News & Blogs Category: Partners in the News

Two major Jewish foundations have together committed $20 million to the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America (SHINA) in a major effort to expand its staff and overall capacity and allow it to shape conversations about Jewish pluralism, Jewish peoplehood, the American Jewish future and its relationship to Israel.

The Koret Foundation and the Jim Joseph Foundation, both based in San Francisco, have each committed $10 million, payable over five years, to SHINA’s future.

According to SHINA President Yehuda Kurtzer, the growth will not be upward so much as it will spread wider and plant deeper roots. “For Shalom Hartman North America, these are definitely the biggest pledges” ever received, he said in an interview with Inside Philanthropy.

Hartman has two bases—one in Jerusalem, where the Shalom Hartman Institute was founded in 1976, and one in New York. Until Kurtzer joined the organization in 2010, its New York office was an “American Friends of” outfit with just two employees. Kurtzer, who joined as its founding president, immediately began growing Shalom Hartman Institute North America into its current incarnation, and with the new gifts, plans to build it out as a unique model: both a think tank and a creator of material to be used in a multiplicity of educational settings, he said.

Engaging Hard Questions

The need and “a great hunger” for Hartman’s unique approach to Jewish ideas are undeniable, he said. “We are in an unprecedented crossroads of Jewish history. The models for the relationship with Israel crafted in the 20th century don’t really work in the 21st century… There’s almost a great awakening taking place, that the institutions that got us here won’t take us further” into an American Jewish future, which, because of major sociological shifts through interfaith marriage and disinterest in joining synagogues and other traditional organizations, looks quite different than even the recent past. “The courage right now is a willingness to engage hard questions even if you don’t know the answers,” said Kurtzer.

With the new funding, SHINA’s staff has grown from 30 to 37 full-time employees since December 2018, he said, having already added a senior vice president, development executives on both U.S. coasts and a director of content and communications, as well as scholars for its think tank and teaching. With the new funding, many more will come. But aside from rented office space for headquarters in upper Manhattan and what Kurtzer calls “semi-permanent” rented space in the Bay Area, the money won’t be spent on bricks and mortar. It will be spent on training people to convey SHINA’s ideas.

“Almost all of this funding will be spent on personnel,” said Kurtzer. “The Jewish community doesn’t need more buildings. We are a content organization, and are happy to bring our content” wherever SHINA can, he said.

The Koret Foundation, which has approximately a half-billion dollars in assets, has made other $10 million gifts in recent years, said Danielle Foreman, Koret’s director of programs. The foundation gave one in 2016 to Israel’s Museum of the Diaspora, or Beit Hatfutshot, to create the Koret International School of Jewish Peoplehood, and another, in 2017, to Tel Aviv University for joint partnerships with University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University focused on smart cities and bioinformatics, Foreman said.

Nevertheless, “this is a very large investment in Hartman and its vision. The foundation doesn’t have a plan to make this size grant every year,” said Foreman. “Hartman has really demonstrated a track record in their work, so Koret wants to help those projects get to the next level.”

Expanding a Relationship

The relationship between Hartman and Koret isn’t new. Koret has funded Hartman’s work in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2013. There, Hartman has worked with organizational leaders on both the professional and lay sides at JCCs, Hillel chapters, Jewish family service organizations and more. The focus is framing and informing their work by deepening their understanding of Jewish ideas rooted in Hartman’s core focuses of Jewish pluralism and peoplehood.

With the $20 million in new funding—Koret’s gift was first announced in March but received little notice—Hartman will expand this fundamental part of its work to a total of six North American cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit, Toronto, Washington, D.C., and New York. Hartman hopes to make those cities “hubs” of its work, which will radiate to other nearby “spoke” cities and towns, Kurtzer told Inside Philanthropy.

That’s one of three main areas it will build out with the new grants. Another is growing a research center with a publication arm by hiring and training additional fellows. And a third is supporting promising early-career academics through the Rabbi David Hartman Center, named for SHI’s founder, who died in 2013. From the time he immigrated to Israel with his young family in 1971, Hartman considered building bridges between Israeli and North American Jews one of his central priorities. The congregation he led in Jerusalem soon grew into the Shalom Hartman Institute, named for his father and formally established in 1976.

The Rabbi David Hartman Center is “a training vehicle for early-career scholars, investing in people who have tremendous potential as thought leaders to help them create pathways,” Kurtzer said. SHINA has already worked with two cohorts, academics focused on Jewish studies and Israel studies, and is now working with its third cohort of rabbis who aren’t working in pulpits, but are “showing great promise as big thinkers.”

“The grant was based on a business plan we wrote for the next five years to build out a more intelligently designed organization for the future of American Jewish life,” Kurtzer said. “Our organization has grown very fast and very opportunistically over the last 10 years. We’ve created a huge amount of program activity around North America following program-designated funding. This was a chance to see what’s the right size.”

“It’s going to help us be a sustainable organization beyond the activities we’ve done until now. The Jewish community needs an independent think tank and research center on major questions facing the Jewish people, and it definitely needs content,” Kurtzer said.

“We see this grant as stabilizing the capacity of Shalom Hartman Institute North America to do our core work for years to come.”

“A Powerful Driver of Idea Generation”

No one from the Jim Joseph Foundation was available for interview, but in an email, foundation President and CEO Barry Finestone wrote that SHINA “is a powerful driver of idea generation for Jewish learning, Jewish thought, and Israel education.

“Their thought leadership contributes to a vibrant, relevant Jewish community—reflecting a commitment to pluralism and to building relationships with a diversity of Jewish thinkers and teachers on campuses, in classrooms, and in the broader community. Importantly, their leadership has created a space for robust, yet nuanced conversation. We are very pleased to partner with the institute as it continues to innovate and to elevate our field, and as it pursues its vision of a Judaism rich with purpose and meaning.”

Koret’s view is that its grant is “really helping an organization that is demonstrating success across North America and in Israel to help them really grow big and see what can happen when an organization is fully funded and able to try out what they are seeking to do,” said Koret’s Foreman. “This is a mutual gain.”

Source: “A Record Gift to Help Navigate an ‘Unprecedented Crossroads of Jewish History,'” Debra Nussbaum Cohen, Inside Philanthropy, August 12, 2019

As the Jewish professional community has grown, so has the need for collaboration.

“What Connects Us,” the theme of JPRO Network’s 2019 conference, addresses just that. The tri-annual event in Detroit, Michigan, gives people from all aspects of Jewish professional life across the United States and Canada the rare chance to come together and learn from each other.

