Making Space for Jewish Thought Leadership

In moments of uncertainty, communities often turn to ideas for meaning, clarity, language and frameworks to make sense of what they are experiencing and what might come next. Over the past several years, we have seen how deeply people in the Jewish community are searching for voices that can help them hold complexity, wrestle with moral questions and imagine possible futures without flattening difference or rushing to certainty.

And yet, even as we talk frequently about the importance of Jewish thought leadership, we rarely ask some basic questions. What do we actually mean when we say “thought leadership” in a Jewish context? Who is a Jewish thought leader today, and how did they become one? What enables thoughtful, courageous voices to emerge and endure and what gets in their way? What might it look like to be more intentional about cultivating Jewish thought leadership to strengthen our capacity for learning, meaning-making, connection and dialogue?

Over the past year plus, the Jim Joseph Foundation and Maimonides Fund commissioned Valerie Ehrlich of Mission Bloom Consulting to conduct a research study to explore those questions. The result is “Ideas that Influence: Understanding and Supporting the Ecosystem of Jewish Thought Leadership,” a set of four connected “deep dive” reports that look at Jewish communal thought leadership from different angles: what it is, who is doing it, the ecosystem that shapes it and the choices facing the field if we want this work to thrive. The study sample is not meant to represent all thought leaders across the diverse communal landscape by any means, and the findings are not meant to offer a single definition or a prescriptive agenda. They are meant to surface patterns, tensions and possibilities. We hope to spark conversation among funders, practitioners, institutional leaders and thought leaders themselves.

Below is a brief introduction to each report and a few of the insights that stood out to us. We hope it encourages you to dive more deeply into the full reports and to talk with others about what resonates, what challenges you and what remaining questions feel relevant.

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

Read the entire piece at eJewish Philanthropy. Access the study here.