Today’s Investments for Future Impact: How a Network Organization Leads a Field

Reflections from the Prizmah Conference

A joy of being part of the funder-grantee relationship is experiencing the grantee-partner’s work first-hand. In particular, I am grateful that the Jim Joseph Foundation prioritizes staff time to experience field-wide gatherings hosted by grantee-partners, many of which are occurring for the first time following the height of the pandemic.

Recently, I was privileged to attend the Prizmah conference in Denver, where I learned alongside educators, education leaders, lay leaders, content experts, funders and other inspiring colleagues. While I was a little nervous congregating with so many people again, I was immediately put at ease by the warmth and creative energy that was palpable throughout the conference (as well as thoughtfully planned break time to breathe in the fresh Colorado air).

Experiencing the conference reinforced for me the importance of investments in network organizations. These organizations, such as Foundation for Jewish Camp, JCCA, along with Prizmah and others, are uniquely positioned to bring together many diverse voices in the field to celebrate and learn from each other’s successes, while also addressing challenges and imagining and planning for a vibrant Jewish future.

Now in its seventh year as an organization, Prizmah’s conference exemplified its readiness to sustain and grow the day school field by supporting the people and schools who positively influence young learners and help develop them into leaders. Here are some insights into how Prizmah leveraged the conference to pursue this vision:

  • A Platform for Futurist Thinking – By bringing education futurists to speak at the conference, Prizmah helped reinforce the need for day schools to anticipate not just what families and educators want now, but to think about these needs with a long-term view, ten, twenty years out. What should Jewish/secular curriculum look like then? What will parent engagement need to account for then? What will student and educator needs be at that time? What will an endowment look like that ensures financial stability and offers long-term affordability models? Many conference participants had already begun to think in this way and about these questions, but futurist speakers like Lisa Kay Solomon, Ariel Raz, and Louie Montoya helped to inspire, prioritize, and concretize how to develop plans with a level of specificity that address these areas.
  • An Investment in the Entire Ecosystem – Prizmah has a very holistic approach to the day school field’s opportunities and challenges. In this regard, Prizmah as a network organization is a conduit for the Foundation to invest in educators that influence myriad learners, families, and communities each year. At the conference, while some of the conversations focused on the local level, it was clear that people were craving macro level systemic content and resources. Conference participants, for example, wanted to hear how Prizmah network members and partners are addressing educator pipeline, recruitment, and retention challenges. While these are three distinct challenges, they are also clearly related. Prizmah, as the field leader, can help craft potential solutions to solve one of the challenges in ways that account for the relationship between all three. This complex set of issues is an area of interest to the Jim Joseph Foundation as it relates to not only day school education but the broader Jewish education sector as well.
  • Relevant and Timely Programming and Resources – The theme of the Prizmah conference, Creative Spirit, says it all. This mindset was evident in every detail of the conference program design as well as all that Prizmah offers to its network members and beyond. In addition to the speakers, learning sessions, and networking, the conference provided a real time space for organizations to share their resources and address nearly anything a day school education leader would need to support their educators and, in turn, their students and families. From youth mental health, to diversity, equity, and inclusion, to digital technology tools, network organizations are able to offer support through these gatherings at the individual, community, and macro levels. And while virtual conferences can be valuable, especially when being physically together is not an option, there is no substitute for in-person gatherings and resource sharing.

Prizmah is a partner that both thinks granularly and also with a larger “systems lens.” This perspective is critical in developing viable interventions at a scale that leads to field-wide solutions. Forward-thinking thought leadership, partnerships, collaborations, and investments will help build a shared vision for the future of Jewish day schools. I am proud to work alongside our Prizmah colleagues and other strategic partners to support these efforts so that more educators are well positioned to positively influence the lives of young people today and in the future.

 

 

Repair the World’s Focus on Jewish Education

Every year, tens of thousands of Jewish young adults serve with Repair the World, addressing pressing local needs while tying their service directly to Jewish wisdom and teachings. For many of these young adults, service is their entry point to Jewish life; Repair engages them at the critical intersection of service, Jewish learning, and the shared passion for a more just world.

Repair’s approach to Jewish education has always been at the heart of their work. In recent years, they deepened their commitment to their Jewish educational strategy, elevating service as a bold expression of engaging in Jewish life. The organization set out to build a culture and strategy that centers Jewish education and works toward ingraining Jewish service in support of social change as a cornerstone of Jewish life.

Repair the World volunteers painting

Repair recognized at the beginning of this process that they would need to commit fully to this shift, naming their education strategy a top organizational priority and aligning budgets and hiring accordingly. They created new organizational values that centered the core Jewish values that drive their work, and built an adaptive strategic plan to ensure consistency in Jewish education throughout its programming. Repair’s multi-step process to evaluate, ideate, and create this culture led to new organizational partnerships, resources and education tools, and a multi-year educational strategy created in deep partnership with M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education. Now, every act of service powered by Repair builds meaningful connections to Jewish service, Jewish culture and community, and participants’ commitments to their own Jewish selfhood.

