Sefaria’s Linker: Connecting Jewish Texts & Ideas Across the Internet

Taking Judaism’s sacred texts and building an online living library is a major undertaking. But that’s exactly what Sefaria has done. From Tanakh to Talmud to Zohar to modern texts—and all the volumes of commentary in between—Sefaria’s platform for Jewish learning enables students and scholars around the world to learn, discuss, question, and explore old texts in new ways. Today, more than 300,000 users access Sefaria each month. Many thousands more engage with Sefaria’s resources on third-party websites and apps that use Sefaria’s free data and API to power their projects.

Sefaria’s new two-way Linker is the latest major development for anyone interested in learning and exploring these sacred texts. The Linker automatically connects Torah content across the internet to primary sources in its library, and vice versa.

Websites that use the Linker give their users direct access to any primary sources they cite in Sefaria’s library, allowing curious learners to go deeper in their study. At the same time, the Linker brings the world of contemporary commentary to Sefaria by showing links in Sefaria’s sidebar to external websites that embed the free Linker code. Put simply, users can now explore beyond the confines of the Sefaria library and find relevant content from Jewish thinkers across the internet directly from Sefaria.org.

Example of the Linker connecting an external website to Sefaria’s library 

Example of the Linker connecting a primary source in Sefaria’s library to Torah commentary on a third-party website

 

The Sefaria project has become the digital home of the book for the people of the book. Sefaria is not just creating a vital online resource, but it is opening up our ancient heritage to a new generation on a global scale in a digital age.
—Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

With the launch of this new linker, Sefaria continues to emerge as the nexus of Torah on the internet, connecting more people with more great Jewish content and allowing for new layers of Torah study and conversation to flourish in the process.

The Linker is a free JavaScript plugin for websites that include citations to Torah texts. To learn how to add it to your website, visit Sefaria.

The Jim Joseph Foundation is a funder of Sefaria.

 

To Develop Young Leaders, Start By Giving Them Opportunities

Parashat Yitro contains some of the Torah’s most useful wisdom about cultivating leadership. Moses’ father-in-law Yitro – notably a convert to Judaism – tells Moses that leadership not shared with others is no leadership at all. He instructs Moses: “What you are doing is not good. You will surely wear away, you as well as this people that is with you; for this thing is too heavy for you – you are not able to perform it yourself alone.” So Yitro encourages Moses to delegate some of his responsibilities to a network of judges, responsible for B’nai Yisrael in groups ranging from a thousand people to only ten people. Moses is still responsible for the overall vision – he “shall show them the way in which they must walk, and the work that they must do” – but the judges will assist him in carrying out this project.

It’s easy for many of us working in Jewish organizations to sign off on Yitro’s wisdom. Yes, delegation can be complicated in practice, but it’s certainly better than trying to do something alone. As Yitro says, that is a recipe for “wear[ing] away, you as well as this people.” What’s notable, then, about this story is not its support for delegation and spreading out leadership – it’s the story’s implicit recognition that no one is ever really prepared for the leadership we ask them to take on. Yitro encourages Moses to find judges who are “valiant, fearers of G-d, people of truth, haters of unjust gain.” Yet the judges Moses eventually appoints are described as having only one of those four qualities (valor.) What are we to make of Moses ignoring three of the four characteristics encouraged by Yitro in the new leaders he is appointing? Based on our work in Habonim Dror’s Bonimot Tzedek leadership development program, the answer is clear: no one is ever really prepared for leadership before taking it on. Leadership development is about giving people more responsibility than they are currently able to handle, while also providing them with the support and guidance to take that on.

Bonimot Tzedek is a program intended to create leaders within Habonim Dror and the larger Jewish community, which we achieve not by identifying young people who already have all of the characteristics we expect in a leader, but by giving all sorts of young people opportunities to take on responsibility, in a way that both meets and challenges their current abilities. We do this through a unique scaffolded model of leadership development. Looked at from the outside, Bonimot Tzedek is a high school leadership and activism training program, where local groups of high schoolers meet biweekly to gain advocacy skills and make their voices heard about the issues they care about. But when we were developing this program, we saw the high schoolers as only one piece of a larger, holistic ecosystem of leadership development. We are equally invested in the development of the local college students who recruit and run trainings for the high school students and the young post-college professionals who coordinate partnerships with local Jewish organizations.

Each of these age-based cohorts – high school-aged participants, college-aged counselors, and post-college regional coordinators – is sometimes asked to take on extreme responsibilities. For a ninth grader, this might look like being asked to speak to your state’s lieutenant governor about gun reform, or being asked to run an event for elementary schoolers at a local synagogue. For a college-aged counselor, being asked to recruit high schoolers to a leadership development program – competing with school, sports, internships, and Instagram – can feel impossible. When one of us, Lia, coordinated the Philadelphia Bonimot Tzedek program the year graduating from college, the task of building genuine partnerships with local nonprofit organizations felt at times to be more than I could bear.