JPRO19, which runs August 12 to 14, will welcome about 550 professionals from a range of organizations and specialities, highlighting how much the field has grown. (Editor’s note: The Forward is a media sponsor of JPRO19.) There will be people working in start-ups, federations, Jewish community centers, human service agencies, synagogues and Hillels. There will be people who study Israel education, work in summer camps and those who’ve made a career of fundraising, all under one roof.

“We can learn from one another, we can share, we can grow,” said Erica Goldman, JPRO Network’s director of program and operations. “When we’re all in the same place, more magic happens than when we’re separated into our subfields and offices and geographic regions. It gives the chance to break down those walls and bring everyone with a common goal together in the same room.”

This year, JPRO19 will break the traditional lecture-only conference mold, operating like a choose-your-adventure experience at the Cobo Convention Center in downtown Detroit. It will sprawl along the atrium, which overlooks the river and offers a beautiful view of Canada, and turn into the Connect Lounge, an interactive space with nine activity zones. In between informative sessions, participants can get a headshot, receive personalized advice for career development and practice workplace wellness.

About 80,000 people work in the Jewish field across the U.S. and Canada, JPRO Executive Director Ilana Aisen explained, so the goal is that the connections made and information learned at JPRO19 will be enduring.

“It’s fun and it’s purposeful,” Aisen said. “We want [the conference] to be the beginning of something. We’re thinking a lot about the ripple effect.”

Hosting the conference in Detroit wasn’t an afterthought — the JPRO Network team wanted the location to be more than a backdrop, offering opportunities to go out in the city and learn directly from the organizations and companies thriving within it.

“We know that Jewish communities and Jewish professional life happens in places,” Aisen said. “As much as we can do virtually, the communities and cities we live in matter for the work we do.”

Scott Kaufman, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, said JPRO19 is the largest Jewish conference the city has seen in about 30 years.

“It’s very exciting,” he said. “We have a unique story, as a city, region and Jewish community.”

Detroit is a great example of the power of collaboration — the city was among the hardest hit in America during the last recession, forcing it to redesign, redevelop and restructure to bring in more people. Like other older midwestern communities, its tight-knit Jewish community has been around for decades, but during the last several years, it rebuilt its urban Jewish center and created an appealing space for the younger generation.

“It’s become a very rich Jewish life,” Kaufman said. “It happened so fast.”

Kaufman says he’s most looking forward to the skills JPRO19 will provide Jewish professionals and the sessions built around difficult conversations, from power dynamics in the workplace to anti-Semitism.

The Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit is a partner of JPRO19. Three major sponsors include the William Davidson Foundation, the Jim Joseph Foundation and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.

“People who normally don’t come into contact with one another, either because they live in different places or they work in different parts of the field are all going to be in the same place,” Aisen said. “We think there’s so much power in individuals strengthening their networks to create a more vibrant and robust ecosystem.”

Source: “The Power of Connection at JPRO19,” The Forward, August 5, 2019

Since Tribe 360 closed its doors over a decade ago, there’s been no central bureau or agency for Jewish education in Atlanta, but that’s about to change.

At one time, the Atlanta Jewish educational world was served by an organization known as Jewish Educational Services, or JES. The Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta later spun off that agency to become the Center for Jewish Education and Experiences or CJEE. That, in turn, became Tribe 360 before it closed its doors more than a decade ago.

Since then, there’s been no central bureau or agency for Jewish education in Atlanta. Stan Beiner is former head of The Epstein School and was chair of the day school council. As he put it: “I think when they created a vacuum, it wasn’t filled.” Beiner, now principal of the Fulton County Academy of Science and Technology in Roswell, observed, “Without a central bureau, everyone goes into his own silo, and you sacrifice community.”

But that’s all about to change.

Jodi Mansbach, chief impact officer at the Jewish Federation, told the AJT that her organization has acknowledged the lack of a central community educational resource that could provide professional development for Jewish educators.

Thanks to a two-year grant, the Jewish Federation will fund a part-time position for someone to convene educators of supplemental Jewish education.

“We’re in the process of hiring and hope to have someone by late summer,” Mansbach said. The goals over the next two to three years will be to focus on educator training with an emphasis on experiential education and to bring together a cohort of Jewish educational organizations already existing in Atlanta that prioritize innovation.

“We’re not trying to recreate a CJEE,” she said. “We’re not trying to create a huge infrastructure. And we’re not trying to say it has to be at the Federation, but we can start by incubating it.”

Last fall the Jewish Federation started bringing a small group of educators together to figure out exactly what is needed in the Jewish community. “Our first step is to build a community of practitioners. We will be working with synagogues to determine the needs. We know there’s a need for high-quality educator training.”

Mansbach noted that the Federation may work with a national organization such as The Jewish Education Project in New York City that has begun reaching out nationally to provide educational support to local communities.

Mansbach pointed to the model used by JumpSpark, an innovative teen programming group that serves as a connector, partner and funder for program development for teens, their parents and Jewish professionals. JumpSpark is part of a national Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative that is also funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation and the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta.

“We saw what Kelly Cohen has done with teens, with the support of a national network and then they created a community network,” said Mansbach, referring to JumpSpark’s director. Atlanta is one of 10 cities that received funding from the national network, Cohen said. “Our funds are matched by the Federation and every city differs. But we work out of common goals and outcomes.”

Kelly Cohen’s JumpSpark is setting up a community partner network.

JumpSpark was launched in 2017. Cohen started in August 2017, becoming the director a year later. “Our goal is to raise the bars for Jewish teens,” she said. “This is not a youth group; you can’t join it. It’s not a classroom program. It’s an impact hub. We’re funding ways to reconceptualize Jewish learning.”

Cohen, who taught at The Davis Academy for six years and has a master’s degree in Jewish education, explained that the centralized program of Tichon that provided after-school Jewish education for teens years ago, “doesn’t fit the world anymore. We must rethink what we mean by education to meet the needs of teens today.”

Indeed, the world of Jewish education has dramatically changed over the last century. According to The Breman Museum archives, the Atlanta Bureau of Jewish Education was first founded in 1945. The purposes of the bureau were: “a) to bring about the coordination of all Jewish schools and other educational agencies in Atlanta, to the extent that their work may be promoted through common and cooperative efforts; b) to render pedagogic and educational services to all Jewish schools and other groups and agencies seeking such assistance; c) to encourage intelligent planning and creative effort in the field of Jewish education calculated to promote the religious, cultural and spiritual growth of the individual and the community, and to make the community more conscious of the program and needs of Jewish education.” The bureau included all accredited rabbis, chairmen of committees of education of affiliated schools, and all professional heads of affiliated schools.

