The Wexner Foundation, in partnership with the Jim Joseph Foundation, is pleased to announce Class 4 of the Wexner Field Fellowship. Fifteen outstanding professionals were selected through a highly competitive process for this three-year intensive program. Utilizing the diverse, cohort-based learning that is the hallmark of The Wexner Foundation programs, Field Fellows will be exposed to different approaches to leadership and tools for addressing pressing issues in the Jewish community, while being integrated into The Wexner Foundation’s vast network of more than 3,000 professional and volunteer leaders in North America and Israel, including the 30 outstanding professionals who are currently in the Field Fellowship Program, as well as 25 alumni.

Complete list of Class 4 Fellows:

• Ari Brickman, Senior Philanthropic Officer, Key Relationships for The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, North Bethesda, MD
• Yehuda Chanales, Director of Educational Advancement for the Fuchs Mizrachi School, Beachwood, OH
• Keren Fraiman, Dean and Chief Academic Officer for the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership, Chicago, IL
• Rachael Fried, Executive Director for JQY (Jewish Queer Youth), New York, NY
• Gavi Geller, Executive Director for the Jewish Community Relations Bureau, AJC, Overland Park, KS
• Addie Klein, Director of Community Engagement for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
• Stephanie Levin, Chief Engagement and Innovation Officer for the Peninsula Jewish Community Center, Foster City, CA
• Evan Majzner, VP, Development and Strategic Initiatives for itrek, New York, NY
• Janu Mendel, Executive Director for Repair the World, Miami, FL
• Harry Pell, Associate Head of School for The Leffell School, Hartsdale, NY
• Hillel Rapp, Director of Education for Bnei Akiva Schools, Toronto, Ontario
• Lani Santo, Executive Director for Footsteps, New York, NY
• Yaffi Scheinberg, Executive Director and Head of School for Kayla’s Children Centre, Toronto, Ontario
• Matt Weintraub, Executive Director for Valley Beth Shalom, Encino, CA
• Ari Weiss, Executive Director for Cornell Hillel, Ithaca, NY

The Wexner Foundation has more than 30 years of experience developing excellence in Jewish professionals and volunteer leaders in North America. The Wexner Field Fellowship was created in 2013 in partnership with the Jim Joseph Foundation to focus on developing promising Jewish professionals’ leadership skills while enveloping them in a rich network of Jewish colleagues. Wexner Field Fellows engage in a diverse, cohort-based leadership learning program. Fellows are selected based on their past accomplishments, current motivation and engagement, and exceptional attributes they’ll contribute to the cohort of 15 diverse Jewish professionals of which they will be a part. Through in-person, intensive conferences and virtual meetings, Wexner Field Fellows are exposed to Jewish educational and professional growth opportunities while addressing their unique needs of career and personal progress.

“We faced the tremendous challenge of selecting our new class from a deep and talented pool of candidates. The field is richly blessed. I am excited about the ways in which these 15 mid-career Jewish professionals will contribute to the Wexner Field Fellowship and more importantly to the Jewish organizations and communities they will lead,” said Rabbi B. Elka Abrahamson, President of The Wexner Foundation. “This new cohort of transformational leaders will add mightily to the community of Wexner Fellows and Alumni shaping the Jewish future.”

As with the first three cohorts of Field Fellows, Class 4 is comprised of dynamic Jewish professionals at pivotal moments in their careers. Fellows work in Jewish federations, summer camps, advocacy and social justice organizations, day and supplementary schools, national organizations and local institutions across North America. To get more info about each Fellow, please click here.

“The Wexner Foundation continues to shape our field in deeply profound ways,” said Barry Finestone, President and CEO of the Jim Joseph Foundation. “Their programs for Jewish leaders and educators provide the highest quality learning and coaching and enable cohort members to develop such important and supportive peer networks. These thousands of leaders and educators engage directly with Jewish youth and ultimately help shape the Jewish community. We are very pleased to continue to support the Wexner Foundation’s important work and congratulate the newest cohort of Wexner Field Fellows.”

As part of this three-year intensive professional development program, Wexner Field Fellows:

• Become part of a selective cohort of lifelong professional learners.
• Learn with amazing leadership teachers and Jewish educators.
• Receive one-on-one professional coaching and Jewish learning, along with access to funds toward customized professional development opportunities.
• Develop a nuanced appreciation for the diversity of the North American Jewish community.
• Focus on developing strengths in adaptive leadership, storytelling, difficult conversations, negotiation and other crucial leadership skills.

Source: The Wexner Foundation, January 7, 2020

DEERFIELD, Ill. (JTA) — Nathan Rosen’s favorite day in Hebrew class is culture day.

