtag Ranch with support from Natan and the Leichtag Foundation. As leaders, we were building Jewish community in new ways, focusing on an entrepreneurial approach that was purpose-driven, rooted in tradition and radically welcoming. We had a common passion for invigorating Jewish life and were dedicated to collaborating with one another to raise the bar for our own organizations and, hopefully, for the entire field.

As this loose affiliation began to take shape, we partnered with the Jim Joseph Foundation to create the Jewish Emergent Network, with the idea that new and thriving Jewish spaces could grow together in surprising and creative ways. The story of the Jewish Emergent Network echoes the story of Jewish tradition and innovation, in which new forms of community emerge in response to the needs and desires of the people we serve, informed by the past but fundamentally oriented to the present moment. The Network formed a meta-community as the leadership of our seven communities leaned on each other and learned from one another, creating relationships that have now lasted for over a decade.

read the full piece in eJewish Philanthropy

Melissa Balaban is the CEO of IKAR. Rachel Cort is the executive director of Mishkan.  Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum is the rabbi and executive director of Kavana. Justin Rosen Smolen, formerly the director of the Jewish Emergent Network, is the vice president for thriving communities and partnerships at Reconstructing Judaism.

“How awesome is this place! This is nothing other than the House of God – this is the gate to heaven!” (Genesis 28:17)

So declares Jacob in this week’s parashah, when he wakes up from his dream of a ladder reaching up to heaven and realizes he is in a sacred place. 

In recent decades, American Jews have redefined their relationships with sacred spaces. Synagogues have moved from cities to suburbia – and some back again. Structures that used to be full are now sparsely attended. Younger Jews often gather in less conventional spaces, sometimes in informal and ad-hoc arrangements. The Covid pandemic disrupted these dynamics, but it also contributed powerful new ways of connecting online. The accessibility of Zoom has led many to wonder whether physical spaces are still worth the investment.  

The benefits of physical spaces for Jewish institutions of prayer, learning, and gathering are too great to ignore. A closer look at Jacob’s encounter offers two reasons why.

Physical Jewish spaces offer stability and connection. In one telling of Jacob’s story, its holiness was rooted in its past and its future. Rashi explains that this was actually the same site as the binding of Isaac, and it would later become the site of the Temple. In this view, Jacob had a meaningful experience because he could tap into the stability of a sacred past and future. To foster connection to the Jewish people, there have to be places to go that hold our story and the inspiration it has held for generations.

The challenge is to ensure that sacred space does not become static and stale. We know that the past significance of a place doesn’t speak to many American Jews. Just because a particular synagogue was sacred for my parents or grandparents doesn’t mean the place makes any claim on me now.  

Physical Jewish spaces are a container for ever-evolving, dynamic gathering. There’s another view that the site of Jacob’s dream had no sacred past at all. It was just a travelers’ way-station on his journey. His dream was actually a vision about the revelation at Sinai, which catalyzed the Jewish people’s relationship with a Torah that would accompany them wherever they went, beyond one mountain in the desert. When Jacob declares “How awesome is this place,” it has nothing to do with the past, rather, it’s about about the potential of what he could create:

“This is nothing other than a place fitting to become a sacred space…I only beheld this vision so that I could make it a place for God” (Radak on Genesis 28:17)

The place where Jacob slept only became sacred because he stretched his imagination of who the Jewish people could become and how this place could foster purposeful gathering. This offers a more dynamic model of sacred space rooted in imagination and potential. When we walk into a physical space where we know people show up with purpose, it creates a sense of anticipation and expectation that something meaningful will happen there, a taste of Jacob’s excitement about the potential that can emerge in a particular place. 

Physical spaces should serve your goals and your people, not become an end in and of themselves. As Jewish organizations, we must constantly ask ourselves: Do we have the space needed to offer stable access to community and connection with each other? Are our physical spaces placing too many constraints on the real work we want to do? 

I am proud to lead an organization, the Hadar Institute, that has prioritized investing in people, programs and content, while approaching physical space as a necessary conduit for these goals. Hadar has been long-term tenants of a synagogue since our inception in 2007. In Manhattan especially, synagogue landlords need tenants to help pay their bills, which allows weekday learning institutions to focus on their own work – without exclusive ownership over a building. We’ve pursued this arrangement because sharing space allows for more agility, freeing up resources to focus on the core purpose of the space.