One of the services offered was a centralized Jewish library, a resource that Atlanta Jewish leaders have noted was lost when CJEE closed.

Paul Flexner said the recession brought down many central bureaus of Jewish education.

Paul Flexner, who was brought to Atlanta in 2004 to head CJEE, notes that central bureaus of Jewish education in many U.S. communities started closing their doors in the early years of this century. According to Rabbi Scott T. Aaron, education director of the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, some of this was due to the recession that struck the country in 2006.

“Communities were slow to respond to the cultural and economic changes, and when we had the recession, central agencies became the target of those who were upset with Jewish education. Many thought the central agencies were outmoded and in need of changes.”

Even the national agency funded by the Federation system to provide a centralized bureau of Jewish education, the Jewish Education Services of North America, folded during the recession.

Aaron, who is also the chair of the Association of Directors of Central Agencies, explained that the models for Jewish education have changed over the years.

“Central agencies were initially set up to be equivalent to boards of education,” he said. “They provided opportunities to streamline resources and sometimes to run centralized schools, originally known as Talmud Torahs. Synagogues didn’t have the wherewithal to have their own schools.”

In the 20th century, as the Jewish community became more suburban, synagogues set up their own schools. National denominations such as Reform and Conservative provided curricular help and teacher training, but Aaron said they don’t any longer. And, he pointed out, “libraries are now obsolete.”

Many communities, like Atlanta, closed their central bureaus. Some brought them into their Federation systems. Not surprisingly, Aaron told the AJT, “I believe in central resources. Many of our communities are adrift. We let this stuff go on autopilot for too long. Now we need to talk to our communities. There’s no template out there anymore. Each city must figure it out for itself.”

That seems to be what is finally happening in Atlanta.

“Central Bureau of Jewish Education for Atlanta?,” Jan Jaben-Eilon, Atlanta Jewish Times, July 10, 2019

In 1913, as a response to exclusionary practices held by groups on American college campuses, Alpha Epsilon Pi was born.  Other fraternities and sororities emerged with a similar purpose as well, creating a critical mass of Jewish participants within Greek life on campus.

Yet, by the 1970s, there was a precipitous decline in membership in AEPi and related organizations.  Many of fraternities and sororities that previously excluded Jews and other minorities adopted a more open policy. Because of this new openness, Jewish fraternities and sororities either deemphasized the Jewish component of their founding charters or removed it entirely.  But not AEPi. Instead, AEPi chose to maintain its Jewish charter and commitment to building Jewish community—a landmark decision and moment for the organization.

No longer existing as a response to marginalization, AEPi would need to redefine its charge.  In many ways, its new purpose was to offer a Jewish community that prioritized brotherhood, collective responsibility, and connection to Jewish culture, identity, and peoplehood.

This has been AEPi’s legacy for decades and is an ongoing story. On a national scale, AEPi launched its Hineni Jewish Identity Enrichment Conference seven years ago to infuse greater Jewish learning and values into the organization.  Concurrently, AEPi introduced the idea of a Jewish Identity Chairman to be associated with each chapter to enhance Jewish programming on the local level.

Four years ago, the Jim Joseph Foundation, which fosters compelling, effective Jewish learning experiences for young Jews, conducted extensive due diligence and research as it considered investing in the AEPi Foundation. Findings from two independent research studies[1] were especially compelling to the Foundation, as they demonstrated that:

• 80% of AEPi members are closer to their Jewish identity than other Jewish college students.
• 73% of AEPi members are more active in Jewish and Israeli activities than other Jewish college students.
• AEPi members are more likely than other Jewish students to stand up to anti-Semitism.
• Three‐quarters of alumni participated in Jewish organizations or activities besides AEPi while in college. Over half acknowledge the fraternity for facilitating this involvement.

The Foundation was confident its investment could amplify these outcomes, and designed a grant together with AEPi to professionalize the training offered to chapter Jewish identity chairs and to provide local and regional offerings to incentivize greater learning through a Jewish lens. Over the grant period these offerings have included experts  from the Jewish and secular worlds engaging with brothers in meaningful discourse on relevant and contemporary topics; philanthropic and volunteer activities; holiday programming; sexual harassment and Jewish ethics trainings; Israel education; safety and security workshops; and diversity awareness.

As AEPi has grown to more than 12,000 active members on 188 campuses internationally (10,000 Americans on 153 campuses), brothers continue to be one of the most visible representations of Jewish life on a college campus today.  The crest of the fraternity—worn and displayed proudly—includes a menorah, a star of David, and a lion of Judah. Because of the strong brotherhood, members participate in Birthright Israel, Repair the World service experiences, thousands of Shabbat dinners, hundreds of Passover Seders and Sukkah construction projects, and new undertakings such as the Yom HaShoah Walk to Remember.

The Foundation appreciates the unique position of AEPi as a large-scale Jewish organization in which a majority of its members live and study together in an immersive environment, often for multiple years during a formative time of life. This investment is thus complementary to the Foundation’s other substantial investment in Hillel International and Birthright Israel, and part of a continuum that includes such organizations as BBYO and Moishe House among many others which are dedicated to creating lasting, meaningful learning experiences for Jewish youth and young adults.

Steven Green is Senior Director of Grants Management and Compliance at the Jim Joseph Foundation. He was inducted into the Epsilon chapter at Emory University in 2001, where he served as Risk Manager.  

By investing in promising Jewish education grant initiatives, the Jim Joseph Foundation seeks to foster compelling, effective Jewish learning experiences for young Jews in the United States. Established in 2006, the Jim Joseph Foundation has awarded more than $500 million in grants to engage, educate, and inspire young Jewish minds to discover the joy of living vibrant Jewish lives.

The Jim Joseph Foundation has invested $750,000 to support AEPi’s efforts to strengthen Jewish learning and leadership at the national and local chapter levels.

1. 2014 Survey of Alumni (conducted by Groeneman Research and Consulting) which interviewed 1,137 AEPi alumni who graduated college from 1995 and 2010; 2015 Luntz Survey of Jewish American College Students in which 50% of the 1,000 polled self-identified as AEPi members.

Source: “Jim Joseph Foundation Supports AEPi,” Steven Green, The Lion, Summer 2019

There was a time when “Don’t trust anyone over 30” was the mantra for the young. But if a new study of Jewish teens—the largest of its kind ever attempted—can be believed, the situation is much different today, news that will no doubt come as a huge relief to parents.