There is no question that the education and learning component of our approach to service enhances the experience, creating an opportunity for young adults to learn more about justice issues and the many ways Judaism has addressed each of these issues. For many, Repair the World is their Jewish community, giving us the chance to draw meaningful connections and learning together, both from a Jewish educational standpoint and from one another. As our Jewish Education Team continues to provide us with incredible resources, I have no doubt our impact will only strengthen in the future.
– Samantha Berinsky, Atlanta City Director, Repair the World

Repair understood that to pursue this new strategy, its professional team would have to include people who are experts in Jewish education. In 2021, Rabbi Jessy Dressin joined Repair as the senior director of Jewish education. She received the support and resources to build a team of talented and experienced educators who are critical to actualizing the strategy. Under Rabbi Jessy and her team’s leadership, Repair collaborates with consultants and leading Jewish educators to facilitate learning for all Repair staff.

Repair’s new Jewish educational strategy focuses first on training and supporting staff to feel confident and empowered in developing andRepair the World volunteers cleaning up playground delivering Jewish service-learning content. One new resource for staff is the Repair Facilitator’s Toolkit, a 38-card deck of “grab and go” cards that equip facilitators with key resources to connect participants to Jewish service. This toolkit includes a series of “core tensions” cards that help to engage with the broader landscape of questions and considerations that arise when people participate in direct service. Repair explicitly leans into these core tensions, such as tradition vs. renewal, to deepen participants’ connection to their service and Jewish values.

This investment supports staff who lead Jewish learning on their journey from new to experienced facilitators. Other Repair investments in Jewish education include one-on-one chevruta learning through the Jewish Learning Collaborative (JLC) in partnership with Moishe House, quarterly facilitator workshops, monthly meetings for program staff to collaborate, regular Torah l’shma (learning for its own sake) opportunities for staff, and more.

My favorite part of Repair’s programming has always been the opportunity it holds to spark transformation. I can think of so many “aha” moments participants have had, not only during the service itself, but after being exposed to a new piece of contextual Jewish education. In my work now, I supervise alumni who are creating these gatherings for their own communities. I couldn’t be more excited to bring these new Jewish education resources to them. It’ll allow for a deeper and broader exposure to Jewish service-learning, as well as a more accessible leadership opportunity for alumni who have never facilitated something like this before.
– Rose Capin, Alumni Engagement Associate, Repair the World

This internal culture shift at Repair is resulting in a profoundly deepened Jewish experience for participants and partners. By investing first in building strong Jewish educators and facilitators, Repair is laying a strong and sustainable foundation for Jewish service nationwide. The effects of this investment are already shining through, as 84% of participants said that serving with Repair provided them with an entry point to do good in the world through a Jewish lens. By connecting participants’ service and experience directly to enriching Jewish education, Repair is creating a Jewish community coalescing around the commitment to repairing the world through service.

Learn more at werepair.org. The Jim Joseph Foundation is a funder of Repair the World.

 

 

 

 

Growing number of young Jews turning to service to express their Jewish values

When Jon Cohen was in college a decade ago studying biology and chemistry with plans for medical school, he knew he wanted to make a difference in the world beyond the Florida State University campus in Tallahassee.

So he and some friends decided to launch a community project teaching science to children from low-income households living nearby. Every Friday, they’d conduct experiments with the kids designed to spark excitement and curiosity about the world around them in a way that would leave an impact on them beyond school.

The idea of service was something Cohen had grown up with in his more affluent Miami suburb, and he wanted to take some time off between college and medical school to devote to it. When, as a college senior, Cohen saw an email about a Jewish service fellowship with Repair the World, he applied.

“I was really interested in seeing what justice-minded Judaism was like,” Cohen recalls.

His family didn’t practice Judaism framed through the lens of morals and values, he said, but rather through rituals like Sabbath observances and attending synagogue. He didn’t go to a Jewish day school or summer camp, he didn’t know Hebrew, and when his parents divorced, they stopped observing Shabbat, leaving Cohen with few pathways for Jewish connection.

When Cohen started his fellowship in New York for Repair the World, he realized he had found a different model for Jewish action — one that felt more meaningful. Cohen worked with Digital Girl, an organization that teaches computer coding to kids of all genders in underfunded schools in neighborhoods like Chinatown, Bedford-Stuyvesant and East New York where many people live in poverty.

Cohen is one of over 230 people who have “served” full-time through Repair the World’s fellowship. Another 740 have completed Repair’s service corps, a three-month, part-time Jewish service learning program for young adults. Since 2009, Repair has partnered with approximately 2,880 service organizations, resulting in over 516,000 acts of service and learning. The goal is to reach 1 million by 2026.

This kind of Jewish engagement is indicative of a sea change in the Jewish communal world: Service is now an integral part of American Jewish life and a meaningful form of Jewish expression, especially for younger adults. Service projects increasingly are how American Jews put their faith into practice and find purpose through humanitarian acts.

“Younger generations are deeply passionate about making the world a better place and improving their communities,” said Robb Lippitt, chair of Repair the World’s board of directors. “Connecting this passion to their Jewish values is something that Repair does really well.”

The organization sends Jewish young adults to serve both with Jewish and non-Jewish organizations addressing needs such as food, housing, and other local needs. Repair the World’s activities are structured with an eye toward making them meaningful Jewish experiences.