How can we justify giving young people these kinds of responsibilities? It’s simple – we make these vast responsibilities learning experiences rather than experiences of frustration by ensuring that none of the developing leaders are doing it alone. At every stage, participants in Bonimot Tzedek have both a cohort of peers as well as a near-peer mentor. This dynamic is obvious for the high school participants, who attend all trainings and advocacy events with a group of peers and a college-aged counselor. This context of peers and mentor support is what allowed one ninth-grade Bonimot Tzedek participant to feel comfortable advocating for immigrants’ rights at a state delegation public hearing with an audience of more than one hundred people, mostly adults. Reflecting later on her experiences, she said, “I felt very empowered because I was given the opportunity to speak for others who are not necessarily able to do so for themselves.” Speaking truth to power about the rights of immigrants felt like an empowering opportunity rather than an unreasonable burden because of the community this participant was surrounded by – both her peers and her counselors.

It may be less obvious than it is with the high schoolers, but this dynamic of community support is just as important in the work of the college-aged counselors and post-college regional coordinators. Each local cohort of college-aged counselors meets several times a month, both to plan activities for the high schoolers and to support each other through past challenges as well as to go through their own educational process led by the post-college coordinator. None of the responsibilities of an individual college-aged counselor is theirs to bear alone. Even the four regional post-college coordinators, while geographically separate from one another, have their own intentional process. They meet as a cohort online twice a month and in person at a seminar three times annually, as coordinated by the national Bonimot Tzedek coordinator.

Our experiences taking on leadership in Habonim Dror, throughout high school, college, and now in our early professional lives, has confirmed Yitro’s wisdom. From very young ages, we were entrusted with great responsibilities, and we now find ourselves in major leadership positions in Habonim Dror’s central office. In these positions, we have taken on responsibilities that we were not always certain we would be able to achieve. Yet the support of our community and our mentors has made those responsibilities bearable. It’s for that reason that we’re not afraid to ask young people to do more than they think they can currently take on; to the contrary, we believe that’s the only way to build a movement of leaders.

Leah Schwartz is Mazkira Klalit (Director) of Habonim Dror North America. Lia BenYishay is Rakazet Bonimot Tzedek (National Tzedek & Teen Coordinator) of Habonim Dror North America.

Jewish Emergent Network announces (RE)VISION20/20 National Conference

From June 18 – 20, 2020 in Los Angeles, the Jewish Emergent Network will gather with thought leaders from around North America for (RE)VISION20/20, a dynamic, content-rich, Shabbat-based conference held at IKAR and co-hosted by the Jewish Emergent Network organizations: IKAR in L.A., Kavana in Seattle, The Kitchen in San Francisco, Mishkan in Chicago, Sixth & I in Washington, D.C., and Lab/Shul and Romemu in New York. The conference is co-chaired by Rabbi Noa Kushner of The Kitchen and Rabbi Shira Stutman of Sixth & I.

“People can come choose-their-own adventure as we dig deep into ritual and prayer, a diverse spectrum of music, approaches to creating radically welcoming spaces and programs, and strategies for navigating moral leadership,” says Melissa Balaban, Chair of the Network and CEO of IKAR. “We also invite people into our processes: our best practices, yes, but also how we fail forward and iterate.”

The three days of content will feature laboratories, galleries, interactive experiments, panels, guest speakers and other creative learning modules, with time built in for networking, davening, singing and creating community. Registration is open to the public: rabbis, cantors, Jewish professionals, educators, lay leaders, academics, philanthropists, activists and interested-folks-at-large from across the spectrum of practice are invited to register at www.JewishEmergentNetwork.org. Spots are limited!

(RE)VISION20/20 will also be the capstone of the Network’s hallmark rabbinic fellowship, as the Network designs a leadership development program for rabbinical students, set to launch in 2021. The rabbinic fellowship helped shape 14 members of the next generation of entrepreneurial, risk-taking, change-making rabbis, and among the myriad opportunities at the conference will be the chance to learn with both cohorts of the Network’s fellows.

The communities in the Network do not represent any one denomination or set of religious practices. What they share is a devotion to revitalizing the field of Jewish engagement, a commitment to approaches both traditionally rooted and creative, and a demonstrated success in attracting unaffiliated and disengaged Jews to a rich and meaningful Jewish practice. While each community is different in form and organizational structure, all have taken an entrepreneurial approach to this shared vision, operating outside of conventional institutional models, rethinking basic assumptions about ritual and spiritual practice, membership models, staff structures, the religious/cultural divide and physical space.

Funding for the Jewish Emergent Network and its rabbinic fellowship program has been generously provided through a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation. Significant additional funding is provided by the Crown Family, the Charles H. Revson Foundation, Diane & Guilford Glazer Philanthropies, the William Davidson Foundation, the Righteous Persons Foundation, the Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, and Natan. The Network is working with current funders and cultivating prospective funders in connection with its next major project.