Eighteen-year-old Yael Berrol is intimately involved in Jewish life—be it in her Conservative synagogue in Oakland, Calif., where she teaches fifth-graders in the Hebrew school; during her 10 years at Camp Ramah in Ojai, Calif.; in Israel, where she rode with an ambulance crew; or at events at her B’nai B’rith Youth Organization (BBYO) youth group.

“The best part of BBYO for me are the conventions, a real connection with Judaism and a weekend away with a bunch of Jews,” says Berrol who’s one of a handful of Jewish students in her high school. “Being together is when I feel like my true self.”

Yael Berrol and her station partner, Evan, at the Meitar MDA station outside of Beersheva. Credit: Courtesy.

More than 17,000 Jewish teens like Berrol participated in an online survey, developed by the Jewish Education Project and Rosov Consulting. Most of the names came off lists from 14 youth groups representing Jews of all backgrounds, including Bnei Akiva, National Council of Synagogue Youth (NCSY), Young Judaea, CTeen (Chabad-Lubavitch), United Synagogue Youth (USY) and the Union of Reform Judaism Youth (URJ/NFTY).

“We were basically interested in the lives of Jewish teens and understanding the impact of youth groups,” says Stacie Cherner, director of learning and evaluation at the Jim Joseph Foundation which, with the Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, funded the study.

The funders were especially interested in teens’ social and emotional development, “how these programs impact them in these ways,” says Cherner. One happy surprise: how many teens actually took the time to complete the survey.

The almost 18,000 respondents came in part from the youth groups that contributed and from a link pushed out through social media. “And we were all impressed with the honest, thoughtful answers we got,” replies Cherner.

Among the findings:

• Jewish teens like their parents; they enjoy spending time with their family and often look to their parents for guidance and to demystify the world around them.
• For most teens surveyed, Jewish beliefs and practices are closely linked with their family relationships and loyalties.
• The respondents believe teens need help in coping with pressures like academic pressure, self-esteem issues and a fear of failure.
• Jewish teens see social media as a mixed blessing, saying it can both cause stress and help them deal with stress, as well as connect with friends and help change the world.
• Most of the teens (75 percent) identify as Jewish (and 16 percent claim to be culturally Jewish), but many of those who say they have “no religion” also hope to engage with Judaism at some point in the future.
• Many (45 percent) rank anti-Semitism as a problem for today’s teens, though few feel personally threatened.
• Most of the teens (71 percent) report either a strong or very strong connection to Israel, with the majority of those who have not yet traveled hoping to do so one day.

Most crucially, the study found that teens active in a Jewish youth group (regardless of denomination) tend to flourish socially, emotionally and spiritually as compared with those who are not. They also report feeling more connected to being Jewish, have higher self-esteem and better relationships with family, friends and other adults, and feel empowered to make positive change in their world.

“The parental issue was the big surprise,” says Rabbi Michael Shire, dean of the Graduate School of Education at Boston’s Hebrew College and a member of the study’s advisory board. And, he says, together with the results of a few other studies, it makes “a pretty good case for religious education and youth groups specifically. It seems that, along with a strong family and the belief in a higher power you’re connected to—this makes for someone who’s healthier in every way. It’s almost like these young people have a protective shell around them.”

Carl Shulman regularly sees these trends in action. “In our programming, we look at Jewish values, including how they were expressed in the civil-rights movement and other social-justice causes,” says Shulman, the youth engagement adviser at Temple Etz Chaim, a Reform congregation in Franklin, Mass. “And we make sure it’s tied to Jewish tradition—something in the Torah or Talmud that speaks to them.”

Shulman says youth-group advisers play a unique role in a teen’s life. “We’re a cross between a teacher, a friend and a camp counselor,” he says. “So they feel they can be open about their thoughts and feelings and confide in us.”

One feature of the study, giving the participating youth movements feedback on how their teens stacked up in a variety of ways, provided much-appreciated input, says NCSY’s international director Rabbi Micah Greenland.

“This is a terrific opportunity to learn about what our teens are gaining from involvement with us. It invites us to better understand and reflect on where we are relative to the field and where we have room to grow.”

Over at URJ, they’re also evaluating the results. “We knew it anecdotally,” says Miriam Chilton, URJ’s vice president for youth. “But now we have the data that demonstrates that participation in Jewish groups goes a long way toward achieving our goals of seeking meaning and seeing themselves as connected to both Jewish tradition and the world.”

Not surprisingly, adds Chilton, most NFTY/URJ teens ranked higher on social justice than on the ritualistic aspects of Judaism, she says. “It’s not good or bad, but it is reflective of Reform values.”

Participants in the Union of Reform Judaism Youth (URJ/NFTY) convention in Dallas. Credit: NFTY via Facebook.

Another take-away for Chilton: multiple points of contact result in maximum impact.

“Those involved in youth group, their temple, Israel and a Jewish camp, for instance, had the most positive impact,” she says. “And given the number of our families who have just one Jewish parent, whose connection may not be as strong, we can look to offer a wide variety of programming. It gives us a pretty compelling case for the best ways of working with the next generation.”

For David Bryfman, The Jewish Education Project’s incoming CEO, this study’s biggest gift is “giving organizers of Jewish youth organizations a good look at the outcomes they’re having in outreach today. Basically, the study shows the more kids doing Jewish activities the more engaged they are.”

The study was also designed to go well beyond the previous emphasis on youth groups as nurturers of Jewish continuity, he adds. “Here we’re looking at how their engagement makes them not just more Jewish but a better person, a better member of the community, more effective in the world and just more human. Some people might argue that this isn’t the traditional use of youth group, but if we don’t help them thrive, none of the rest of it really matters.

Besides,” he add, “when you can get the Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and even the unaffiliated to sign onto the same study, you’re already doing something right.”

The No. 1 finding, he says, is “even though we knew that youth groups have huge impact on teens, right up there with day schools, Jewish summer camps and trips to Israel, this study actually shows the power of that involvement.”

Looking to the future

“We got confirmation that generally speaking, we’re doing really good job in Israel engagement with our teens, with Jewish tradition, and how much Shabbat and the holidays matter to them, and even the extent to which they attribute these values to their NCSY involvement,” says NCSY’s Rabbi Greenland. “But we can also see that we are below average in the realm of taking responsibility for making a difference in the world at large. And, in addition to everything else we do, that’s something we’ve been talking about a lot since the results came out; it’s pushed us to look at ways to enhance that quality, too.”