Every Friday, the students learn about one aspect of Israeli culture. Earlier this year Rosen, 13, did a presentation about Eli Cohen, the Israeli spy who infiltrated the highest echelons of the Syrian military in the 1960s.

On a recent Friday, Rosen and two friends were working on a short Hebrew screenplay about a dysfunctional family that visits a cafe in Israel. The three eighth-graders huddled around a table, intermittently acting out the scene in loud voices and cracking up.

For Rosen, parts of the class feel similar to his former school, a private Conservative Jewish day school. But now he attends Alan B. Shepard Middle School, a public school in this Chicago suburb on the North Shore. Rosen plans to keep taking the language at a public high school in Deerfield next year.

More than anything, he loves the bonds it creates with his Hebrew classmates, all of whom are Jewish.

“We built a whole little community in the school,” Rosen said. “In the hallway sometimes, we’ll call each other by our Hebrew names, and it’s like no one else knows what we’re saying, but, like, we kind of feel like we have our own little relationships.”

Rosen is one of 680 students in the Chicago area studying Hebrew in public schools, according to the iCenter, a Chicago-based group that promotes Israel education. Excluding Hebrew language charter schools, approximately 1,400 students nationwide are studying Hebrew in public schools — and nearly half of them are in Chicago. Nine of the 22 American public schools that offer Hebrew are located in the Chicago area, according to a new report from the Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education. Others are in Minnesota, Ohio, Texas, New York and elsewhere.

Most American students who study Hebrew daily do so in Jewish day schools. A substantial number — in New York, Florida and elsewhere — also attend Hebrew-language charter schools that integrate Hebrew throughout the day. But a growing number of students are studying the language in traditional public schools.

Chicago’s public school Hebrew enrollment has jumped by more than a third in three years, from some 500 in 2016 to 680 today, according to the local Jewish federation. CASJE — a group of academics, teachers and donors working to improve the quality of Jewish education — says the numbers of public school Hebrew students are growing nationwide as well.

Public school Hebrew classes are broadly similar to other public school foreign language instruction. But Jewish parents and local Jewish community leaders appreciate them because they provide students with another link to their Jewish identity. The vast majority of students in the Chicago programs are Jewish, teachers say.

“Here they get to be with Jewish students one period every day,” said Helene Herbstman, whose daughter studied Hebrew in public school and who helped recruit other parents to the Hebrew programs on behalf of the local Jewish federation. “The content was more about Israel. You’re learning how to speak conversational Hebrew. You come out of these bar mitzvah programs [at synagogues], you’re not speaking Hebrew.”

Chicagoland high schools have had Hebrew programs since at least the 1970s, but the number of schools has increased in recent decades thanks largely to the efforts of Peter Friedman, a longtime local Jewish federation executive who died earlier this year. Friedman and Herbstman surveyed area synagogues asking whether parents would support Hebrew programs at their local schools and then encouraged those parents to lobby their school boards for the programs.

Now seven high schools in Chicago suburbs with large Jewish communities offer Hebrew, the largest being Deerfield High with approximately 180 Hebrew students. Last year, two Deerfield middle schools also began offering Hebrew. One high school appears to be phasing out the program.

Anne Lanski, founder and CEO of the iCenter, which holds professional development classes for Hebrew teachers, said public school Hebrew took off in the area because the vast majority of the city’s Jewish high schools are Orthodox, leaving much of the Jewish community looking elsewhere for Jewish enrichment.

“We didn’t have a high school that wasn’t Orthodox for most of our time,” Lanski said. “So the kids who wanted to continue with some engagement provided an audience” for Hebrew classes.

In addition to reading, writing and speaking, classes teach about Israel. In Rosen’s class at Shepard Middle School, students play Taki, an Israeli version of the card game Uno, and learn Krav Maga, the Israeli martial art. Niles North High School, in the historically Jewish suburb of Skokie, has an exchange program where students go to Israel for 10 days and welcome a visiting Israeli contingent to their school.

“It’s not just about a language — it has to be connected to a land and people,” said Yaffa Berman, who has taught Hebrew at Deerfield High for eight years. “We have to invigorate the language in a way that makes it cultural. It has to have an experiential part to it. It has to tell a story.”

Teacher Osnat Lichtenfeld, center, guides students in an eighth-grade Hebrew class at Shepard Middle School, Dec. 13, 2019. (Ben Sales)

Teachers avoid addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict directly, though they do discuss the Israel Defense Forces and Israel’s domestic politics. This year, the Shepard class learned about Israeli elections and the two leading candidates. They have also learned about the standard IDF uniform and the force’s different divisions. One high school class studied Israel’s 1976 hostage rescue operation at Entebbe Airport in Uganda.