Source: eJewish Philanthropy

Data File From Survey for GenZ Now: Understanding and Engaging Jewish Teens Today

The data file from the survey of more than 17,500 Jewish teens that was conducted for the 2019 report, GenZ Now: Understanding and Engaging Jewish Teens, is now housed on the Berman Jewish DataBank. This “public use” data set is available for anyone to use for future analyses and research.

  • Survey of 17,576 Jewish teens completed in December, 2017 and January, 2018 via an online questionnaire.
  • Study co-planned by The Jewish Education Project and Rosov Consulting.
  • Data collection online by Qualtrics supervised by Rosov Consulting.

Access the data here.

Reboot Ideas Festival Open To All

For 18 years, Reboot has gathered some of the best and brightest change-agents for conversations about Jewish identity and meaning.  This combined power of imagination and dialogue helps to turn big issues into transformative ideas. Now, Reboot is opening its doors to the public for the first time to amplify these vital voices and to bring in wider perspectives to inspire more wandering Jews to evolve today’s world. The Reboot Ideas Festival, March 26-29 in San Francisco, will be a deeply personal and communal exploration of the most pressing issues captivating the Jewish world and beyond. Through inspired conversations, curated experiences, live performances, and art-driven showcases, the Reboot Ideas Festival will take a candid look at contemporary challenges – social, spiritual, and psychic – and through art, culture, and imagination will conjure new pathways to address them.

The Ideas Festival reflects Reboot’s role as a unique arts and culture nonprofit reimagining and reinforcing Jewish thought and traditions. It is a premier R&D platform for the Jewish world, with its Rebooter Network of preeminent creators, artists, entrepreneurs, and activists producing experiences and products that advance the Jewish conversation and strive to transform society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDEbMVtjQso&feature=emb_logo

The Reboot Ideas Festival ushers in a new era for Reboot.  With it, Reboot is taking its methodology of asking the biggest Jewish questions of the day, revolving around core thoughts about what we are inheriting and what we want to do about it, and opening it up to a larger audience. During what feels to be a dark time, we are so excited to bring together such an amazing cast of characters to think about the Jewish future and how our traditions and stories can cast a light onto the world. – David Katznelson, CEO of Reboot

All Reboot projects imagine Jewish ritual and tradition afresh, offering an inviting mix of discovery, experience and reflection through events, exhibitions, recordings, books, films, DIY activity toolkits and apps. These projects have engaged over a million participants and continue to inspire Jewish connections and meaning by encouraging participants to become creators in their Jewish experience. The annual Reboot Summit convenes a diverse group of prominent Jewish change agents in an intellectually provocative environment that inspires them to discover new ways to engage with their Judaism.

Register for the Reboot Ideas Festival here.

The Jim Joseph Foundation is a funder of Reboot.

Onward Israel

Each summer, thousands of North American college-age students experience daily life in Israel—and what it takes to succeed there professionally—through Onward Israel’s two-month professional internship in Israel. More than 12,000 young adults have participated in Onward since 2012, attracted in part to the program’s accessible length and affordable price, making it one of the fastest-growing and impactful programs in the Jewish world.

My summer on Hillel Onward Israel Jerusalem was without a doubt one of the most incredible summers of my life…It was really amazing to have gone on a program that gives its participants the freedom to explore Israel as they wish. I interned at the Hebrew University Givat Ram in the Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior Department…Even today I am still in touch with the professor I worked with, as we are continuing our work together over email. Onward Israel Jerusalem intensified my passion for the land of Israel, gave me valuable research experience to take back to Cornell, and allowed me to personally connect with the land I consider to be my home.
– Emily, Hillel Onward Israel Jerusalem, summer 2017

Israel’s vibrant economy, thriving technology and innovation sectors, and multi-cultural landscape make it an ideal place for college-age students looking to have a resume-enhancing experience that builds life-skills and can help them when they enter the workforce. Because they are immersed in the Israeli workplace and society—they are placed in housing and have opportunities to tour the country—participants return home with greater knowledge, sense of connection, and engagement in Jewish life and Israel. Evaluations of participants before and after the program show that they increase their knowledge about diversity and variety in Israeli life, society, and politics; their sense of responsibility and connection to Israelis and the Jewish people; the ability to explain to others why being Jewish and engaging with Israel are important; and knowledge of Judaism, Jewish communities, and the diversity of approaches to Judaism.