“If we design programming that reflects the way young people see the world, we’ll be able to maximize personal development and Jewish identity and commitment,” says URJ’s Chilton. “This study also gives us a benchmark so if we adjust something now, we can look back in a few years and see how we’re doing.”

“The study sends a clear message that Jewish engagement doesn’t have to end at bar or bat mitzvah if you provide young people with programming they see as meaningful,” says Bryfman. “If the Jewish youth organizations can provide that, the teens will be there.”

It’s a message the funders are taking to heart.

“What we’ve learned from these teens is that they are very Jewishly identified, though their ways of expressing it may not be the same,” says Jim Joseph Foundation’s Stacie Cherner. “It’s confirming to us that we’re on the right path—that our investments are having a positive impact.”

As California teen Yael Berrol puts it: “We don’t have many Jews near us, but my parents have made it easy for me to connect. Our family friends are mostly Jewish, Camp Ramah is like my home, and my synagogue is where I go when I’m missing being with other Jews, when I need that grounding, in community and in my authentic self.”

To see the entire study, visit https://www.jewishedproject.org/genznow.

Source: “Study finds Jewish teens flourish socially, emotionally and spiritually when connected to youth groups,” Deborah Fineblum, JNS, June 6, 2019

(JTA) — The Jewish community has been undercounting the number of people of color who are Jewish, a new analysis found.

Researchers at Stanford University and the University of San Francisco examined 25 population studies of American Jews and found that many failed to ask about race and the methods they used meant that nonwhite Jews were undersampled.

“The Jewish community has consistently been inconsistent with respect to how it attempts to account for Jews of color within the American Jewish community,” lead researcher Ari Kelman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a phone interview Wednesday. Kelman is an associate professor of education and Jewish studies at Stanford.

Using three of the most comprehensive surveys that did ask about race and ethnicity, the researchers said they could roughly estimate that 12-15 percent of American Jews are people of color.

The surveys used to come up with the estimate — the American Jewish Population Project, or AJPP, and community surveys done in New York in 2011 and San Francisco in 2017 — found a range of 10-14 percent Jews of color. The three surveys included data on people who self-identify as nonwhite, mixed race or Hispanic. The AJPP counted about 11 percent of Jews in this category.

Since the researchers posit that surveys have undercounted Jews of color, they estimate the slightly higher range of 12-15 percent. Kelman said it is crucial to keep in mind that the data used to arrive at that number is problematic.

“We offer population estimates based on data that was gathered inconsistently, so they should be read, interpreted and shared as we wrote them, which is as estimates,” he said.

The report, which was released earlier this month, was commissioned by the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative, an organization that seeks to advance and educate about Jews of color. The report was funded with a $35,600 grant from the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation.

It comes at a time when the Jewish community is increasingly paying attention to questions of race and diversity. The Reform movement, the Jewish Renewal movement, the Jewish Women’s Archive and Repair the World are among the organizations that have launched initiatives or said they are focusing on educating and promoting diversity in the Jewish community.

The director of the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative, Ilana Kaufman, decided to commission the research because of the dearth of data available about Jews of color. Often when she works with community leaders trying to engage the cohort, she is asked to provide data but has none.

“There are all these questions that come up when talking about Jews of color and there’s a paucity of information,” said Kaufman, whose mother is an Ashkenazi Jew and father is African-American.

Presenting the results last week at the UJA-Federation of New York, Kaufman recalled speaking about racism in the Jewish community at an event two years ago. Following the presentation, an audience member questioned her, saying he had rarely come across people of color in the community.

“I think you’re really a unicorn and that this whole discussion around Jews of color and Jewish community diversity is much more an issue for the very few Jews of color in the Jewish community,” she recalled the man telling her.

Such statements show why data on Jewish community diversity is necessary, Kaufman said.

“That story illustrates the delta, the gap, the space between the perception and the reality of our U.S. Jewish community, and we have to use tools and data and facts to inform who we are,” she said at the event last week.

The researchers found that studies undercounted Jews of color in various ways, including by failing to ask about race and ethnicity, or doing so in inconsistent and incomplete ways. For example, some surveys asked if respondents were Hispanic or Sephardi without asking about any other racial or ethnic categories.

The way many studies sampled respondents was also problematic, the researchers said. Some recruited respondents who had “distinctively Jewish names” or by relying on Jewish community lists. The researchers said that disadvantages Jews of color because many of them do not have stereotypically Jewish names and often are underrepresented in communal organizations.

Kaufman presented the results this month at a conference in Washington, D.C., organized by the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, as well as at the UJA-Federation of New York event. Next week she will be speaking at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

Gamal Palmer, the Los Angeles federation’s senior vice president of leadership development, said the lack of data on the racial makeup of the Jewish community creates “a blind spot,” where organizations are not properly able to create programming to engage people of color.

“Our hope is that this will give us some tools and some perspectives to help us direct our work towards the JOC community in a way that is effective and meaningful,” he said.

In addition to federation officials, representatives of 70-100 communal groups, as well as city government staff, are expected to attend the Los Angeles event. Palmer, an African-American Jew, hopes the event will help communal leaders make sure Jews of color don’t feel alienated.

Creating inclusive spaces means “people going to synagogue or sending their kids to camp, and that there shouldn’t be a worry about whether they’ll be accepted, whether someone will say something offensive or make them feel like that they’re not Jewish,” Palmer said, adding that he had experienced such comments and questioning.

Kelman said that one reason behind the inconsistent data in past surveys is that the Jewish community has been operating with a certain assumption about what its members look like.

“For most of the late 20th century and into the 21st century, the default assumption is that Jews were white or that [there was] such a preponderance of Jews identifying as white that any percentage of Jews of color was so small that they didn’t matter,” he said.

Kaufman hopes the project will challenge that notion.

“We need to think about ourselves, see ourselves as racially diverse,” she said. “We need to think about all of our communities as environments that should function as multiracial, diverse environments, even if there’s limited racial diversity in the micropopulation.”

Source: “Jews of Color are Chronically Undercounted, Researchers Find,” Josefin Dolsten, JTA, May 30, 2019

Several newly announced donations totaling $7 million to the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies will significantly increase its endowment and broaden its academic impact, starting with the creation of an endowed chair.

The Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies, which will launch in the fall, is the first in its field at UC Berkeley.

The endowed chair will be held by political science associate professor Ron Hassner, the institute’s faculty co-director and a past recipient of the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

The new $5 million grant is the second major endowment from the Helen Diller Foundation; a $5 million gift in 2002 continues to provide support for Cal’s Jewish studies programs.