“Everything we do is done through both a Jewish and a social impact lens,” said Cindy Greenberg, Repair’s president and CEO. “In addition to hands-on service, we look at the issue area at hand and ask: Why is my service needed? What are the underlying societal challenges impacting this issue and how might it be healed? And what does Jewish wisdom have to say about these challenges and our obligation to repair the world?”

Janu Mendel, the Southeast regional director of Repair the World, tends to vegetation at a local community farm in Miami. (Courtesy of Repair the World)

Greenberg said expanding the Jewish service movement will lead to a flourishing Jewish community and strengthen society generally.

Repair the World was founded 13 years ago to make service a defining element of Jewish life. Since then, studies have shown that Jewish young adults increasingly express their Jewish identity by caring for the vulnerable.

“Over 13 years, Repair the World has been the driving force of the Jewish service movement, ensuring that these experiences are grounded in serious Jewish learning,” said Barry Finestone, president and CEO of the Jim Joseph Foundation, one of Repair’s funders. “Repairs organizational partnerships, fellowship programs, and proven best practices define the movement today — and enable so many to find purpose in Jewish life while creating change.”

While most of those who serve with Repair — about three quarters — are Jewish, much of the impact is in non-Jewish communities. About eight years ago, for example, the organization began partnering with St. John’s Bread and Life, a faith-based emergency food provider in Brooklyn that operates a food pantry, serves hot meals and hosts a mobile kitchen.

St. John’s serves approximately 1,000 hot meals a day, according to Sister Marie Sorenson, the chaplain there. The current Repair the World fellow serving with St. John’s has continued volunteer outreach, ensuring that unhoused and food-insecure individuals and families in the neighborhood have their nutritional needs met with compassion and respect. Repair also has organized volunteers to give thousands of toiletries, personal hygiene kits, baby wipes, diapers and baby formula to clients of St. John’s.

“Because we are both faith-based service organizations, we have really connected well with each other,” Sorenson said.

This commitment to food justice is connected to Repair’s service impact nationwide. Repair has mobilized volunteers to donate 200,000 pounds of food and prepared or served more than 100,000 meals to people in need throughout the country.

In the partnership with St. John’s, the Christian participants tend to be locals who have extra time or are retirees, whereas the Repair volunteers are “young people who value service, who value giving back to the community,” Sorenson noted.

Repair is funded by a wide array of supporters, including Jewish federations across the country, the Jim Joseph Foundation, and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies. Repair’s expansive pandemic response, Serve the Moment, drew funding from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott and the Jewish Communal Response and Impact Fund, known as JCRIF.

Repair has also invested significantly in partnerships with other Jewish organizations to maximize reach and impact.

“The power of Repair’s model is the opportunity it provides for young adult volunteers to learn from and work in deep partnership with the communities they are serving — while engaging in Jewish life and learning,” said Lisa Eisen, Repair’s founding board chair and co-president of Schusterman Family Philanthropies. “We saw this so clearly through the pandemic, when Repair mobilized tens of thousands of young Jews to support people in need while also providing an avenue for them to stay connected to each other and Jewish community.”

Eric Fingerhut, the president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, described service programs as a gateway to greater Jewish involvement. “We believe service is a powerful tool for expanding engagement in Jewish life across the system,” Fingerhut said.

Volunteers paint and restore a community space during MLK Weekend of service in New York. (Shulamit Photo + Video)

Lippitt, Repair’s board chair, noted that Repair’s service work is especially important given the divisions in the country right now.

“It’s a vitally important bridge-building experience with our neighbors in these divided times,” he said. “The benefits that come at this moment in American history of getting out in the community and serving alongside people who may not see the world as you do are just immense for the community and for society.”

Many of the young Jews who work with Repair the World come from cohorts that traditional Jewish organizations have struggled to reach. In the most recent data collected by the organization, Repair found that between 19 and 25% of participants identify as having a disability; 25% of participants and 44% of corps members identify as non-white; and 75% of fellows, 42% of corps members, and 22% of participants identify as LGBTQ.

After Jon Cohen finished his yearlong fellowship with Repair, he went to medical school as planned, but he soon realized it wasn’t the path he wanted. When an opportunity came up to join Repair’s staff in Miami, he jumped at the opportunity, staying for three years. He now is the director of community mobilization at Keshet, the Jewish LGBTQ+ rights organization, and serves on Repair’s board of directors.

“Service has always been something that was important to me but never existed through Judaism until I did the fellowship,” Cohen said of his experience. “It was groundbreaking for me to learn about tikkun olam and all of my Jewish values. It was such an educational experience, and now I feel so proudly and passionately Jewish because of the foundation Repair the World gave me.”

How Culture Change and Data Gathering Go Hand in Hand

Earlier this year, the Foundation shared its strategy around DEI. As 2022 concludes, Stacie Cherner, Director of Evaluation and Learning at the Jim Joseph Foundation, reflects on the process of culture change and data gathering in this context, progress made, and the work to do moving forward.