So far, I have come to the conclusion that Israel is everything Alaska is not! Unlike in my hometown, here, in Jerusalem I am bombarded with the sound of traffic the minute I walk out my front door. The food, the sights, the music, and especially the environment are very different from anything I grew up with. Being in Jerusalem and working in the museum has given me a stronger understanding of the history of Israel, which means a greater appreciation of the ground I stand on today. I am here in Jerusalem basking in all the glory of my people’s hard work and could not feel more fortunate and more welcomed.
– Aidan, Onward Israel Arts and Culture, summer 2018

Importantly, research shows that these changes in participants continue for years after they return home. Other key findings from Onward Israel’s numerous evaluations, conducted by Rosov Consulting, show that:

  • Internships and the framework for personal growth attracts young people with the potential to deepen their connection to Jewish life. More than 75% of participants have spent less than three months in Israel prior to the program. More than 90% of participants define themselves as Conservative, Reform, or Just Jewish.
  • Participants are overwhelmingly satisfied with their internship and 90% of employers recommend to their peers to absorb interns.
  • Alumni make plans to return to Israel and become more involved with Jewish and Israel activities back on their college campuses (Onward Israel is particularly attractive for Birthright Israel alumni who want to return to Israel).
  • Onward Israel’s partnership model with Israeli businesses and organizations gives participants a customized experience and enables partners to achieve their own objectives.

I think Onward gave me a push to bring people together and explain more about Israel in a way where I could use my knowledge. I was a lot more informed. Maybe before, I could have also done it, but it gave me more confidence.
– Onward alumnus

Engaging in day-to-day life in Israel with all of its complexities and challenges gives participants an appreciation of the country and realistic and sophisticated understanding of both Israel and Jewish life. Building on this proven model, Onward is poised to engage even more young adults. It aspires to reach 5,000 annual participants by 2023 and to help bring half of all young adults who experience Israel before college or through Birthright Israel back to Israel for a second, more intensive experience. These participants, like their predecessors, will return home more connected, engaged, and inspired to become involved in Jewish life and Israel experience on campus and within their Jewish communities.

The Jim Joseph Foundation is a supporter of Onward Israel. To learn more about Onward Israel please visit www.onwardisrael.org.

Study Underway to Address the Recruitment, Retention, and Development of Educators in Jewish Settings in North America

CASJE-supported research will focus on career trajectories of Jewish educators in eight cities

A multi-year, comprehensive research project addressing the recruitment, retention, and development of educators working in Jewish settings in North America is underway, led by CASJE (Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education) and conducted by Rosov Consulting. The research program consists of three main components that examine the career trajectories and experiences of Jewish educators from multiple vantage points.  On the Journey (OTJ), the first phase of this study, focuses on the career trajectories and lived experiences of educators employed in the field. The research will build on a Working Paper authored by Rosov Consulting that was released earlier this year from CASJE and The George Washington University Graduate School of Education and Human Development (GSEHD). The new study will explore eight yet-to-be-selected communities representing diversity of Jewish population size, geographic region, and Jewish educational infrastructure.

Over the next 18-20 months, OTJ will investigate 1) Jewish educators, 2) the settings and sectors in which they work, 3) the kinds of professional development and other supports available to them (and whether they have taken advantage of these opportunities), and 4) how these interventions contribute to key outcomes that have implications for professional performance: job retention (length of tenure and career commitment), job satisfaction, and a sense of professional self-efficacy.

In parallel with  OTJ, the research project will continue with two additional phases: Preparing for Entry, which will study the career plans of people in the settings from which Jewish educators have tended to come (such as summer camps, longer-term programs in Israel, and college fellowships) to determine the factors that contribute to recruitment into the field; and Mapping the Market (MTM), which will focus on identifying available pre-service training and in-service professional development offerings for Jewish educators, as well as challenges faced by employers and training providers who are coping with personnel shortages and/or saturation.

“Since the overall research program will synthesize data from all three of its strands, the research has the potential to dramatically amplify the field’s understandings of the whole cycle of the recruitment, retention, and development of Jewish educators across multiple sectors,” says Arielle Levites, Managing Director of CASJE.

In order to build on prior studies of Jewish education professionals, the research takes a broad approach in defining who is a “Jewish educator.” Thus, researchers will include a spectrum of professionals involved in designing and delivering experiences for Jewish learning, engagement, connection, and meaning.

“Jewish education policy makers, professional development providers, pre-service training providers, philanthropists and others all stand to benefit from what we learn during this study,” adds Wendy Rosov, Founder and Principal of Rosov Consulting. “We are excited to make a significant contribution to a growing knowledge-base about who Jewish educators are in the U.S. today, how and why they enter into the field (and why some that we might expect to enter don’t), how their careers progress, the market demand for their services, and more.”

OTJ in particular will study professionals who work directly with people of any age who identify as Jews, in settings—whether virtual, brick-and-mortar, or outdoor—that aim to help participants find special meaning in Jewish texts, experiences, and associations.

This includes five primary sectors within which these professionals work: 1) formal Jewish education (day schools, early childhood education centers, supplementary schools); 2) informal/experiential settings including both immersive (e.g., camp) and non-immersive (e.g., youth organizations, JCCs); 3) those involved in engagement, social justice, and innovation; 4) communal organizations that may employ someone in an educational role (e.g., scholars in residence at Federations or Jewish educators at Jewish Family Services); and (5) non-organizational networks and online learning platforms (e.g., independent B’nai mitzvah or Hebrew tutors). By including all these sectors, the researchers’ goal is to not only provide unique insights about the nature of educators and their work, but also to test existing paradigms that see these sectors as distinct from and even exclusive of one another, rather than part of a larger whole.