Hadar moved to a new home this year in a new rebuilt synagogue on 93rd Street. The building was intentionally and thoughtfully designed to be shared with our new synagogue landlords, allowing us to create a home for Jewish prayer, learning, and community characterized by both stability and dynamism. The walls have already held the sounds of hundreds of voices, from dancing in a Sefer Torah to lively havruta (students aged twenty to eighty) to meditative song circles. 

The magic of what physical spaces can hold is critical to sacred work, but there is nothing sacred about any particular space – just ample sacred potential.

Jewish communities should continue to invest in physical spaces, so long as we don’t get distracted by placing too much value on the place itself. What matters are the people and the purpose contained within. When we gather with purpose, these spaces become stable containers for our values, inspiring us to keep dreaming up new potential.

Rabbi Aviva Richman is a Rosh Yeshiva at the Hadar Institute. 

Social connection is a fundamental, universal human need, encompassing the structure of our personal networks, the ways in which we rely on others for support and the quality of our relationships. Our connections to others help us build a sense of who we are and to whom we belong, and scientists have increasingly come to appreciate the ways in which social connectedness is a critical facet of our physical and emotional well-being.

In 2022, the Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE), housed at George Washington University, was awarded a research grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation to study Shabbat dinner and social connectedness. The study, a research-practice partnership with OneTable and supported by additional funds from the Jim Joseph Foundation and Jewish Federations of North America’s BeWell initiative, seeks to learn how Jewish engagement activities can contribute to building belonging and mitigating loneliness.

read the full blog on eJewish Philanthropy

Arielle Levites is the managing director of the Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE), housed at George Washington University.

Gage Gorsky is an interdisciplinary researcher and evaluator completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University.

Two and a half years ago, the Jim Joseph Foundation launched an initiative to test new models of connection, learning and leadership development for mid-career professionals within the Jewish community. It has now been a year since we last shared our efforts to design cohort-based professional development experiences (CBE) to be more accessible and affordable for this demographic. We’ve been intent on learning about what components help create the most effective experiences, with our ultimate aim to understand how we can expand this work.

Today our efforts with the Jim Joseph Foundation, in partnership with Gather Consulting and Conscious Builders, are growing. We’re scaling our work to offer more opportunities for mid-career Jewish communal professionals to learn, grow, and support one another in trusted cohorts of colleagues.

Read the full piece at eJewish Philanthropy.

Seth Linden is the founder of Gather Consulting and Gamal J. Palmer is the founder of Conscious Builders. Together, they lead Chavurot: Expanding Professional Growth for Communal Leaders (Working Title).

An Update on the National BeWell Survey in Partnership with Stanford University

BeWell, the Jewish Federations of North America’s youth mental health and wellness initiative, is addressing this important issue within the Jewish world. BeWell recently led a landmark national research project—which was first conceptualized nearly three years ago—examining teen well-being, in partnership with Stanford University. Here’s why the leaders of this research say this is so important:

“The data from this groundbreaking research project will help us better understand how Jewish American teens are faring in this post-pandemic, post-October 7th era, and how we can best meet their needs. This study will provide insight into teens’ relationship with Jewish culture and tradition in relation to their peers, family and social supports. The aim is to pinpoint both their greatest sources of stress, and their strategies for thriving—so the Jewish community can best design opportunities to build resilience and support them when they need it,” says Kate Greene, a social worker and BeWell’s Director of the Resiliency Roundtable, which unites hundreds of professionals and clinicians from across the country for shared learnings, best practices, and other collaborations. Beyond that national network, 20 local communities have launched their own, local Resiliency Roundtables with BeWell support to meet Jewish well-being needs on the ground in their communities.

Dr. Ari Kelman, a professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education and Principal Investigator for the project, explains, “American teens are facing a series of crises on all sorts of levels. The research examines experiences among American Jewish teens with regard to pressures for achievement, the pressures of social media, antisemitism, and the war. At the heart of this project is an opportunity to look very closely at American Jewish teenagers and to see whether or not they are experiencing this moment in the same way as their peers.”

Dr. Laura Brady of the Stanford research team adds, “There’s no existing peer-reviewed study that provides the information that we are going to gather through this research. What we learn is going to be something that no one currently knows from an empirically validated standpoint. We don’t want a lack of information to be a reason why Jewish teens aren’t getting the support they need.”