In addition, the institute today announced a $1 million endowment gift from the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation, which provided seed funding for the institute and gives it annual programming grants; and a $1 million gift from an anonymous donor earmarked for Israel studies and student programs.

Since its launch eight years ago, the institute has been funded for the most part by generous annual programming grants from entities such as the Koret Foundation, the Jim Joseph Foundation and the aforementioned Gilbert Foundation. The new Diller and Gilbert grants will give a major boost to the existing endowment and enable a dramatic expansion of the scope of Jewish and Israel studies at Cal.

“It’s a sign of permanence,” faculty co-director Kenneth Bamberger said about the new endowed chair and the donations that made it possible. “It’s a sign of commitment that there should be a faculty member teaching Israel studies and coordinating Israel studies programming.”

Hassner, who last year launched UC Berkeley’s first regular course on conflict in the Middle East, said he was “moved and humbled” by the generosity of the Diller grant. “The foundation recognized the urgency of teaching Israel in an even-handed and professional manner on the Berkeley campus and sprang into action. Their gift allows us to address our students’ growing thirst for bold discussions in this flourishing, provocative and crucial academic field.”

Bamberger stressed the importance of Chancellor Carol Christ’s enthusiastic support for the university’s Jewish and Israel studies programs. “This chancellor is extremely dedicated to undergraduate instruction and to creating a vibrant multicultural campus,” he said. “Her support for the flourishing of Jewish and Israel studies is part of that vision, and it’s been transformative for us. The chancellor is wonderfully innovative and effective in thinking about ways that existing resources [at UC Berkeley] can be institutionalized, grown and enhanced.”

Said Christ in press statement: “This is an extraordinary gift for many reasons, not the least of which is that it lays a cornerstone at Berkeley for future support of these programs. It signals great faith in the work we have done to build Jewish and Israel Studies at Berkeley, and helps launch, in a very robust way, a campaign to ensure that our ‘startup’ efforts will be institutionalized for generations of students to come.”

Currently, Berkeley undergraduates may minor in Jewish studies, while graduate students can earn an advanced degree with a Jewish studies emphasis. Bamberger hopes that in time, and in partnership with the institute, UC Berkeley will offer a Jewish and Israel studies major. He also hopes new and additional funding will allow the institute to create faculty positions and programs, such as a proposed study-abroad summer in Israel.

Jewish and Israel studies as an academic field at UC Berkeley have grown dramatically since the 2011 founding of the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies, the 2013 establishment of the Center for Jewish Studies, and the 2010 acquisition of the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life. The institute has developed two core programs, the Berkeley Program on Israel Studies; and the Berkeley Program on Jewish Law, Thought and Identity. Every semester, the institute hosts several visiting Israeli professors, and it has sponsored conferences, public programs and academic events such as the 2018 conference of the Association for Israel Studies.

Source: J – The Jewish News of Northern California 

In order to become a rabbi, Benay Lappe had to go back in the closet.

It would be nearly a decade after she was ordained in 1997 that the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary would lift its ban on gay rabbis. So she spent six years during her studies hiding her sexuality and relationship status.

“It was extremely, extremely difficult and painful,” recalled Lappe, 59. “I had no idea it was going to be as hard as it was.”

The experience led Lappe in 2003 to found Svara, a yeshiva where she and other members of the LGBTQ community could be themselves and study Jewish texts.

“I was in the closet in school and never really had the chance to learn with my whole self present,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency earlier this month at Svara’s headquarters in this city. “So when I got out of school I was a rabbi, but needed to learn for the first time in an integrated way. On a very personal level I started Svara to be that place.”

In its beginning, the yeshiva was just that. But things have changed as the LGBTQ movement has gained wider acceptance, including in the Jewish community. Today, all non-Orthodox Jewish movements ordain LGBTQ rabbis and allow same-sex weddings.

At an evening beit midrash program earlier this month called a “One-Night-Stand,” about two-thirds of the 42 attendees did not identify as part of the LGBTQ community. That is higher than usual — usually between half to nearly everyone at Svara events is queer depending on the type of program— but not entirely out of line.

Lappe traces the shift back to 2013, when she partnered with the nondenominational Jewish community Mishkan Chicago. Attendance grew, including by those who do not identify as LGBTQ.

“We evolved into becoming a queer yeshiva for everybody,” she said. “Our project is about changing the world through the insights of queer people but for the benefit of everybody, just like the feminist project isn’t ultimately for the benefit of women only.”

While Lappe still wants Svara to be a space for LGBTQ people, that in itself is no longer the singular focus.

“We’re not a ‘gay thing,’” she said. “We’re a Talmud revolution thing.”

Essie Shachar-Hill has been attending events at Svara for three years. (Jess Benjamin)

Svara now has a budget of $1.4 million, which comes from program fees and donations from individuals and organizations such as the Jim Joseph Foundation, Crown Family Philanthropies, the Walter & Elisa Haas Fund and the Natan giving circle. The yeshiva hosts a range of programs, including weekly Jewish learning programs, fellowships and a five-day Queer Talmud Camp, which attracted applications from some 500 people, mostly millennials.

Lappe also encourages former students to host their own learning events, and there are currently 11 informal study centers around the country created by Svara alumni.

The rabbi believes that the Jewish community needs to revitalize its approach to text study, making it more accessible to people of all backgrounds and abilities, and find new innovative ways to read the canon. Lappe says that many queer people’s experiences of being outsiders and on the margins make them “particularly suited” to do so.

“We’re focused on raising up queer and trans teachers and readers and beit midrash conveners and rosh yeshivas who have the life experience of what we call ‘crash,’” she said. “Crash” is what happens when people realize “‘the way I thought the world was ain’t the way it is, and the fact that I’ve survived means that I know a lot about how to deal with that.’”

Some people still come to Svara because it is the only Jewish learning space where they feel comfortable. That’s the case for 25-year-old Essie Shachar-Hill, who identifies as non-binary.

“I come to this one because it feels really low barrier, and accessible and inclusive, but I wouldn’t necessarily risk my own safety going into a more traditional” Jewish environment, Shachar-Hill said.

But for others, it’s Lappe’s accessible approach to Talmud study that draws them.

At Svara, texts are read only in the original language, and students are expected to look up in dictionaries any Hebrew or Aramaic words they do not understand. For some people that might be every single word, but Lappe is there to help.

At the “One Night Stand” event earlier this month, Lappe and another Svara staffer, identified by the sparkly purple fairy wings they wear on their backs, walked around to answer questions about the passage being studied.