The multi-year research project is funded with generous grants from the William Davidson Foundation and Jim Joseph Foundation.

CASJE is a community of researchers, practitioners, and philanthropic leaders committed to sharing knowledge to improve Jewish education. In addition to the William Davidson Foundation and Jim Joseph Foundation, CASJE receives support from The AVI CHAI Foundation and Crown Family Philanthropies, among others. The George Washington University serves as the administrative home for CASJE, enabling the specific goals of CASJE to be enriched by the academic and intellectual resources of a global, comprehensive, research university.  Along with this project, CASJE’s areas of inquiry include Jewish educational leadership, Jewish early childhood education, Hebrew language education, and Israel education.

CASJE’s Advisory Board includes co-chairs Dr. Michael Feuer and Rabbi Mitchel Malkus, and members Dr. Rena Dorph (UC Berkeley), Dr. Charles “Chip” Edelsberg, Dr. Sharon Feiman-Nemser (Brandeis University), Dr. Ellen Goldring (Vanderbilt University), Dr. Paul Goren (former superintendent of Evanston/Skokie School District 65), Dr. Ilana Horwitz (Stanford University), Dr. Benjamin Jacobs (The George Washington University), Dr. Susan Kardos (Abraham Joshua Heschel School) and Robert Sherman (formerly of The Jewish Education Project), a well as one emeritus member, Dr. Lee Shulman (Stanford University).

Source: CASJE

 

Hadar

In the midst of its second decade, Hadar offers a powerful, immersive Jewish text learning environment that empowers Jews to create vibrant, egalitarian communities of Torah, Avodah, and Hesed. In the last few years, in an increasingly socially fragmented world, Hadar has experienced unprecedented growth and demand for its programs. People are thirsty for Jewish content that authentically guides and inspires. In turn, Hadar learners want to share their meaningful experiences with others by creating community.

Hadar is a place where the Torah is sharp and the people are sweet, and being here has been an incredibly important and transformative experience for me. It’s one of the only places where I feel I can be honest about who I am and what I believe in and care about. I feel grateful to live in a world in which this beit midrash and this community exists.
– Alum of Hadar Fellowship

As Hadar implements an ambitious strategic plan–its annual budget now tops $6 million–new initiatives and programs continue to engage people with varying levels of knowledge, passions, and visions for future Jewish life. Hadar’s Rising Song Jewish Music Residency, a year-long immersive study program for students of Jewish music and spiritual tradition, trains musical change agents to cultivate Jewish spiritual life across the full, pluralistic range of Jewish expression. Its Moot Beit Din programs offers a unique mock-trial experience for halakhic debate in high schools and colleges. The Pedagogy of Partnership, powered by Hadar, focuses on relationship-centered education, training teachers to modify and advance their teaching practices. And the Advanced Kollel is for students with an extensive learning background committed to a multi-year intensive course of study.

More people than ever are engaging in these programs—there are over 600 alumni of Hadar’s summer and year-long fellowship programs, and 2,000 alumni of its dozen week-long programs. Hadar’s online podcasts, classes, and music offerings are downloaded by more than two million people annually. Hadar has also expanded regular programming outside New York in cities such as Washington, DC, Boston, Philadelphia and Jerusalem.

Hadar made me see the possibility of living a Jewish life that does not compromise my identity or my values.
– Participant in Hadar program

Hadar’s timely resources include a new High Holiday “reader,” a printable, designed, free collection of seasonal essays from their faculty. Hadar’s Israel operation is busy with its Elul program for university-age Israelis studying in an immersive all-Hebrew beit midrash setting that embodies Hadar’s vision of Jewish learning and an embrace of gender equality. And registration is open for Hadar’s second-ever National Shabbaton,  January 31, 2020, for a weekend of learning, community-building, prayer, and music. 

Deeply rooted in our texts and traditions, Hadar’s learning experiences are a creative response to contemporary questions and challenges. As Jews re-evaluate questions of identity and affiliation, Hadar is well-positioned to meet their needs and to impact diverse audiences through its vision of Torah that is uncompromisingly honest, spiritually meaningful, and socially responsible.

The Jim Joseph Foundation is a funder of Hadar. Access Hadar’s High Holiday reader here.

 

Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies

With a pioneering model of teaching and programming, the Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies engages students and faculty in a rich environment of learning, research, and unique public events. In just eight years, the Institute has transitioned from a start-up to a permanent presence that cultivates young Jewish leadership and continues to change the landscape of Israel studies on campus and in the larger community.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TrLY5eUhGE&feature=youtu.be

The Institute offers numerous paths for meaningful student and faculty engagement, including opportunities for research, teaching, programming, and mentorship.  The Institute brings visiting faculty and scholars to campus and organizes classes, lectures, colloquia, and conferences to strengthen academic inquiry and discourse around Israel and Jewish topics. 