The response to the survey was overwhelming. As the field leader, BeWell leveraged its deep relationships, and activated dozens of national Jewish organizations as well as local leaders, educators, clinicians, parents, grandparents, and other family members to share this with the young people in their lives. To ensure a diversity of backgrounds and experiences were captured, teens were also encouraged to share the survey widely with their friends and schoolmates. More than 4,000 teens from all 50 states, as well as Puerto Rico, completed the survey. The research team will analyze findings over the summer and results will be made publicly available later this year.

“The findings will be so important to national organizations and local communities alike. We are raising awareness and clarifying what Jewish teens are experiencing. We know this research will inspire solutions that most effectively promote teens’ well-being, drawing on Jewish life and resources,” adds Greene.

To learn more about this research, check out BeWell’s website and sign up to receive BeWell’s monthly newsletter and hear the findings as soon as they are released.

Sara Allen is Associate Vice President of Community & Jewish Life at JFNA. She is also the Executive Director of the Funder Collaborative, powered by Jewish Federations.

Last month, I was on a train coming home from the airport. A woman sitting next to me was wearing a Star of David necklace. We made eye contact and both smiled. Then she asked me if I was Jewish. I said, “Yes, I am.” She responded, “I feel safer now that you’re here and I am not alone.”

She shared with me that her daughter goes to public school and that since October 7, she has felt alone and isolated. She experienced some forms of antisemitism and, in light of this, will attend Jewish camp for the first time this summer.

“My daughter Sasha needs Jewish community. She needs Jewish camp.” Knowing that their daughter will have a safe space where she can be Jewish with other peers and counselor role models gives her family hope during this dark time.

Jamie Simon is chief program officer of Foundation for Jewish Camp.

Read the full blog in the Jerusalem Post.

In the course of developing “Our Next Generation” — the most recent strategic plan for our organization, Moving Traditions, released in 2022 — we learned that many teens didn’t feel they had permission to talk about Israel. They felt they weren’t sufficiently informed about the country’s deep and complicated history, or they were worried that they had an opinion that wasn’t the “right” opinion. As a result, we started asking ourselves and our stakeholders: How can we better support Jewish teens by making sure they can bring whatever is weighing on their hearts to Jewish spaces without fear? How can we do that in a way that also respects the very different mindsets their parents and educators might have?

Shuli Karkowsky is CEO of Moving Traditions.

Read the full article in eJewish Philanthropy. Photo courtesy of Moving Traditions: Teens participate in a Moving Traditions program for Rosh Hodesh.

To Do:

• Foster substantive and meaningful connections among parents.
• Learn Torah that speaks to pressing questions of our time.
• Empower parents with the same language and tools for Torah learning and relationship- building that their children are learning in school.
• Enable parents to give themselves the gift of Torah learning with a flexible structure that respects their busy lives.

It is a gratifying thing to pursue a program of meaningful Jewish learning that checks all the boxes. This was the experience of a pilot program that emerged organically from Pedagogy of Partnership’s (PoP) longtime partnerships with two Jewish day schools. For years, PoP, Powered by Hadar, has been working with teachers and leaders from Boston’s Jewish Community Day School and Schechter Boston to root PoP’s havruta^[1] -based method of “learning Jewishly” to meet their schools’ respective and unique visions for their students and faculty. Particularly after the disruption of covid, the time was ripe for weaving back together the many connections and relationships that make day school communities special: relationships among parents, connection of parents to the heart of their children’s Jewish learning experience, and a shared relationship to Torah for all members of the community.

The pilot program brought PoP’s orientation and tools for havruta learning together with Hadar’s Project Zug (PZ) course, To Share or Not to Share: The Torah of Social Media, and the personalized invitation and havruta matchmaking ability of each school’s educational leadership. Together, we formed the how, what, who, and where of this learning opportunity for the parents of each community. We hope that sharing this model is helpful to others designing programs meant to build relationships through Torah learning.

The basic structure of the program was simple. The schools sent out an invitation to parents to sign up for a four session havruta learning experience bookended by an in-person communal PoP introduction to havruta learning at the beginning, and a PoP siyum, closing celebration, at the end. Parents could choose to be matched with someone new or sign up with a friend, spouse, or someone they have always wanted to get to know better. After the group introductory session, each havruta pair arranged to meet together at a time, frequency, and location that worked for them as they charted their own course through the PZ learning materials.