“[After Yitzhak] Rabin’s assassination, every kid came to class just waiting, and knowing that there was nowhere else” to discuss the news, said Lanski, who used to teach Hebrew in a Chicago public school. “They knew when they got to Hebrew, they could talk about it and learn about it.”

Since Hebrew is the official language of Israel and Israel is the Jewish state, teaching the language inevitably involves broaching Judaism, which requires something of a balancing act in a public school. To abide by public school guidelines, teachers keep the discussions focused on the cultural. Berman, for example, gave her students sufganiyot, the jelly doughnuts traditionally eaten on Hanukkah, but did not light the menorah or say a blessing. Osnat Lichtenfeld, the Shepard Hebrew teacher, has to remind kids not to ask questions about their bar mitzvahs or bat mitzvahs in class.

But Sharon Avni, who co-wrote the CASJE study with Avital Karpman, said that every language class encounters some kind of cultural-religious tension.

“Religion happens in public school all the time,” said Avni, a language and literacy professor at the City University of New York. “If you go into Spanish class, they might talk about a holiday that’s celebrated, and it’s very much related to the Catholic Church. I’m not necessarily saying they’re doing Jewish [in Hebrew class], but it’s not like religion doesn’t happen in public schooling.”

Advocates of public school Hebrew aren’t worried about the lack of explicitly religious content. For them, it’s enough that students have one period a day where they’re connecting to the language — and each other.

“What’s important about Hebrew is, you’re staying connected to the Jewish community,” Herbstman said. “With less and less people belonging to synagogue, and more and more families dropping out of synagogue after bar mitzvah, this is the one connection your child will still have with Israel.”

“Hebrew language classes in public schools are rare — but they’re on the rise in Chicago’s suburbs,” Ben Sales, JTA, December 23, 2019

“As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together.” (Parker Palmer). As educators, we are driven by questions – some of which we cannot easily answer. Whether a teacher in a classroom, a youth engagement professional, a parent or a rabbi, we all play a role in the education of our children and how we think about these questions and our ability to achieve Palmer’s “authentic self” plays out in our support and development of our youth.

Two years ago, as an initiative of the Cincinnati Jewish Teen Collective, a new cohort for Strategic Israel Engagement Development (SIED) formed to answer one of these ultimate questions: what does the future of Israel engagement and education look like in Cincinnati? This new cohort consists of thirteen senior professionals and educators, representing nine different educational institutions and four denominations – from a seminary to a university to synagogues to a day school. Committing countless hours, our cohort met monthly from January 2018 through August 2019, working on a phenomenally exciting and potentially groundbreaking development of our community’s approach to Israel education and engagement. As one of the ten communities in North America who are a part of the Teen Funder Collaborative, we were able to lead this conversation thanks to our close work and meaningful alignment with the Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati. The Foundation’s work over the past 20 years to establish Israel travel and experiences as a key opportunity for our teens made it possible for us to reflect on our experience and pursue this with initial communal buy in.

Four months ago, we met with the leadership at the Jewish Foundation to discuss the most recent progress of our work. As we met to check in on the upcoming launch of the third phase of our endeavor, one of its directors asked us directly: “Is not one of our goals for Israel education that our teens, for example, foster a positive relationship with Israel?” He raised this question, undoubtedly, as a direct response to our own dancing around the word “positive.”

Interestingly, in the Teen Funder Collaborative, one of the newly identified outcomes for Jewish teens and tweens is that “Jewish teens develop a positive relationship to the land, people and State of Israel.” It may not come as a surprise to you that no word has driven more questions and discussion in Cincinnati, and more broadly, than “positive.”

In the context of Israel education, the questions around the word “positive” can be difficult to answer because of their seemingly political nature. Or, they can be difficult to answer because the word “positive” itself requires some further understanding.

Here is one way to come to an understanding of what “positive” means: Positive, as an adjective, is defined as consisting in or characterized by the presence or possession of features or qualities rather than their absence. Alternatively, it can be defined as constructive, optimistic, or confident. Additionally, if we look at the Hebrew, there are arguably two ways in which to say positive – chiuvi and dargat hapashut. Both are instructive when we consider their etymology. First, chiuvi derives from chiuv, which means “to be obligated by.” As Am Yisrael (the people of Israel), we are indeed obligated to have an ongoing relationship with Israel. In this way, “a positive” relationship similarly means “an existing” relationship. Second, dargat hapashut literally means “a degree of simplicity.” With this explanation, we understand “positive” to mean “more than zero,” such as we might think of positive when we encounter this term in the realm of science or mathematics. One of our great goals, indeed, is to spark, facilitate, and expect some engagement with Israel.