In 2017 the Jim Joseph Foundation entered a two-year process to develop a new strategic framework for grantmaking. We began with fundamental questions: What had we learned in the years since the Foundation began? How has Jewish education in the United States (which is the core focus of our funding) evolved? What could we uniquely contribute to this field during the next phase of our work?

As we’ve articulated, the Foundation believes that Jewish learning and the Jewish community will be richer when leaders, educators, and participants better reflect the full diversity of today’s Jewish population. Working toward this vision has been a priority of the Foundation’s for many years. However, developing a new strategic framework provided an opportunity to be even more explicit about this work by adding “engaging diverse voices and partners” as one of our core guiding principles.  Today, we elevate this principle in our grantmaking strategies, in our hands-on work with grantee partners, and in every department of the Foundation.

Throughout the Foundation’s two-year process, we relied on trusted partners to help us learn about needs to address in this area and some best practices to do so. In particular, the Jews of Color Initiative’s Counting Inconsistencies and Beyond the Count reports concretized our learning that, while exact numbers may be unknown, a large percentage of Jews of Color experience racism in Jewish settings and are marginalized. In addition, they are woefully underrepresented in positions of leadership in organizations in our community.

This learning added urgency to our commitment to elevate diverse voices and perspectives both internally and in our external communications. This includes how we build teams, seek consultants, make grants, build internal processes, and share learnings and information. In this regard, the Foundation itself has undergone a culture change in how we think about and approach work in this space.

We made strides this year in articulating what success looks like—such as more grantees elevating DEI in their work—as a result of making these commitments. The Foundation also asked questions and gathered data and insights related to our portfolios of grants, looking at investments across sets or groups of grantees. We restarted a data collection method—an annual survey of grantees—that we paused during strategic planning. In sync with our value of data-informed decision making, we piloted a new version of our annual grantee survey to ask about participation rates (how many people were reached and how often), and we added new questions to help us understand to what extent these participants represent the diversity of the Jewish community.

We know these data collection methods are new for most and the language and questions themselves are appropriately evolving. But most important to us at this moment is whether our grantees are even trying to collect this important information. If more and more say “yes, we know the answer to this question” instead of “we don’t know the answer because we don’t collect that information,” then we can ascertain that progress is being made. At the same time, we understand that culture change does not happen without a commitment by the organization’s leaders. We include additional questions on our survey about the diversity of boards and senior leadership teams.

Finally, this year, we also collected diversity indicators for our leadership at the Foundation. Concurrent to that, we doubled down on our efforts to build a diverse team as we fill open positions on our board and staff. We have integrated these goals into recent searches by working with consultants to identify diverse pools of candidates beyond our direct networks and through specialized anti-bias training for interviewers. On the program side, we are also investing in a new assessment of our investments to elevate diversity through the programming, advocacy, and research of organizations such as JIMENA, Keshet, the Safety Respect Equity Network, and the Jews of Color Initiative.

Culture change is deep, and often challenging work. Asking these types of questions is one catalyst, we believe, to creating large-scale change. If we don’t ask, we don’t communicate that we want to learn and see these changes occur. By asking these questions, the Foundation is inviting our partners to learn with us. We believe a proactive intention to create a culture of belonging within the programs we support and to bring in a multitude of voices in leadership makes for the best decision making and has the greatest potential to expand opportunities for connection, meaning, and purpose for young Jews, their families, and friends. We have explored our own assumptions and looked to uncover bias. Going forward, we are ready to continue listening, learning, and changing.

 

 

Shmita-Scale Learning: JOFEE Leaders Reflect on the Past Seven Years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Wilderness Torah participant commented:

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

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

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

One teen commented:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Berman Archive: Documenting American Jewish Communities

The Berman Archive (bermanarchive.stanford.edu) is the new starting point for anyone engaging with American Jewish communal life—be it academic, professional, or religious—and is a repository for the reflections and expressions of American Jewish professionals today. As the largest open-access, digital archive of printed material about the subject, the Berman Archive’s holdings are a vast trove of insights, observations, data, reports, and perspectives on organized Jewish life and service—valuable glimpses into the past for today’s professionals, scholars, and inquiring minds.

Formerly the Berman Jewish Policy Archive, the rebranded, refreshed platform is more user-friendly than ever, reconfigured to make it easier to search for and find desired content. Organizations and individuals are invited to contribute (by emailing [email protected]) to the ever-growing collection of resources that are vital for collecting, preserving, and sharing ideas, data, and points of view that define and sustain the American Jewish experience. The Berman Archive houses material typically produced outside traditional academic and commercial spheres, but which nevertheless provide insights into the long-lasting trends and persistent concerns about Jewish life in North America. This includes material about small, defunct organizations, quirky collective efforts, and historically underrepresented groups in American Jewish life. Reports, writing, and publication that might otherwise be lost to history or shoved in the back of a file cabinet—but that shine light on the true diversity of American Jewish life—are welcomed content on the platform.

We want the Berman Archive to be a catalyst for new perspectives in the Jewish world. Considering the past is key to working in an informed and curious way and we hope to be that point of connection for the Jewish community.
– Dr. Ari Y Kelman, Director of the Berman Archive

Berman Archive

Berman Archive new brand

The Berman Archive is committed to ongoing critical engagement with its holdings and invites comment, criticism, essays, and contributions from current professionals and scholars engaged with the American Jewish community. Moving forward, the Berman Archive will also feature and host events and initiatives. To sustain and expand all of its efforts, the Berman Archive welcomes additional support.