In the opening session, we oriented parents to a shared understanding of havruta learning by introducing them to select PoP frameworks including, “The Havruta Triangle.”

Parents energetically unpacked the implications of this relational conception of Jewish learning by considering what it means for the text to be a partner; what it looks like to enter into a balanced give-and-take with another person and a text, and what dispositions we might need to call upon to enter into this kind of learning. Parents named such dispositions as “openness,” “curiosity,” “empathy,” “listening,” and “humility” as core attitudes that would animate this triangle in action.

A highlight of this discussion came from the parents’ children themselves!  Each school made a video of their students, who learn through PoP at school, reflecting on the very questions we asked parents to consider about the nature of havruta learning. The students offered practical advice for how to make the most of one’s learning. Parents were enchanted and took to heart their children’s sound advice:

You don’t always have to agree with [your havruta partner] and sometimes it is better if you disagree. If you disagree with your partner, you can end up learning more than you would have if you agreed.
– Seventh Grade PoP student

 

You should be caring and help each other. You should learn something, you should teach something…
– Third Grade PoP student

 

Adults studying in havruta should remember to look at the text a lot more than they think they need to
– Seventh Grade PoP student

 

You need to focus on what you are reading and understand it…actually understanding what does the text say but also making sure that you respect your partner.
– Third Grade PoP student

With this orienting framework, parents started to form their own havruta relationships with a “havruta warm-up” exercise to identify strengths and skills they could each bring to their learning. With a sense of shared purpose, tools, and compelling questions about the text itself, parents were ready to go on to study the rich course materials on their own until we gathered again a couple of months later to celebrate and share learning and reflections.

The content that parents studied together in the The Torah of Social Media PZ course, curated by Yitzhak Bronstein, constitutes a complex and multi-layered compilation of traditional Jewish sources that raise and address critical questions about how we talk about one another and to one another. Amplified exponentially by the onset of social media, ancient considerations about what constitutes gossip, how we balance the prohibition against gossip with the responsibilities to rebuke wrong-doing and also to judge one’s fellow favorably, reverberate in our present-day lives with heightened significance and consequence.

Parents commented on how the sources presented them with new ideas or extended how they thought about the unintended harms of talking or writing about others, such as the idea that gossip not only harms the object of gossip but the teller and the receiver of that gossip [Mishneh Torah, Hilchot De’ot 7:1,3]. Many parents shared stories about how their learning had an immediate impact on how they navigate everyday decisions about speech and sharing information.

The Power of Havruta to Build Relationships
Reflecting on their havruta experience as a whole, parents expressed deep gratitude for the meaningful and substance-rich connections they formed with their partners. Some commented on having made a brand-new connection with a fellow parent with whom they share much in common—and others shared that their new connections were refreshing precisely because of what they did not have in common! A parent with young children matched with a parent of older children appreciated the ways they could learn from one another and see themselves on a developmental pathway held by their respective journeys through the school. Participants reported having experienced firsthand what it is to get to know another person through the study of Torah—where the text serves as a mediator inviting two people to meet in conversation in a way they would not have otherwise.

Parents also reported that the PoP frameworks provided shared language and routines, and thereby helped to bring together those parents who were new to havruta learning with parents who have a lot of experience. One parent shared with us that she had always admired those who studied in havruta, and she prioritized a Jewish education for her own children to learn to develop those skills, but she had been too intimidated to try it herself until this pilot program. Having been paired with a very learned and experienced partner she was even more nervous until they sat down together, and using the PoP learning routine, created a flow of lively and fascinating Torah discussion. Both partners came away enriched with Torah and shared their appreciations for one another at the close of the course. In both school communities the siyum celebrations ended with a resounding request for more learning.

The PoP-PZ-School partnership pilot happily checked a lot of boxes from a programmatic standpoint. More important, however, is the uplift, connection, and Torah-insights that participants within this program framework were able to create on their own for one another by bringing themselves to their havruta learning with openness, curiosity, humility and desire to learn. Parents were able to demonstrate for themselves the PoP idea that, “If all the havruta partners work together, we will come to learning and insights that we would not have come to on our own, in the same way, or with a different set of partners” (Cook & Kent, 2018. Exploring the Partnership Stance).

Allison Cook and Dr. Orit Kent and the Founders and Co-Directors of Pedagogy of Partnership, Powered by Hadar. PoP offers trainings, coaching, and resources for Jewish educators, school leaders, adults and families. To hear from PoP students directly about the power of learning in havruta, click here!