To return to the question, “Is one of our goals for Israel education that our teens, foster a positive relationship with Israel?” For us, the answer wasn’t initially obvious. To understand why, we must describe the evolution of our community’s approach to Israel education and engagement. Six months ago, the SIED Cohort, after a year of thoughtful study that included multiple seminars and a life-changing eleven-day trip to Israel, proposed to our community’s institutional stakeholders (schools, congregations, youth groups, camps and community centers) a list of six guiding principles to inform our work on the ground. Two months ago, our community adopted these principles in a moving ceremony. One of the principles reads: “A healthy environment for Israel engagement contains space for diverse and divergent social, cultural, and political narratives, and is especially essential for productive engagement beyond our community.” If we hold true to our principle, would it not be the case that some of our teens might have a challenging relationship to Israel?

To answer this question, we go back to the text. “Positive” is immediately followed by “relationship.” We looked at what it means to feel positively about one’s own relationship – not the content thereof necessarily, but the existence of a relationship in the first place and a sense of confidence in that relationship.

In one of our recent high school classes, a student expressed her concern about sharing her ambivalence about Israel in a Jewish context. She challenged us to recognize that her ability to express her Jewish self was compromised. How could she participate fully if she isn’t given the tools to feel confident, safe and supported to develop her own relationship to Israel? As educators, we honor her ambivalence, are learning about Israel with her and her peers, and as a result see that she has a relationship with Israel – that is what we mean by positive.

Moreover, another principle reads: “The Cincinnati Jewish community is committed to developing lifelong personal relationships with Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael, Medinat Yisrael, and Torat Yisrael – the Jewish people, the land of Israel, the State of Israel, and the Torah of Israel.” Taken together, these principles express our belief that the young person who struggles with his or her or their relationship to Israel may become the young adult who continues to struggle with elements of their relationship to Israel – but whose relationship is nuanced and sophisticated enough that they find comfort in their views and might routinely visit and even engage in a leadership program and eventually teach about Israel to children. Would that be indicative of a “positive” relationship with Israel? We think so – but we came to this conclusion only after giving much thought to this concept of having a positive relationship.

We share this story and the evolution of our principles because we know that nearly every community is looking for “answers” around Israel education and engagement. The answers and the “right” steps to take may be different everywhere you look. As we enter the third phase of our endeavor toward renewed and reinvigorated Israel education in Cincinnati, our next step is to establish a cadre of coaches who will guide our teens toward their authentic Israel engagement.

So yes, we unabashedly want our children to develop their positive relationship to Israel. We now have a lot of work ahead of us to make this objective a reality. After all, as educators, we believe it is our obligation to do so.

Jeff Blumental is Director of the Cincinnati Jewish Teen Collective. Rabbi Karen Thomashow serves as an Associate Rabbi at Isaac M. Wise Temple in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Cincinnati Jewish Teen Collective is funded by the Jim Joseph Foundation and Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati in partnership with the Mayerson JCC. With gratitude to The iCenter, which has been our partner in the important work of the SIED Cohort.

Source: eJewish Philanthropy

Onward Israel gives students high-quality professional summer internships while aiming to strengthen their Jewish identity

It is hard to believe that only 10 years ago there was no organized summer internship program in Israel for North American Jewish college students wishing to intern overseas.

Cynthia Shapira’s daughter was one of these students. So Cynthia and her husband, David, decided to take action.

As president and chairman, respectively, of the David S. and Karen A. Shapira Foundation, the Shapiras are concerned about Jewish identity and assimilation among young North American Jews.

Their experience as national Jewish communal lay leaders taught them that they needed to meet young people where they are to strengthen their connection to Judaism and to Israel.

“Most college students are focused on their careers,” says Cynthia. “They want to get professional experience and build their resumes before they graduate.”

The Shapiras saw the need for an intermediate alternative to the 10-day Birthright Israel program and the longer-term Masa program.

“Our goal was to create a program that gives the students what they want — high-quality professional summer internships that fit into their college schedules — while we worked toward the aim to strengthen Jewish identity,” says David.

Onward Israel was launched in 2012, assisted by the Jewish Agency. It then became an independent and autonomous organization, working closely with Masa, Birthright, Hillel and local Jewish federations.

The driving motivation is to address the critical question facing the world Jewish community today: In an open society, where all choices and identities are possible, will young Jews choose to remain Jewish?

The Shapiras were instrumental in creating the program and funding formula and providing both intellectual and financial capital.

“I knew that we needed to provide an affordable two-month summer internship with real work experience,” explains Cynthia. “Others wanted to include community-service work, but we were very focused on giving students actual professional experience and Israel engagement opportunities.”

She also insisted on having supervision and a point of contact for parents. For many of the participants it was their first time living on their own in a different country.