Visit bermanarchive.stanford.edu. The Berman Archive is led by Dr. Ari Y Kelman and is a project of the Concentration in Education and Jewish Studies at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education, and is a partner with the Berman Jewish DataBank at the Jewish Federations of North America. The Berman Archive is sustained by the support of the Mandell L. and Madeleine H. Berman Foundation and the Jim Joseph Foundation.

2022 Standards Self-Assessment Membership Report

The 2022 Standards Self-Assessment Membership (SSA) Report shares the new findings of how the SRE Network member organizations have grown this past year, their common strengths, and the areas for improvement in the year ahead.

The report reveals that SRE Network member organizations are successfully making gradual and steady progress along their journeys to building safer, more respectful, and equitable workplaces and communal spaces. And there is still more room to improve.

 

Key Findings

  • Overall, organizations improved in the last year. 50% of organizations improved from 2021 and 21% sustained their progress, an accomplishment during a year of great disruption.
  • The most common areas of improvement in the past year were Policies & Procedures and Reporting & Response. These are connected with the areas SRE Network invested the most support in this past year.
  • Some of the most improved areas are still the most pressing priorities for further development in the year to come. Roughly a quarter of organizations improved in regularly communicating reporting & response procedures to staff, making hiring and advancement policies easily accessible to staff and frequently communicating them, and training the individuals who conduct investigations into discrimination and harassment.
  • Education & Training is the area with the most room for growth. Many organizations that provide only one training a year indicate it is insufficient and cite a need for more frequent in-depth trainings.
  • Communicating policies and procedures to staff on a regular basis is a key growth area priority. This includes regularly communicating the fair and equitable hiring and advancing policies; reporting and response procedures; and non-discrimination policies.
  • While most organizations have successfully established processes for Reporting & Response, many have not yet communicated these procedures to staff on a regular basis nor provided training to the individuals responsible for conducting internal investigations.

About the Standards Self-Assessment
The purpose of this assessment is to help each member organization assess and strengthen its own organizational commitment and expertise in SRE areas over time, based on the SRE Standards. The survey is completed on an annual basis by one senior leader, in consultation with their leadership team. The Standards were designed by experts to prevent and address discrimination and harassment in Jewish workplaces and communal spaces.

2022 Standards Self-Assessment Membership Report, November 16, 2022, SRE Network

How Yeshivat Maharat is building a field of women Orthodox rabbis

In its 14 years, Yeshivat Maharat has produced nearly 60 strong, passionate graduates who are using their Maharat training to serve approximately 35 communities across the world in Orthodox pulpits, as educators and administrators at Jewish day schools, in hospitals as chaplains and in other Jewish communal leadership positions. This success came with strategic hard work by our faculty, our students and our partnerships in the larger community. This year, we have 33 new students enrolled across our three rabbinic ordination and preparatory programs, in which their education will be modeled on traditional yeshivot but grounded in preparing them to be 21st-century leaders. Enrollment is up, philanthropy dollars are being directed to bolster this field and there is a communal appetite to employ female clergy. What lessons can we learn about the present and future of Orthodox female clergy from the history of Maharat so far?

Gender equity, transparency and the ‘stained-glass ceiling’

Last year, Maharat retained Rosov Consulting to gather data on Maharat alumnae and discovered that “Some [Maharat] alumnae are confronted with a multiplicity of barriers and antagonism . . . that may include . . . lack of opportunities and upward mobility in certain roles, and, in some cases, discrimination by decision makers. There is certainly a shared sentiment that a glass ceiling for female rabbis exists in the Orthodox world.”

Even as women join the ranks of Orthodox rabbinic leadership, it is clear that a stained-glass ceiling prevents them from progressing to senior positions. This lack of mobility is a very real obstacle to transforming the role of female leaders in the Orthodox community. Learning from our prior support of congregations who place our graduates in assistant clergy roles, Maharat will be investing in senior leadership positions in partnership with the nonprofit Beloved, supporting our alumnae financially as they forge new ground and normalize the female senior Orthodox clergy role. This investment, along with learning from self-created communities that are successful, for example, alumna Rabbanit Dasi Fruchter’s South Philadelphia Shtiebel and Rabbi Dina Najman’s Kehila in Riverdale, N.Y., inspire the continued growth of the Orthodox female rabbinate.

In addition to limited senior level positions, the pay scale for Orthodox women has not been transparent and, based on research, has been at a much lower rate. Up until just a few years ago, we assumed that this problem was unique to the Orthodox community — after all, women’s historical exclusion from the Orthodox leadership has led to systemic inequity as women were denied roles in community-wide leadership and decision-making. However, organizations like Advancing Women’s Professionals in the Jewish Community, the SRE Network and the Gender Equity in Hiring Project have shown women across the community are struggling with transparency and equity. The very same questions and research we have been conducting to create more transparent salary bands and ensure that women are paid as professionals rather than volunteers were already on the table for discussion. This needs to be a communal conversation; organizations across the field need to demand greater transparency in general.