^[1] Havruta refers to the traditional Jewish social learning practice in which two learners study texts together as a pair. The term havruta can also refer to one’s study partner, as in, “I am learning with my havruta.”

Gathering and supporting those on the frontlines of change is more and more vital as the world becomes increasingly complex and intertwined.  It is one of the surest bets to make lasting systemic change.

A great example of this important work was recently highlighted by Jenna Hanauer at the Jim Joseph Foundation, in her reflections on the Prizmah Conference that brought together leaders, experts, and funders, among others, to engage, discuss, and collaborate on the future of Jewish day schools. Her piece highlights the great benefit–and desperate need–of these field-wide convenings to bring people together to address systemic challenges and opportunities.

We must equally support and accelerate those professionals who make this critical work happen: the leaders of vibrant network organizations. There is no readily available course or easily accessible way to learn the skills needed to lead these organizations effectively. In my role as executive director of the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative, powered by Jewish Federations of North America, I know the challenges and bandwidth required to maintain relationships with members of network organizations, to understand the through-lines among the members’ work, and to capitalize on the opportunities for collective impact. It also can be lonely to head a network organization – it’s a role not easily understood; and, while we foster relationships, we must maintain boundaries. I often think how beneficial it would be to have a “network of networks,” which would be a place to share the necessary tools needed to do this work effectively. Moreover, by supporting the network leaders themselves though education, training and resources, we can vastly accelerate field-wide change.

At the heart of some of the most sophisticated, large-scale solutions to social problems are some of the most accomplished leaders you’ve never heard of: network entrepreneurs.
– Stanford Social Innovation Review

This quote embodies a philosophy that has defined my career. As the head of the Funder Collaborative, it has become clear to me that weaving effective networks, and planning thoughtful convenings, are an essential step towards galvanizing a field.

I’ve witnessed first-hand the ripple effects of weaving individuals, each working on similar and related topics–and building a culture of trust and cooperation. This is the act of field-building.  The Funder Collaborative has been so successful in this work because we see the world as interconnected. We believe that solutions–and the bold new ideas that make lasting change–come from the community. A critical first step is convening: an immersive learning and transformative experience which weaves a community. Done well, actions ring clear and people are purposefully engaged and empowered to achieve a vision for change. It also serves to amplify the voices of those who hold the most imaginative solutions to our most pressing challenges – the people who are closest to the work on the ground.

At each convening of this network, we take the time to ask questions, listen closely, nurture learning and inspire action. From my experience, the power of effective convenings exist outside the bounds of time: a well-designed user experience begins long before the gathering opens, and a well-crafted agenda sets the stage for efforts that continue long after the participants pack up.

There are countless creative and impactful ways to maintain communities year-round. Weaving amongst individuals, AI-powered networking, smaller virtual or in-person gatherings, continued education, frequent relevant communication, and lifting stories from the field infuse energy in the group over various touchpoints. By elevating and championing community voices, we reinforce commitment to work on the ground.

This “playbook” for community-building–gleaned from years heading the Funder Collaborative–has applications for any network or community. Steps like first identifying potential community members, earning these members’ trust as both a leader and in the idea of the network, and fueling participation by finding and providing value were fundamental building blocks of BeWell, the Jewish community’s coordinated response to the youth mental health crisis. BeWell’s national Resiliency Roundtable–the only forum that brings together education and engagement professionals with clinicians in Jewish settings to reach and support Jewish youth–meets monthly to share best practices, problem-solve, and collaborate. It is a model being replicated in nearly 20 communities across the country. Participating organizations and individuals are stronger as a result of the network leadership best practices that are infused in day to day work, education, and convenings.

There are many other issue areas to which these and other steps can be applied. I welcome the opportunity to share concrete skills that may be useful to other network leaders. Please also reach out if you lead a network and are interested in connecting with me and others – [email protected]. As a driver of social change, I have spent years honing and championing this approach, and I am always inspired by its impact. I applaud the tireless efforts of network entrepreneurs and organizations, as well as the funders for recognizing their long-term benefits.

Sara Allen is Executive Director of the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative, powered by JFNA.