David viewed Onward Israel as a startup and brought his business acumen to the table to make sure that there was a secure business model and proof of concept.

Everything needed to align: idea, management, value-added product, ability to attract participants and a new leveraged funding model that brought together strategic partners, programmatic partners and participants.

Major foundations, sharing in the program’s vision, came on board. This included the Jim Joseph Foundation, the William Davidson Foundation, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, the Koret Foundation and the Paul E. Singer Foundation. Continually expanding the strategic partnerships is an essential part of Onward’s growth.

Nearly 12,000 alumni

In Israel, there were logistical hurdles to overcome.

International companies and leading Israeli companies needed to be convinced of the advantage of taking on an English-speaking intern for two months, as this was not part of the business culture in Israel. Finding affordable summer housing, especially in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, was another challenge.

From the beginning, evaluation protocols were put into place. An external evaluator, Rosov Consulting, continually evaluates experience, outcomes and impact measurement. This includes pre- and post-program evaluations, annual evaluations and a three-year longitudinal study.

Onward Israel was launched in 2012 with 265 participants in 12 programs. In the summer of 2019 it had 2,806 people in 99 programs and reached close to 12,000 alumni. The organization’s goal is to reach 5,000 participants annually in the next five years.

Although the original target audience was Jewish students with minimal Jewish background, the program has also become popular among more observant students and even non-Jewish participants.

Onward has significantly changed the internship landscape in Israel. In the beginning, companies were wary. Today, some 1,400 companies work with Onward Israel interns.

Startups are especially receptive as they see the intrinsic value of having English-speaking personnel who can contribute to their team. Internships span Israel’s burgeoning high-tech, business, media, health, education, non-profit and other business sectors.

Both company mentors and students report high rates of satisfaction with the experience. A large percentage of students feel that they are given real responsibility and gain valuable work experience.

A longitudinal alumni study, A Deep Dive into Onward Israel’s Contribution to Alumni’s Personal and Professional Trajectories, showed that three years on 73% of graduates increased or maintained their involvement in Jewish and Israel-related activities, 68% felt a strong connection to their Jewish identity, 55% retained an emotional connection to Israel and 48% felt that their professional choices were influenced by their Onward internship, with the majority in finance, engineering and high tech.

“We love the statistics, and they are very important,” say the Shapiras. “We also meet with students all the time, hear their thoughts and their stories and listen to their recommendations. We then work with Onward management to try to improve the program accordingly.”

“Onward Israel does everything it can to make sure that our customers, Jewish students around the world, are satisfied with their professional and personal experience,” say the Shapiras. “This is a pivotal time in their lives as they define career goals and make important decisions about personal and communal identities.”

Lisa Samin is a Jerusalem-based resource development and marketing communications consultant for non-profits. She works with Onward Israel to expand its partnership base.

This summer, a student from Onward Israel, Anna Wachspress, joined ISRAEL21c as a photographic intern.

Source: “Israel is Now a Hot Spot for College Summer Internships,” Lisa Samin, The Jewish Voice, December 4, 2019

Marking its 10th year, Repair the World attracts young people — and critics — to its mission for social justice.

Jonathan Cohen, a former fellow at the growing social justice organization Repair the World, did not expect the volunteer position to involve confronting the police.

In April 2016, Cohen, now 27, saw a teenage student of his from the East New York Family Academy, where he was working as part of his fellowship, being held against a wall on a subway platform in East New York by two armed police officers. He intervened, asking the officers what was going on and vouching for the good character of his student. The officers — who thought the young man had started a fire on the tracks, a suspicion that proved to be unfounded — agreed to release him, and Cohen accompanied his student home.

“I lived an experience first-hand which Repair the World has trained the fellows for since the beginning: To truly understand your own privilege, you have to confront the realities of others,” Cohen wrote in a blog post about the incident hours later.

Since Repair the World’s launch 10 years ago, the national organization has thrived by equipping young Jews with the tools to tackle pressing needs in their local communities, ranging from food insecurity and housing and education issues to interfaith cooperation and dialogue.

The mission seems to be working: In 2014, Repair’s “Communities” program drew 5,000 participants in four communities; in the 2018-19 program year, the program exceeded its goal of 30,000 participants in nine communities, including, most recently, Chicago and Atlanta. Since 2013, the organization has engaged a total of 72,000 participants, contributing 220,000 volunteer hours to 1,300 partner organizations.

In some ways, the group is swimming against a generational tide. Studies indicate that millennials and members of Gen Z are increasingly detached from Jewish institutional life. A March 2014 Pew Research Center survey pointed to a precipitous drop in synagogue attendance among young Jews. Pew’s “Portrait of American Jews,” from a year earlier, found that nearly a third of young Jews define themselves as having no religion.