In Maharat’s early years, we provided seed money to synagogues embarking on their first female clergy hires, funded by a Maharat board member and visionary. We continue to offer funds to synagogues that hire Maharat clergy, and community members and philanthropists — the Jewish Orthodox Feminists Alliance (JOFA)’s Devorah Scholars program, for example— have joined in supporting the field. In addition to pulpit work, our alumnae have had tremendous impact adding to the canon of Jewish scholarship, including Maharat’s Va’tichtov: She Writes.

Adaptability 

In its 14 years, Maharat has remained nimble, with an ability to adapt and adjust to fit the needs of our community. Even before Zoom’s pandemic boom, Maharat embraced digital and hybrid learning; when other rabbinic programs and yeshivot required in-person learning, Maharat’s early adoption of hybrid and remote learning enabled us to fill a need for Orthodox women worldwide who did not have access to rabbinical school. This innovation and flexibility creates unity, camaraderie and community among the small and growing contingent of Orthodox women clergy. Maharat now has a global reach, with students studying and impacting communities in France, England, Australia, South Africa, Germany, Switzerland and Israel.

Another study in adaptation is the evolution of Maharat’s Advanced Kollel: Executive Ordination program. In 2013, we realized that there were many women with advanced Jewish degrees who were already working in the field as female Orthodox leaders — without ordination or broad institutional support. In response, we opened up a new ordination track where women with strong learning backgrounds could access rabbinic education. With foundation support, we developed a program that would intentionally sunset and transition into a new high-level post-graduate learning program, the Center for Lived Torah. This year, we welcomed our final incoming Advanced Kollel class after experiencing an unprecedented number of candidates. Many of our Advanced Kollel students are already leaders in their organizations, and theoretically, the degree of semicha (ordination) would not change their day-to-day work. Yet, they have come to Maharat and are seeking semicha.

Partnerships

We have always believed there is strength in collaboration, so from its inception, Maharat sought out partnerships from like-minded institutions. We needed help but were hesitant to redirect resources away from existing organizations. The Drisha Institute took Maharat under its wings in those early years, providing crucial support, and we hope that one day, we can return that kindness by bolstering their work as well.  Yeshivat Chovevei Torah is a frequent partner, and we look forward to our new partnership with Beloved. While some institutions shy away from partnerships, for fear of losing resources or giving up authority, Maharat seeks them out.

Aligning with market demand

Even with an expanded definition of pulpit, synagogues still need rabbinic leadership, and those leaders can and should include women. While Maharat is experiencing a 50% increase in new students this year, we only have 10 years of graduates. The few other rabbinic training programs for Orthodox women in the U.S. and Israel are small and cannot keep up with demand. We are doing our part in recruiting future rabbinic leaders by identifying candidates in high school and offering them learning and leadership opportunities during their Israel gap-year and college experiences. Some of the students entering Maharat were never aware of a time when women could not pursue Orthodox rabbinic ordination; this career path has always been open to them. The tide is shifting, and we are on our way towards saturating the Jewish community with more educated and passionate candidates who will be ready to lead.

Seeding the field

The proliferation of programs that center on women’s learning and leadership is a nod to the success of Maharat’s mission. Women are being seen and treated as authorities, scholars and leaders. We have a tremendous opportunity to keep seeding the flourishing  field of Orthodox women’s leadership.

The Hebrew word for field is sadeh, but in context, sadeh can also mean rural, wilderness or uninhabited. For example, in Bereishit 27:3, Isaac tells his unruly son Eisav to grab his bow and arrow and “tzei hasadeh,” “go out to the open country,” to hunt some wild game. The field can be seen as chaotic and wild, but it is also ready to be built up, organized and transformed into a place that will truly impact the masses.

Rabba Sara Hurwitz is co-founder and president of Yeshivat Maharat in Riverdale, N.Y.

“How Yeshivat Maharat is building a field of women Orthodox rabbis,” eJewishPhilanthropy

 

 

Are Jewish Organizations Great Places to Work? Results from the Sixth Annual Employee Experience Survey

The Leading Edge Employee Experience Survey is intended to help individual organizations understand and improve how their employees experience work. The survey helps Jewish nonprofit leaders and managers identify organizational strengths as well as growth areas that can be addressed to improve workplace culture.

Since 2016, more than 45,000 employees working at nearly 400 organizations have received the survey. Organizations that take the survey for multiple years tend to see their numbers improve year over year as their interventions make their employees’ working lives demonstrably better.