This piece from Jakir Manela, CEO of Hazon & Pearlstone, with contributions from Rabbi Zelig Golden, Executive Director of Wilderness Torah, and Adam Weisberg, Executive Director of Urban Adamah, shares lessons learned from JOFEE leadership during the recently completed three-year period of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s general operating grant to Hazon, as well as lessons learned over the last ten years of the Foundation’s support to the field.

At Hazon and Pearlstone, we believe in the centrality of adam and adamah, people and planet. Our mission is to cultivate vibrant Jewish life in deep connection with the earth, catalyzing culture change and systemic change through immersive retreats, Jewish environmental education, and climate action.

The parallel issues of declining Jewish affiliation and the global climate crisis are not unrelated. Climate grief and anxiety are now diagnosable mental health crises that impact young people across the Jewish world. Young Jews tend to care more about climate and sustainability than older generations, and they are also less likely than older generations to affiliate with Jewish institutions. For many, what keeps them up at night is not Jewish survival, but human survival.

It was almost 10 years ago that the term JOFEE (Jewish Outdoor, Food, Farming, and Environmental Education) was coined by a group of funders. Collectively, the Jim Joseph Foundation, Leichtag Foundation, The Morningstar Foundation, Rose Community Foundation, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, and UJA – Federation of New York invested in the Seeds of Opportunity JOFEE report. They discovered—through robust third-party research—a movement that was making a significant impact across the Jewish world. Since then, the Jim Joseph Foundation investments focused on supporting the four largest JOFEE organizations — Hazon, Pearlstone Center, Urban Adamah, and Wilderness Torah—and launching the JOFEE Fellowship in order to both professionalize and expand career opportunities across the field.

Over four years, the JOFEE Fellowship trained more than 60 young adults as educators, placing them at Jewish organizations including JCCs, federations, summer camps, and more. For fellows, the chance to create change by bridging their environmental concerns with their Jewish identities was a key motivation for joining the program:

“I was sick of being Jewish for the sake of being Jewish,” one wrote. “I’m here because I think being Jewish really matters in the world.”

In 2019, the Jim Joseph Foundation further invested in these organizations for an additional three years. Over these years, we learned lessons and gathered insights as our field grew and evolved.

The Growth and Diversification of the Community of People Engaging in JOFEE
As the pandemic unfolded, Jewish outdoor education quickly became a go-to for communities. Programs have grown both in the number and type of participants they’re engaging—including wider age ranges, geographies, and affiliation levels. Both the accelerated adoption of virtual programming, and the desire of people to re-engage in in-person programming as the world reopens, means that we have so far maintained new program growth, and expect to continue to do so into the future. As a result, JOFEE now reaches a broader audience.

Reflecting this growth, Wilderness Torah and Camp Newman will create the Center for Earth Based Judaism, a learning center for all segments of the community, and focus on earth care and climate resiliency. As Wilderness Torah builds regionally, it also is scaling nationally with programs such as Neshama (Soul) Quest and Jewish backpacking trips. And while its festivals are transformational, the organization has identified a need for smaller bite-sized programs across urban areas to increase participation: after going to two to three small programs, people begin to attend larger events.

As for Hazon and Pearlstone, in 2023 the two organizations are merging into the largest Jewish environmental non-profit outside of Israel. Our two retreat centers (Isabella Freedman in CT, and Pearlstone Center in MD) were hit hard by the pandemic, but we also saw tremendous growth in our programmatic impact. In the words of one parent whose child was in a weekly program: “While the children are busy feeling free and happy and honing their favorite skills, our parental spirits are soaring because we know [they’re being guided] toward full aliveness, sensitivity, and responsibility to the world around them.”

Nature is a Profound Driver of Reconnection to Jewish Life
In this age of digital overload and hesitancy surrounding indoor gatherings, a nature-connected, outdoor Judaism speaks directly to what we need in mind and body, heart and soul. Despite myriad online opportunities, people continue to seek the authentic sense of purpose and connection that can be found through engaging with the more-than-human world.

A Wilderness Torah participant commented:

“I experienced a profound healing in the part of my soul that has been searching for a tribe and embodied Jewish community. My Jewish heart and connection to my ancestors has opened. I have found my home as a Jew.”

We have also witnessed JOFEE’s ability to connect youth to wider Jewish communal life. If we provide meaningful experiences, youth can and do stay engaged. We need to ask ourselves: How do we authentically connect with who we are at our rooted core, to the obligations and responsibilities of what it means to be a human on planet earth?