The Repair the World office in Crown Heights, with new president and CEO, Cindy Greenberg, second from right, and Repair fellows Brenna Rosen and Andrew Davidoff. Hannah Dreyfus/JW

Yet Repair the World seems to have found a language — and a worldview — that speaks to younger Jews. And it is doing so by casting Jewish values in universalistic rather than particularistic terms.

“For young people, the question of living Jewish values authentically is central,” said Cindy Greenberg, Repair the World’s recently appointed president and CEO. (Prior to her appointment, Greenberg founded Repair the World NYC, an affiliate that mobilized more than 30,000 volunteers to meet local needs in Central Brooklyn and Harlem.)

“Service is actually at the core of the Jewish narrative,” said Greenberg. It is, she says, a mission that “aligns itself with what young people are interested in today.” According to statistics gathered in the organization’s annual survey, 85 percent of Repair participants believe service should be a central part of Jewish life; 91 percent reported caring more about being part of the Jewish community because of their service experience.

A report released in 2016 by the New York-based Jewish Education Project found that Jewish members of Gen Z are largely invested in becoming “better human beings” rather than participating in conventional religious practices, like attending synagogue.

The study found that while Jewish teenagers take deep pride in their tribal Jewish identity, they are largely checking out of traditional kinds of Jewish engagement.

“The report sets out a new way of looking at success when it comes to Jewish teen engagement today,” said David Bryfman, chief executive officer at JEP, a nonprofit that works with Jewish educators and clergy. “We can’t keep asking the questions we used to ask, like ‘How can we get more members?’ or ‘How can our programs make kids more Jewish?’ If we want to reach Jewish teens today, the question has to be ‘how can this program make teens more successful as human beings?’”

At the same time, organizations like Repair the World (and American Jewish World Service before it) have been accused by the Jewish right of stripping the notion of tikkun olam — Hebrew for “repairing the world” — of its Jewishness and for using social justice as a pretext for pressing liberal policies tied to the Democratic Party.

In his 2018 book, “To Heal the World?: How the Jewish Left Corrupts Judaism and Endangers Israel,” British author Jonathan Neumann accuses liberal Judaism of co-opting tikkun olam to advance a narrow — and sometimes anti-Zionist — social agenda. Earlier this year, academic Joel Kotkin argued in Tablet Magazine that the “social justice” brand of Judaism disdains “heritage, spirituality, and family,” and as a result is unlikely to reverse the steeply declining memberships at synagogues and other religious institutions across the U.S.

Greenberg rejects those critiques.

“We believe the opposite,” she wrote in a statement. “The pursuit of a just and ethical society and the imperative to care for our vulnerable neighbors is one of the central themes throughout the entire Jewish narrative. At Repair the World, we believe authentic service, meeting pressing local needs in our communities, is something all Jews can agree is important. Service is a valuable and meaningful expression of Jewish practice.”

Values And Privilege

During his year as a fellow, Cohen spent two days a week volunteering for a local nonprofit that provides technology education to young, low-income students across Brooklyn. Though Cohen, originally from Miami, was accustomed to diverse settings — he himself is half Mexican and has relatives from Trinidad — he was not prepared for the metal detectors at every school entrance, armed security guards and casual violence that frequently brought students to class with torn clothing and blackened eyes.

“I felt like I was living my Jewish values by stepping up for others,” said Cohen. “To use my privilege for good made me feel like I was putting Judaism into practice.” The experience, he said, challenged him to redefine Judaism as “not just a religion. It’s a way of thinking and living so that you can stand up for others.”

“Service is the best of Judaism,” he said, quoting the notion from Talmud (Sanhedrin 4:1) that “saving one person is like saving the world.” Today, he serves as the program manager for Repair the World in Miami where he helps manage five fellows and continues working with local nonprofits on education issues.

Brenna Rosen, 22, applied for the Repair the World service fellowship directly after graduating last spring from the University of Pittsburgh. Though she grew up attending a Reform congregation, her Jewish involvement felt “more cultural and social than personal” until she started to ramp up her service work in college.

Rosen, who studied psychology and religious studies, got involved with Challah for Hunger while on campus. The start-up mobilized college students to bake and sell challah and donate proceeds to social justice causes. The “hands-on” experience brought her face to face with how her “Jewish values could be translated into action.”

“People in my generation are looking to make Judaism their own,” said Rosen. “We’re looking to create impact in our local and global communities.”

Loren Shatten, 28, an alum of Repair the World’s Philadelphia chapter and today the interim chief executive officer of Challah for Hunger, agrees: She says pairing “Jewish values and volunteerism” can keep young people engaged in a way conventional services cannot.