Benna Kessler, 31, has been attending Svara events regularly for 3 1/2 years. She does not identify as queer but appreciates the focus on studying Talmud in its original languages.

“I think it’s a very empowering place to learn [and] also a very inspiring place to learn,” she said. “It has brought me back to my love of being a student.”

Benna Kessler never studied the Talmud in its original language prior to Svara. (Jess Benjamin)

It’s not always easy to find the balance between a space where queer people feel comfortable and one that is open to allies, Lappe said, pointing to the fact that at the “One Night Stand” event, LGBTQ participants were in the minority.

“For the trans folk in the room, it probably didn’t feel as much like ‘I can bring out some of my ideas and thoughts’ as much as it does on nights when it’s 70 percent queer and trans folk,” she said.

Ultimately, Lappe sees her yeshiva as appealing to people who feel alienated from the Jewish community, whether due to their sexuality, gender expression or something else.

“That’s what happens in a queer normative space, the folks that bring their full selves are not just the LGBT folks,” she said. “It’s folks who didn’t feel like they could talk about ‘X’ about themselves in another space. Now they can.”

Source: “A Chicago space for LGBTQ Jews becomes a ‘queer yeshiva for everybody’,” Josefin Dolsten, JTA, April 23, 2019

New data provides an in-depth picture of Jewish grandparenting in an age of complexity and change.

The first-ever national study of Jewish grandparents—commissioned by the Jewish Grandparents Network (JGN), in partnership with 17 national organizations and Jewish Federations—provides detailed information about the demographics, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors and needs of this crucial family sector.

Nearly 8,000 individuals (approximately 1,000 of them from a nationally representative sample) participated in the study.

Key findings include that fact that most grandparents are committed to transmitting of Jewish values; nearly half of the grandparents in the national representative sample have a child married to a non-Jewish partner; and most frequently, interactions between grandparents and their grandchildren take place in their homes and their grandchildren’s homes, around birthdays and national holidays.

According to David Raphael, co-founder and CEO of JGN, “the challenge for the Jewish community is to pivot towards the wonderful opportunity to engage grandparents in ways that ultimately bring the entire family together in meaningful Jewish experiences. Grandparents really can be partners in the Jewish engagement work that so many communities look to do.”

The study identified five segments or groupings of Jewish grandparents, based on shared attitudes and beliefs:

• Joyful Transmitters (20 percent): love being grandparents, and feel that it’s important to transmit Jewish values and beliefs.
• Faithful Transmitters (16 percent): want their grandchildren to have a strong connection to Judaism and to marry Jews.
• Engaged Secularists (23 percent): engaged grandparents, but don’t model Jewish involvement for their grandchildren.
• Wistful Outsiders (20 percent): want to be more involved with their grandchildren, but family dynamics get in the way.
• Non-Transmitters (20 percent): not Jewishly engaged nor interested in passing on Jewish practices to their grandchildren.

In the months ahead, the Jewish Grandparents Network will collaborate with educators, professionals, community leaders and academic to further mine the study’s extensive data, as well as understand how it can inform communal and organizational priorities and practices.

A report of the study’s findings will be available soon. For a copy, email: [email protected].

Source: Jewish News Service

As the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative continues the work that started in 2013, we are excited about the advances we see in the field. More communities have more resources to offer, in an increasingly diverse, supportive, and genuinely creative field – which leads to more offerings to engage teens in meaningful Jewish life. The Funder Collaborative – made up of ten communities and national and local funders that develop, nurture and scale new approaches to teen engagement – shares insights and lessons learned with the field so that any community, most anywhere, can elevate its teen engagement.

At this moment, both of us can also step back and share our experience of serving on the Funder Collaborative’s Operating Committee (OC) in 2017-2018. We do this because funder collaboratives are inherently complex – with many different organizations and people coming together at a common table, both for, ideally, a common goal, but also with their own goals. Embarking on an effective teen initiative, and creating an effective Funder Collaborative requires leaders. And being positioned for successful leadership is paramount.

We were incredibly fortunate to join the OC during the Funder Collaborative’s second stage, with an executive director in place. As Federation and foundation professionals with full plates of our own, the FC’s incredible executive director, Sara Allen, enabled us to feel excited about the opportunity to serve in this role and made filling the role something doable – even with regular time constraints and competing priorities.

We found serving on the OC and being leaders of the Funder Collaborative to encompass a few main responsibilities and opportunities. Anyone asked to serve in similar roles of similarly complex, multi-faceted endeavors will hopefully resonate with some of these reflections and perhaps find them helpful:

Relish the Role
Simply being a part of a Funder Collaborative made up of communities and funders who steward communal dollars, from across the country is a chance to learn, to grow professionally, and to infuse your organization with new ideas. Being on the Operating Committee of such an endeavor offers even more of these opportunities. Taking part in a field building endeavor to try and move the needle for how teen engagement is carried out in communities across the country is a powerful experience. Moreover, working with researchers to launch major surveys to teens and teen professionals and engaging youth-serving organizations to learn about their work and goals, are opportunities to learn from practitioners and beneficiaries in the field, on a scale that often times is out of reach. The insights emerging from these studies have been exciting and informed new ways of looking at the space.

Serve as a Sounding Board
There’s always an important balance to strike between simply listening to what people are saying and determining what, if any, next steps might follow. We listened to our colleagues in other communities and heard what learnings and best practices on teen engagement were actually helpful to them. We then sought to give voice to the “needs” and “wants” that we heard. In this way, we hope that we facilitated the flow of information, and helped the Funder Collaborative to be most responsive.

The Ombudsman Role
By nature – and by name – a funder collaborative necessitates significant collaboration among various entities: the practitioner organizations that make up the collaborative; the funder organizations and their lay leadership; professional leadership and colleagues, and evaluators, if they are engaged. The FC has all of these. Thus, our leadership role included serving as ombudsmen of sorts. We communicated to the primary national funder, the Jim Joseph Foundation, on behalf of the communities. We communicated with our home communities, who carry the other half of the funding, and directly oversee the initiatives; the research team leading the major cross-community evaluation to help ensure that the CCE would bring value to the communities; we also worked to make sure that what the communities were doing and learning was making its way into the CCE.

Different People Coming Together
For teen engagement, as for other endeavors, what works in New York doesn’t necessarily work in Cincinnati – and vice versa – and so it is for other cities as well. Serving on the OC amplifies this truth and was an opportunity for deeper and wider learning that extends far beyond our own communities – what cities are in fact in need of or best suited for certain programs? Our leadership roles on the FC gave us a great opportunity to go beyond our own bubbles and interact with communities of different sizes and learn the realities of varying resources, audiences, and other differences.