Jewish Youth and Young Adults are Seeking Opportunities to Lead on Environmental Issues – Whether in the Jewish Community or Not
Perhaps one of the biggest lessons learned over the past years is the growing demand from and for Jewish youth to be empowered as their own leaders and educators in environmental work and action. Hazon’s Jewish Youth Climate Movement (JYCM) was launched in 2020 and in just over two years blossomed into over 44 Kvutzot (chapters) nationwide, each with 10-30 members — a strong indicator of the need for these kinds of outlets. Efforts run by the teens themselves reach about 10,000 more people each year. These chapters are not just powerful Jewish engagement opportunities; they are also a safe space for young people who may not feel accepted with their full Jewish identities amid some elements of anti-Zionism and antisemitism in the secular climate justice movement.

One teen commented:

“Previous to my engagement in JYCM, I was in a youth-led movement that…taught me a lot about the climate crisis and how to organize…However, at times it felt as if I had to choose between my Jewish identity and organizing as the movement had been involved in some anti-Semitic activity and my specific chapter was unwilling to publicly condemn it.”

We see college campuses as an area of critical growth on the horizon, as Hillels have been among the most active participants in Hazon’s climate action and sustainability programs to date. As young adults seek ways to get involved, many look for hands-on experiences. For example, Urban Adamah runs an alternative spring break experience combining sustainable agriculture and Jewish community building.

A theme among these programs is participants’ desire to make a difference in the world overall, not just within the Jewish world. As such, JOFEE programs are increasingly welcoming young adults’ non-Jewish friends and family members. This helps to foster participation and widens the tents of involvement and belonging for those wishing to become active in community building and organizing.

Jewish Communal Interest and Action on Sustainability is Growing, Presenting New Opportunities for Collaboration within the Wider Jewish World
For many of the JOFEE field’s participants, the climate crisis is an overarching emotional and spiritual theme, present in their daily lives. And Jewish tradition has a direct, powerful, and unique response to these concerns.  For over 20 years, we have unpacked Jewish ecological wisdom to connect people with their own inspiration, and an empowered community of peers to build with. Moving forward, we aim to interweave Hazon and Pearlstone’s programs in order to facilitate greater networking, collaboration, and leadership among participants.

Hazon’s growing national portfolio of virtual and in-person programs provide options for pop-up collaborations. At the same time, Jewish youth are increasingly seeking leadership opportunities within JOFEE — a useful avenue for them to create meaningful experiences while also building a network of peers. We approach the end of 2022 with a new and diverse set of programs and participants, including a network of hundreds of Jewish teen activists across the country via JYCM; a newly launched Jewish Climate Leadership Coalition with over 120 Jewish organizations, three major national community hubs engaging tens of thousands of people a year in Baltimore, New York/Connecticut, and Detroit; and a programmatic framework that enables seamless online and in-person fusions. With Wilderness Torah and Urban Adamah also scaling programs to a national level, as well as increasing their regional impact, it is increasingly possible for young Jewish individuals to find their place in a Jewish community that shares their environmental values.

As we expand our ability to engage youth and young adults on the issues that matter most to them, we also renew Jewish communal life by empowering them to build their own communities of meaning, purpose, and connection.

Jakir Manela is CEO of Hazon & Pearlstone, which cultivates a vibrant Jewish life in deep connection with the earth. Rabbi Zelig Golden is Executive Director of Wilderness Torah, which promotes healing, belonging, and resilience by awakening and celebrating earth-based Jewish traditions. Adam Weisberg is Executive Director of Urban Adamah, an educational farm and community center in Berkeley, California that integrates the practices of Jewish tradition, mindfulness, sustainable agriculture, and social action.

As a social entrepreneur support organization, how will we better define and measure our success and our direct and indirect impact? How can we inspire and incubate more social enterprises and/or nonprofits with more promising and robust earned revenue streams? How will we build diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ) into our strategy, metrics, culture and operations as we grow?

These were just some of the questions we asked ourselves as we launched a new strategic planning process nearly a year ago. As our previous strategic plan came to a close, UpStart’s future was becoming clearer than ever before. At its heart, UpStart is a learning organization, and we always find it clarifying to reflect on the past to see how far we’ve come and how far we’re poised to go.

Aaron Katler is the CEO of UpStart.

Read the full article in eJewish Philanthropy.