While Shatten “grew up in a Conservative home,” including attending High Holiday services and family celebrations, service work is what allowed her to “come into my own Jewishly.”

Between 2013 and 2015, she served as a Repair the World fellow in Philadelphia, volunteering 20 hours a week for nonprofits working on education and food issues.

“The experience with Repair was my entry point into the working world, and has prepared me to lead my current organization,” said the millennial CEO. She is also the youngest member of Repair the World’s national board of directors.

Repair the World also taps into Jewish traditions beyond the synagogue and study hall – namely, the kind of historic activism that led to Jewish labor unions, housing cooperatives and settlement houses.

Part of that work, said Greenberg, is focusing on gentrification and neighborhood change in communities where Repair has taken root, from Detroit to Baltimore to Brooklyn. Since first opening the Crown Heights location in 2015, Repair fellows have watched coffee shops replace barber shops, and luxury high-rise apartment buildings replace affordable housing.

Andrew Davidov, program manager for Repair’s Brooklyn branch and one of its inaugural fellows, described his close friendship with a local barber, whose shop used to be a few storefronts down from the Repair the World space. As rents nearby increased, his barber was forced to pack up shop and move to the “other side” of Eastern Parkway, where rents remained more affordable. “I wandered into his chair a few years ago, and he’s taken care of me since,” he said.

Davidov, 27, whose grandparents lived in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side after immigrating to America after the Holocaust, says, “I want to give back to the community that gave so much to them.”

I heard so many voices – in the hallways, in our small table discussions, and in quiet conversations around the conference center – that I have been waiting to hear for many years. Young voices, older voices, from all walks of life and backgrounds – all bringing new insights and passion to our profession, and marveled at the thought of how this will actually change us as we move forward. I walked behind a group of young professionals yesterday morning… smiling to myself at their enthusiasm and their savvy. I know our community continues to be in good hands, and that nothing is lost but only gained in abundance by listening intently to what they are telling us. And then acting on it together.”
– Beth Mann, Vice President, Institutional Advancement, JFNA; JPRO Board Member

The energy was resounding. The experience was unique. What was the secret sauce that made JPRO19: What Connects Us a game-changer?

Wait. What was JPRO19? Here is a window into the experience that 580 of Jewish community professionals from 228 organizations and 29 states and provinces shared this summer in Detroit:

Since the conference, we have reflected, read and reread feedback, and analyzed survey results to distill the essential ingredients of JPRO19. As best as we can tell, here they are:

1. Begin with purpose, then blend thoroughly with play;
2. Welcome, connect, repeat;
3. Throw away the recipe.

Purpose and Play

There was a lot of playtime at JPRO19: Corn hole! A stilt-walking juggler! The first official Jewish Connect Four Tournament! (Congratulations again to the delegations from Cleveland and Pittsburgh, our champion and runner up from a competitive 16 team bracket.) That said, the JPRO19 committee started with purpose. We sought to:

• Enable participants to build enduring connections across diverse roles, organizations, generations, and geography;
• Engage with Detroit as a learning laboratory;
• Provide a “choose-your-own-adventure” array of learning opportunities, applicable to far-ranging professional roles and career stages.

JPRO Network serves the entirety of our diverse Jewish organizational landscape, which means that many different challenges and opportunities characterize our participants’ day-to-day. Following many stakeholder conversations, we selected four pressing issues as programmatic themes: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ); Civil Discourse in Complex Times; Designing Workplaces for the Future; and Building Resilient Communities. We then invited colleague organizations leading in those areas to serve as our programmatic partners and – of course – each one brought their A game. Of special note: The session, “Jews of Color, Our Multiracial Jewish Communities, Our Work As Leaders” taught by Ilana Kaufman, Executive Director of the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative and sponsored by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation as part of our DEIJ programming attracted exceptional interest and feedback.

JPRO is doing an incredible service to the Jewish community by providing professionals with the support and the tools that they need for success, alongside discussions about some of the most vexing issues that our communities face.
– Dr. Elana Stein Hain, Scholar in Residence and Director of Faculty, Shalom Hartman Institute of North America

Purpose and play could have existed in parallel, as two separate elements of JPRO19 but we intentionally blended them:

• Steal This (which we, in turn, stole from 100Kin10) and Pop-up Workshops provided peer-to-peer learning opportunities for bite-sized learning during extended breaks from theme programming, creating a “choose-your-own-adventure” vibe.
• That Connect Four tournament: it wasn’t only a game. It built team spirit within and among the city-based delegations at JPRO19 and set up the closing program, Connect More.

JPRO19 blended purpose and play because we do our best learning when our whole selves are engaged and because there is a deep joy and privilege to working with and on behalf of our Jewish communities. Mostly, we blended purpose and play because JPRO Network’s leadership treasures and enjoys the people in our professional community and it really is a delight to be together.