Key Findings of the 2022 survey:

  • People want to stay in this sector. A strong majority of employees surveyed (70%) want to stay in the Jewish nonprofit sector for two years or more.
  • People (still) want well-being, trusted leaders, and inclusion. The top drivers of employee engagement remain what Leading Edge has seen in past years: feeling that the organization cares for employees’ well-being, confidence in leadership, feelings of belonging, and feeling that there is open and honest communication in the organization.
  • Some employees are less likely to feel like they belong. LGBTQ+ employees and People of Color (particularly Black employees, both including Black Jews and Black employees who are not Jewish) are markedly less likely to feel like they belong in their organizations.
  • There’s been a lot of turnover. One third (33%) of employees surveyed have been with their organizations for less than two years.
  • Working with board members is common. More than one out of every four employees surveyed (27%) reports that they work with the board.
  • Most employees go to work in person for at least part of their work week. Three quarters of employees surveyed (76%) reported that they work outside their homes for at least part of each week.
  • People working in person (i.e., not remotely) trust their leaders more if they feel well prepared for physical security threats. For the first time, we asked employees working outside their homes about preparedness for physical security threats. Five out of six employees surveyed (72%) feel prepared to act in the event of a security threat, but those who don’t feel prepared are markedly less likely to have confidence in their organizational leadership.

Are Jewish Organizations Great Places to Work? Results from the Sixth Annual Employee Experience Survey (2022), November 1, 2022, Leading Edge

Jewish College Students in America

In January 2022, the Jim Joseph Foundation commissioned a study of Jewish college students. Working with the foundation as well as with a survey research and analytics firm, College Pulse, Dr. Eitan Hersh designed a study to capture the attitudes and behaviors of today’s four-year college students. The study includes a national survey of 2,000 Jewish undergraduates, plus a comparison survey of 1,000 non-Jewish undergraduates. In addition to the 35-question survey, the study includes five focus groups of students enrolled at the following universities: SUNY Binghamton, Ohio State, UC Santa Cruz, University of Chicago, and Tulane University.

The goal of the study is to examine who Jewish students are, what drives them and motivates them, where they find connection and meaning, and how being Jewish does or does not play in their college lives. The study answers questions such as: How connected do Jewish students feel to Jewish life on campus? What do they want out of their Jewish experiences? To what extent does the campus political climate affect their engagement with Jewish life? The study places special emphasis on the large share of Jewish-identifying students who have little to no interaction with organized Jewish life.

Jewish College Students in America, Dr. Eitan Hersh, August 2022

Everyone’s Professional Journey Can Add Value to a Team

When I accepted my position at the Jim Joseph Foundation earlier this summer, I was beyond excited, proud, and, to be honest, a little bit nervous. I am new-ish to San Francisco and moved between three States last year. This is my first in-person hybrid office role in over two years and the first role in which I focus exclusively on grantmaking.

I am still navigating many parts of what is new and feel very fortunate that I am surrounded by people who want to teach me, support me, and assure me that it is ok to be vulnerable. At the same time, those very same people also want to learn from me. This gives me a sense of pride and confidence as I continue to find my footing. Whether sharing how I approached experiential program design for the Seattle Jewish community or how I navigated building positive workplace cultures across multiple sectors and countries, I can bring helpful insights to the practice of trust-based Jewish philanthropy. This collaborative workplace framework—in which professional team members are simultaneously students and teachers—aligns beautifully with hitlamdoot, the Jim Joseph Foundation staff value of ongoing learning.

As I reflect on what helped lead me to this role at the Foundation, certain experiences, traits, and practices stand out as particularly formative and have served me well. Everyone has their own list of formative moments that evolves and grows over their professional journey. The Foundation believes that the best grantmakers have rich experience working in other settings and can bring direct field experience to their roles. In this regard, any organization looking to add new professional team members can keep in mind the array of candidate experiences and backgrounds that might add value to their professional team. Cultivated at different stages of my academic and professional career, here are some of the ways I approach my work and look to elevate the new professional team around me:

  1. Leading with Empathy – I was not surprised that my recent CliftonStrengths assessment identified empathy as my number one strength. I have always been a people person who feels most complete when I know I am connecting with others and advancing positive change. Though not always common practice in the corporate sector, I approached my work in entertainment and luxury marketing with this mindset and tried to help foster systemic change by modeling empathic behavior. Whether working in the for-profit or non-profit sector, I have learned that empathy is an essential trait, especially during challenging moments. As I begin to interact with grantee-partners, I try to first gain an understanding and relate to the challenges they encounter in the field, which helps me support them in the best way possible to succeed.
  2. Practicing Cultural Competence – This concept is one of my favorite take-aways from my Master of Science in Social Work degree program. At its core, cultural competence is about having awareness and open-mindedness across differences, which is necessary when working with and supporting diverse groups of people. In practice, cultural competence is all about being curious and respectful, especially as I develop new relationships and partnerships with colleagues both in and outside of the Jewish community.
  3. Finding Leadership Opportunities at All Levels and for All Team Members – Throughout my career, no matter where I sat within an organization, I always found opportunities to be a leader. From mentoring early-career colleagues to find their leadership voice, to taking on assignments outside of my job description, these leadership opportunities helped  me develop authentic connections with colleagues throughout an organization. This, in turn, helped me feel heard when I later brought recommendations to executive leadership about the direction of the organization moving forward.
  4. Approaching Time with Intention – Time is one of our most precious commodities. When I was a community engagement professional juggling so many competing priorities, I learned quickly that I had to be very thoughtful with how I structured my schedule. For this reason, I am a big fan of labeling blocks of time on my calendar so I (and my colleagues) can visualize how I am going to be productive between independent projects, meetings, and self-care (yes, it is ok to block time for a walk too!). Also, when it comes to designing program experiences or even 1:1 meetings–whether with colleagues, grantee-partners, or peer funders–I find it helpful to outline the purpose and include time at the end to review what is happening next. If you are not already familiar with Priya Parker’s work, she is the go-to expert on The Art of Gathering.