Visiting Israeli faculty and scholars offer courses and mentorship in diverse fields of interest, including Geography, Political Science, Anthropology, Near Eastern Studies, Jewish Studies, Law, and Economics. The Institute’s Undergraduate Fellows Program fosters a growing cohort of student leaders that in turn create programs and courses for their peers. This cohort will now be able to take advantage of the Institute’s developing  experiential learning program in Israel, which will include on-site coursework and internships with a focus on social change.

It’s great to have such constant offerings from the Institute. These events have piqued my interest in Jewish and Israel topics and I find that I seek out other opportunities to learn more, outside of campus. I’ve always been interested in the news even before being part of the Institute, but now there is a good chance I’ll stay actively involved in keeping up with academic literature that deals with Israel and international relations.
– UC Berkeley Student

In recent years, the Institute hosted the annual meeting of the Association for Israel Studies, brought Israeli Supreme Court Justice Daphne Barak-Erez as The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Scholar-in-Residence, sponsored courses ranging from Israeli Constitutional Law to Religion in Israel, and hosted up to five stellar visiting professors per year to teach and mentor in their areas of expertise.

Staff are amazing at being resources for us even outside of the class and lectures. . . If there is something I want to do that is Israel- or Jewish-related, they’ll go out of their way. The Institute feels like family. At this point, they’ve been instrumental in shaping my college experience.
– UC Berkeley Student

In the 2019-2020 academic year, the Institute will expand and diversify undergraduate courses, student programs, academic programs, and especially experiential learning opportunities. This also is the first year in which Professor Ron Hassner, the Institute’s faculty co-director, will serve as the new Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies.

The Berkeley Institute made academic study of Judaism and Israel a legitimate field of study and discourse on the Berkeley campus. It put Jewish studies and Israel studies back on the map. In the last 3 years alone the Institute has exposed to us for the first time Israel’s water policies, Israel’s high tech, Israel’s supreme court, Israel’s philosophy. These were things you could talk about and research.
– Faculty Member

The Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies receives support from the Jim Joseph Foundation. Learn more about the Institute.

 

 

Reflecting on Partnership and Belonging During My Time at the Jim Joseph Foundation

In reflecting about my journey at the Jim Joseph Foundation – these last 4 ½ years – an insight from Mother Teresa comes to mind. Indeed, after a lifetime of working with the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable, Mother Teresa observed that, “The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the feeling of not belonging.” What makes this observation even more powerful is that she died in 1997 – before the digital revolution really took hold, before cell phones, social media, and widespread online communities.

It is no surprise to most of us that this disease – this notion of not belonging – has reached epidemic proportions. Type in “loneliness epidemic” into google and a flurry of articles pop up – and countries are beginning to think about how to confront the issue. Just one example, in 2018, the U.K. appointed a Loneliness Minister, Tracey Crouch, to help combat the country’s chronic loneliness problem.

We long to belong.

The Jim Joseph Foundation has been on a journey itself that intersected with my own – one that has led to a stated aspiration of working with grantee-partners to help all Jews, their families and their friends lead connected, meaningful, purpose-filled lives and to make positive contributions to their communities and the world. The Foundation is looking to help fund, support, and build meaningful connection in our lives. In my own journey of wrestling with this meaning-based connection, the Jewish theologian Martin Buber has been particularly illustrative. At the core of Buber’s theology is his theory of dialogue – the idea that entering into relationship with one another is essential – because in doing so one enters into a relationship with G-d. Buber famously speaks to what he calls the “I-It” vs the “I-You” – the “I-It” characterized as how most of us tend to operate in daily life; we tend to treat the people and the world around us as things to be used for our benefit. Sometimes this is very appropriate. After all, a toothbrush is meant for my benefit (and the benefit of those around me, I might add). But what about a person? Buber speaks to the notion of the “I-You” as addressing other people directly as partners in dialogue and relationship. Only when we say “You” to our world can we perceive its eccentricity and peculiarity and, simultaneously, its potential for intimacy.

In my time at the Foundation, I attempted to carry myself with the words “I-You” on my lips. Indeed, what does it mean to be a true partner given the power and perch that comes from being positioned at a large institutional funder? These are questions that the sector would do well, in my opinion, to keep asking – as I think they remain increasingly pertinent and meaningful, particularly in a universe where our work is about furnishing the hearth of connection. This question of partnership is at the center of what effective grantmaking is concerned with. Phil Buchanan, in his latest book, Giving Done Right (in my humble opinion a book that should be required reading for all who enter the philanthropic field), discusses what it takes to build effective relationships with grantee-partners. He provides ten rules based on his organization’s, the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), surveys of tens of thousands of grantee-partners about hundreds of grantmakers. One of the ten in particular spoke to me: Don’t assume you have what it takes to strengthen nonprofits or build their capabilities. Ask what they need and then offer it only if you’re positioned to do it well. As grantmakers we like to think we know something. And often we do. And often we actually don’t know as much as we think we know. Just as the heart pumps blood through our body, providing it with oxygen and nutrients, our grantee-partners pump their lived experience, their work, and their knowledge to the philanthropic sector. We would be wise to listen and when we think we are listening to actually listen more.