Welcome, Connect, Repeat

“On the way home, a colleague shared that after many years working at a Jewish organization the conference made her now feel like a Jewish professional. That right there sums it all up. WIN!!”

In order to connect, everyone at JPRO19 needed to be explicitly welcomed and included. We thought about the person who is brand-new to the field, the person attending a professional conference for the very first time, the person who isn’t Jewish at a very Jewish-feeling conference. Conferences can feel like reunions, which can feel intimidating and off-putting to those who aren’t seeing familiar faces. JPRO Network wants and needs everyone to feel like an insider. We also learned a lot about diversity and inclusion along the way and have more work to do to truly walk that talk.

We embraced our chutzpah and asked senior professionals to spend hours of the conference as greeters, handing out gifts, and saying goodbye. What might have seemed like a big ask in other contexts was eagerly embraced by our ambassadors, a group of 35 JPRO champions, comprised of key colleagues in Detroit, the JPRO Network Board, and the conference committee. Having VIPs doing the welcoming was vital to setting the tone.

“I am early in my career, and I felt encouraged, validated, and empowered by stories and messages I heard from JPRO presenters and participants. A successful career as a Jewish leader feels like a more real possibility now.”

Throw Away the Recipe

“I was very touched to be a part of this gathering. I gained from colleagues and appreciated that national ‘experts’ weren’t paraded in front of us. We learned from each other, which encourages me to think about what I want to continue to learn from colleagues and what I have to contribute.”

When envisioning JPRO19, we took a deep breath and committed to letting go of any assumptions about how to structure a conference. Being bold in our thinking meant we had to get comfortable with not knowing what this thing would look like. Risk-taking is a team sport. Our funding partners supported the big ideas for JPRO19 before we were able to be specific about how it would all land. Our Nachshons, the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit and the William Davidson Foundation, took a real leap of faith by stepping up first to make JPRO19 possible and giving the JPRO team the keys to the city.

Before there was a conference schedule, the committee turned to our goals and dreamed about how to make them happen. For example:

• Enable participants to build enduring connections across diverse roles, organizations, generations, and geography. On one hand: structured opportunities like WellAdvised Live; the “What Connects Us?” video booth; and a plenary session that had all 580 of us learning in chavrutah. On the other hand: a warm, energized environment with a lot of informal time to connect.
• Engage with Detroit as a learning laboratory. Immersive experiences at ten innovative hometown locations, each opportunities tied to one of the four conference themes. A large cadre of participants from Detroit who brought Jewish Detroit’s intrepid spirit to the fore.
• Provide a “choose-your-own-adventure” set of learning opportunities, directly applicable to far-ranging professional roles and career stages. Optional three-hour JPRO Master Classes. The Connect Lounge, our very own “professional development amusement park” with nine zones of activity and dozens of ways for participants to engage with purpose/play tied to their own career aspirations.

We also started with the assumption that the expertise is already “in the room.” Professionals at all career stages interviewed C-suite colleagues during the “Teams and Dreams” plenary; more than 50 of our colleagues helped facilitate “Connect More.” All together, more than one third of all attendees spoke, led, presented, facilitated, interviewed, or otherwise brought to help make the magic happen.

An article about what made JPRO19 a resounding success would not be complete without one more not-so-secret secret. We made a mess. We cleaned it up. And then we made another mess. There were false starts, eggs broken, batches thrown out, and sleepless nights. We learned from many, many mistakes along the way. We will pave the road to the next JPRO conference with those learnings.

“Every moment at JPRO19 was given immense thought and planning – and it showed. Just as important, nearly every conference moment had elements of experimentation and risk-taking as well. This is a mindset and approach our sector can emulate as we work to inspire more people through meaningful Jewish life.”
– Barry Finestone, President and CEO, Jim Joseph Foundation

The secret sauce of JPRO19 is that we were able to come together to harness the talent, creativity, drive, and enthusiasm that already exists in our workforce. Together, we magnified and refracted it across and beyond all of us who came together to explore What Connects Us.

Just like we threw away the recipe when cooking up JPRO19, we are closing this piece in an unconventional way. With YOU, the professional who JPRO exists to serve. Please drop us a line here to tell us what JPRO Network means to you, what you hope to see from us next, or how we can better support your work and career. We will compile all responses and share them without attribution in JPRO Network’s final newsletter of 2019.

Audra Berg is the Board Chair of JPRO Network and Vice President, Leadership Engagement and Board Relations, at the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. Ilana Aisen is the CEO of JPRO Network.

Source: “JPRO19: What Connected Us?,” eJewish Philanthropy, December 2, 2019