Cultivate and Foster Open Communications
Finally, as is so often true, getting behind a culture of openness, premised on trusting and strong relationships, was key to being effective leaders for the FC, to advance its support of our colleagues, communities’ teen initiatives, and the field. We both sought to bring a spirit of transparency to this role and felt comfortable sharing our own concerns with our colleagues. We hope that our colleagues throughout the FC understood our role as supporters and advocates, open and honest communicators about topics ranging from evaluations, programs, team building, lay leadership engagement and more. We worked closely with Sara to outline a clear agenda, and always checked for agreed upon expectations and goals. Ultimately, we both grew to know our colleagues in deeper ways. And we’re all better off for it.

Now, as the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative continues in its 7th year, we are off the OC, but still representing our communities in the FC and most importantly, in the work. The growth of the field focusing on teen Jewish initiatives and the resources now available for any community will continue to elevate this work. Phase 3 of the FC, now underway, is about building on early lessons learned, the successes, challenges and failures. The FC, as a multi-layered entity, with so many committed colleagues, outstanding educators who lead the programs on the ground, and thoughtful funders and organizations to envision and realize the work, help make all of this possible.

Melanie Schneider is Sr. Planning Executive with the Department of Jewish Life at UJA Federation of New York.

Brian Jaffee is Executive Director at The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati.

Source: eJewishPhilanthropy

The Jewish Education Project has announced the second cohort of the Generation Now Fellowship, the first comprehensive fellowship to provide professional growth and leadership development for senior educators in the field of Jewish teen education/engagement.

Following a highly selective application process, the second cohort of 20 fellows includes veteran educators from across the country. These individuals represent 17 national organizations, regional affiliates, and local organizations that, collectively, impact the lives of tens of thousands of teens from diverse Jewish backgrounds. Organizations represented include USCJ/USY, BBYO, Keshet, Diller Teen Initiatives, and several local JCCs and Federations.

With the backing of a $2.1 million grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation and in partnership with the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative, the Generation Now Fellowship seeks to strengthen the field of teen engagement by investing in those professionals most likely to influence educational change and leadership in the teen landscape.

“This extraordinarily talented cohort marks a unique convergence of leaders and influencers who have dedicated their careers to Jewish teen engagement,” said Andrea Hendler, Director of the Generation Now Fellowship for The Jewish Education Project. “The Jewish Education Project is deeply honored and excited to provide a world-class experience befitting these leaders’ commitment to the field and passion for continued professional growth.”

Over the course of 18 months, Fellows will convene in-person several times, building their professional and leadership skills, as well as expanding their Jewish educational thinking in particular around a new outcomes-driven approach to teen engagement. In addition, Fellows will benefit from extensive personal coaching and top-of-the-line leadership and professional development experiences, including:

• A week-long seminar in Israel
• An experiential “intensive” in creativity, leadership, and innovation at Disney Institute
• Personalized coaching, professional development, and/or Jewish learning experiences for professional growth

Click here to meet the next 20 Generation Now Fellows.

Source: eJewishPhilanthropy, March 27, 2019

At this week’s Jewish Funders Network Conference, The Jewish Education Project unveiled what we believe to be the largest study of American Jewish teens ever conducted, with 17,576 teens participating. GenZ Now, Understanding and Connecting with Jewish Teens Today deepens our understanding of the complexities of being a Jewish teen in the United States today.

Among the key headlines from the report:

• Participation in Jewish youth movements, youth groups and other organizations – collectively referred to as youth-serving organizations, or YSOs – measurably contributes to teens connecting to being Jewish, and to feeling good about themselves, their relationships, and their ability to make change in the world.
• Jewish teens get along with their parents and often reflect their Jewish values and practices.
• For Jewish teens, being Jewish is often about family, holiday celebrations, and cultural practices.
• Jewish teens share the troubles and concerns of other American adolescents, notably managing anxiety and depression, and coping with academic pressure.

Perhaps the most important message that communities and organizations can take away from this study is that youth-serving organizations are awesome. Teens who participate in a youth-serving organization (or at least the organizations studied in the report) score higher on almost every outcome measured by our researchers, including affinity toward Israel and behaving with the intention of making world a better place.

The findings of this report suggest an imperative to invest further in youth-serving organizations as a model for teen engagement, both to champion the invaluable work that YSOs are already doing, and to imagine new possibilities, including opportunities that appeal to teens who are underrepresented and not yet engaged.

Beginning with a VIP reception on May 28th in New York City, The Jewish Education Project will explore the findings of this monumental study with funders, lay leaders and leadership of participating YSOs. We hope this report provides youth professionals and other stakeholders with constructive insights that enrich their capacity to work with Jewish teens.

Beyond the considerable amount we have learned about American Jewish teens themselves – their essence, their interests, and the ways in which youth-serving organizations matter in their lives – this project serves as a paradigm for collaboration among funders, researchers, and practitioners.

This study would not have been possible without our partners at Rosov Consulting; lead researchers Arielle Levites, Ph.D., and Liat Sayfan, Ph.D.; or the goodwill of the 14 participating youth-serving organizations – from across American Jewish communal life, representing an extraordinary breadth of ideologies and interests. By mobilizing as a field to advance this research, these partners have set an example by prioritizing the teen experience over specific organizational needs.

Their openness to work together to elevate the field and to enrich teens’ development beyond the walls of their own institutions is truly admirable – and indicates a continued, positive shift in organizational mindset and approaches in Jewish teen engagement efforts today.

On behalf of our partners, The Jewish Education Project offers its sincere gratitude to the Jim Joseph Foundation, Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation for their support in this long-term effort. Their vision and commitment enabled us to complete this complex and robust multi-year, multi-stage study, which we hope will serve as a model for Jewish communal and educational research in the future.

GenZ Now, Understanding and Connecting with Jewish Teens Today will be released digitally in June. Click here to sign up for a copy of the report, which includes findings based on the following Jewish Youth Servings Organizations:

• BBYO
• Bnei Akiva of the US and Canada
• The Bronfman Youth Fellowship
• CTeen
• Diller Teen Fellows
• Friends of Israel Scouts/Tzofim
• Habonim Dror North America
• JCC Association of North America
• Jewish Teen Funders Network
• Moving Traditions
• NCSY
• URJ Youth/NFTY
• USY/USCJ’s Youth Movement
• Young Judaea