In their book Stories of the Spirit, Jack Kornfield and Christina Feldman tell this story: A family went out to a restaurant for dinner. When the waitress arrived, the parents gave their orders, where then immediately their five-year-old daughter piped up with her own: “I’ll have a hot dog, french fries, and a Coke.” “Oh no you won’t,” interjected the parents, and turning to the waitress said, “She’ll have meat loaf, mashed potatoes, milk.” Looking at the child with a smile, the waitress said, “So hon, what do you want on that hot dog?” When she left, the family sat stunned and silent. A few moments later the little girl, eyes shining, said, “She thinks I’m real.”

Who do we believe is real in our communities? My sense, for one reason or another, is many of us have been treated like the daughter was by the parents. A question that I find myself coming back to again and again – how can I be more real and see people in all their miraculous realness? Moving from the individual to the sector perspective, this story is also illustrative of the ways in which many of us in the philanthropic sector see the nonprofit universe. Business-type thinking permeates the nonprofit world. As Phil Buchanan notes, “What we need today is a further clarifying – not a blurring – of the boundaries between the sectors. Each sector plays a distinct role. We live in a market economy, but markets have limits – and markets fail – and that’s why the nonprofit sector is so crucial.” I couldn’t agree more. No sector is superior, and the pursuit of profit and that of social impact ends may not always conflict, but they often do. As Buchanan says, “Nonprofits are often working to address the very problems markets have failed to address. So, it makes little sense to maintain that ”market approaches” are the answer to every problem.” This is often difficult for philanthropists and principals – the vast majority of them who made their fortunes in the market world – to come to terms with. And naturally so, we are hardwired to think that what worked in one situation could work in another. In philanthropy we have many examples to the contrary and more being created each and every day.

Which brings me to my last story. The psychologist and author Tara Brach writes in her work, Radical Acceptance: Mohini was a regal white tiger who lived for many years at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. For the majority of those years, her home was the old lion house, a typical twelve-by-twelve foot cage with iron bars and a cement floor. Mohini’s days consisted of pacing restlessly back and forth in her cramped quarters. Eventually, the Zoo staff worked together to create a natural habitat for her, covering several acres with hills, trees, a pond and a variety of vegetation. With excitement and anticipation, they released Mohini into her new and expansive environment. But it was too late. The tiger immediately sought refuge in a corner of the compound, where she lived for the remainder of her life. Mohini paced and paced in that corner until an area twelve by twelve feet was worn bare of grass.

So many of us find ourselves trapped in the same old patterns. The same old thinking. So many of us find our institutions trapped in the same old patterns. The same old thinking. For all of us in the Jewish communal sector, what would it look like to realize that we are actually living in an expansive wilderness and acting as if we live in a cage of our own making?

It was a privilege to be a part of and contributor to this Foundation’s work for the last 4 ½ years, to have been a colleague and a partner to many organizations and individuals in the world of Jewish education, and to continue to be inspired by the work of our grantee partners in the field – you all are the champions that made coming to work each and every day at the Jim Joseph Foundation the best job a guy could have.

Jeff Tiell was a Program Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation until August, 2019. He can be reached now at [email protected].

 

Shalom Hartman Institute gifted $20 million by S.F. foundations

If it’s true that money talks, the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America is about to get an earful.

In a joint announcement this month, the Koret Foundation and the Jim Joseph Foundation, both based in San Francisco, said they will give $10 million each to the institute over the next five years.

The $20 million total is one of the largest financial gifts in the history of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a center of Jewish thought and education with a mission to “strengthen Jewish peoplehood, identity and pluralism,” according to its website.

A headline on InsidePhilanthropy.com called it a “record gift” that will “help navigate an unprecedented crossroads of Jewish history.”

The funding, mostly for general operations, will accelerate North American expansion of the Jerusalem-based institute, which now has offices in New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Toronto, Los Angeles, Detroit and Washington, D.C.

It will also be used to hire new scholars, open offices in additional cities, host more events, beef up the Institute’s digital presence, establish more research groups and expand training.

The $20 million will “allow us to build up across the country and put the right tools in front of the right leaders to fight the right challenges, and do it in a serious, sustainable way,” said Dan Friedman, Hartman’s North American director of content and communications.

Jeff Farber
Jeff Farber

“Koret does not make a lot of $10 million grants,” said Jeff Farber, CEO of the Koret Foundation, which has been funding a Hartman pilot program in the Bay Area since 2013. “This is basically a $20 million business plan to expand what has been successful in the Bay Area.”