My experiences over many years shaped the professional I am today and how I show up in the world. Some of my Foundation team members share these experiences and traits. In other instances, I am bringing something entirely new to the team. As organizations hire new team members, candidates’ backgrounds, experiences, and practices can both add something new and reinforce how a professional team approaches its work. Different perspectives from different team members help to make a better team. Recognizing the value of different kinds of experiences will help our field bring new voices from a variety of career paths into the mix, ultimately expanding the field’s pipeline and strengthening our collective impact. I am grateful for this opportunity where I can continue learning, leading, and creating change alongside an incredible community of colleagues.

Jenna Hanauer is a Program Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation.

 

The Center for Values in Action: A New Initiative from M²

How can examining challenging issues through the lens of Jewish values be both clarifying and activating? 

Change, self-discovery, and growth most often happen when people are confronted with challenging situations and issues.  Difficult circumstances and disruptive events prompt people to examine what’s important to them and how they want to move forward in response. Today’s learners are often compelled to respond to a range of issues, from climate change, food insecurity, social pressures, increased antisemitism, and more. To help them navigate challenges and be inspired to take action, M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education is launching the Center for Values in Action, which will partner with major organizations to support Jewish educators, community builders, and leaders across the country.   

“While growth happens when we are challenged, it’s not easy, nor is it a linear process. When confronted with challenging issues, we tend to feel first – we get caught up with strong emotions, become overwhelmed, anxious or stuck.  We may react impulsively.  Sometimes it becomes so overwhelming we shut down – literally pulling the hoodie over our head and tuning it all out.  These are all very normal, in fact, very human responses.” 
– Debbi Cooper, Senior Director, Center for Values in Action, M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education

Understanding these initial human responses, the Center will provide training for thousands of educators, offering content, pedagogies, and resources to ensure that Jewish values can mediate and illuminate some of today’s most pressing challenges. Grounded in Jewish wisdom while including a diversity of perspectives, the Center will make sure that educators are equipped to help their learners find meaning in today’s challenges and live a more fulfilled life in line with universal and Jewish values. 

Taking action grounded in a commitment to values will nurture learners’ identities, help them find personal meaning, and recognize the relevance of Jewish ideas and perspectives. In fact, examining challenging issues through the lens of Jewish values can be both clarifying and activating. This approach often enables educators and learners to move beyond buzzwords and soundbites, illuminating how the issue impacts them personally. They can narrow the focus of an issue that feels unwieldy and overwhelming, while also navigating alternative narratives or perspectives. And this lens of Jewish values can provide a “pause” moment to reframe and collect thoughts, and then to examine what truly matters to the learner.

The Center for Values in Action includes a 10-hour Certificate Course for hundreds of educators, engagers, community builders, organizational leaders and program facilitators.  Once these professionals have participated in the Course, they will have access to dozens of “grab and go” resources designed to move learners through the Values in Action approach, using experiential learning modalities and exploration of a variety of Jewish sources to support their experience. While the Center’s many resources are customized to the needs and realities of partner organizations, they all share the same DNA and underlying structure. The “Values in Action” approach will help educators: 

  • Frame contemporary issues (such as climate change) for learners, giving them a chance to weigh in on how the issue is impacting them/their lives.
  • Anchor the issue in a Jewish value (such as responsibility) that can be helpful to educators as they contend with the issue and determine how they can respond.
  • Examine the issue in core Jewish or secular texts, meaningful ideas, and lived experiences.
  • Lead an experiential activity to deepen learners’ understanding of the value, examining the complexity of the value and identifying what’s hard – and grounding – about enacting it.
  • Provide learners with opportunities to make meaning of the experiential activity, drawing out how the activity helped them to reframe their understanding of the value.
  • Prompt learners to consider how they might take action as they respond to the issue.

M² is excited to debut the Center for Values in Action in November, training hundreds of community builders throughout all of 2022 with its first organizational partner, and then introducing a second organizational partner in early 2023. M² has retained an independent evaluator to work with the M² team to identify opportunities for strengthening or refining its offering and/or delivery and to assess the impact on both the educator as well as the organization. 

As a society, it is imperative that we begin having conversations about the difficult topics of the day, with a focus on agency; how we can move past stagnation and take active steps toward creating a more just, kind and compassionate world. An exploration of values can help us clarify our next steps and our tradition’s wisdom can guide us to new understandings of ourselves. We’re eager to get started!
– Kiva Rabinsky, Chief Program Officer, M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education

The Jim Joseph Foundation is a supporter of M². To learn more about M², visit URL www.ieje.org. To learn more about partnering with the Center for Values in Action, reach out to Debbi Cooper, [email protected]. Photos above are of M² professional staff and thought partners in April 2022 at “ThinkLab” – a thoughtful and experiential gathering to prototype the approach and resources for Values in Action.