Since 2013, that pilot program has engaged in a variety of events, such as bringing in Shalom Hartman scholars to give public lectures and to meet with Jewish community leaders to help them further ground their organizations in Jewish values. The list of scholars has included Rabbi Donniel Hartman (Shalom Hartman president) and Yehuda Kurtzer (North American president).

“The teachings are insightful and relevant, but grounded in Torah,” said Ollie Benn, San Francisco Hillel executive director, who has attended many Hartman Institute gatherings. “They manage to identify contemporary issues that impact the community and the Jewish world, based on texts that illuminate these issues. [The meetings] create a space with some of the sharpest minds in Jewish thinking to reframe and grapple with complex issues in new ways.”

Barry Finestone
Barry Finestone

Barry Finestone, president and CEO of the Jim Joseph Foundation, said his organization has funded numerous Hartman initiatives over the years, such as its iEngage Fellowship for Student Leaders, which helps college students address issues surrounding Israel. This donation marks the foundation’s first large-scale general operating grant to the organization.

“We were already familiar with their work and the quality of it,” Finestone said. “It became clear to us that a number of other grantee partners we work with were using [Hartman] services for their own learning and education. Also, we have as one of our major strategic priorities supporting exceptional Jewish leaders and educators — and we view this [$10 million] grant as a signature grant in this arena.”

Finestone said SHI is more than a think tank. He calls it a “think-and-do tank.”

Rabbi Joshua Ladon, West Coast director of education, said the grants will allow him to “move toward a vision of San Francisco being the hub city” for Hartman’s work in North America. Part of the plan is to build what he called “cohorts of learners and leaders.”

This fits with the Hartman model of having deeply intellectual collective conversations about issues of concern to Jews today, something Ladon says is part of the organization’s DNA.

“We’re grabbing a group of Bay Area senior educators,” Ladon said. “We already have groups of rabbis meeting on a regular basis, groups of executive directors [of Jewish nonprofits] meeting, trying to increase cross-communal congregating at all levels of Jewish life, both to strengthen those organizations and also help build a group of Jewish thought leaders.”

Finestone eagerly sings the praises of the institute, largely because he has participated in sessions facilitated by its scholars.

“While they are deeply pluralistic, their ability to bring diverse Jewish thinkers and teachers together to talk about critical issues sets them apart,” he said. “Some of the pillars that govern North American Jewish life today are products of brilliant ideas that were generated through deep discussion and intellectual curiosity.”

While the $20 million will open up plenty of new options for Shalom Hartman’s presence in North America, Friedman said some things about the approach to scholarship will not change.

“We are able to elevate and deepen the conversations to go both broader and deeper, and take people into a place where they can bring an understanding of their local communities into sharper effect,” he said.

“Here are the tools: thousands of years of ethical and experiential teaching from men and women of wisdom. We bring these old and current texts, and they will give you the tools to deal with the community in the best possible way.”

Source: “Shalom Hartman Institute gifted $20 million by S.F. foundations,” Dan Pine, J – The Jewish News of Northern California, August 21, 2019

Reflecting on Growth and Learning While at the Jim Joseph Foundation

I stepped into the Jim Joseph Foundation office for the first time as a Jewish philanthropy professional around 7:45 am on Thursday, October 15, 2015. On Friday, June 7, 2019, I exited the office for the last time as a Program Officer for the Foundation. Many of us come and go from various jobs and professions, so we know what it’s like to start work, do the work, and end the work. I was honored and privileged to work here, and part of what I loved so much was the opportunity to reflect and to learn. In fact, if there’s one thing I enjoyed and appreciated most about my funder colleagues, my grantee-partners, my peers in secular philanthropy, and our trusted consultants, is how much they taught me over the past three-and-one-half years.

One of the first assignments that I received upon donning the role of Program Officer was to meet with and speak with dozens of program officers from other foundations to hear their stories: What led them to where they are now? What challenges do they see in the field of Jewish education? What opportunities on the horizon excite them? For those who know me, you can imagine this being an assignment I relished. Set up coffee dates with those wiser and more learned than me? Sign me up! I was skimming through some of these notes recently, and I must have had 30-40 conversations in those first few months to get me up to speed in the vernacular of Jewish communal life (this was, after all, my first Jewish professional job, and my first job in philanthropy. My previous 10 years had been spent running a K-12 tutoring company, and before that I was a high school math and science teacher).

My first Jewish Funders Network conference was an exciting blur of camp-meets-summit, continuing to meet new colleagues, re-connect with folks I had met virtually, and connect with a few legends in the field who my assigned first-time mentor, Jon Woocher, z’’l, made sure I met: Cindy Chazan, Joni Blinderman, and Yossi Abramowitz. As I was already starting to carve out distinct portfolios in my grantee and project work, these three helped introduce me to the worlds of Jewish leadership, early childhood education, and educational technology.

As I progressed, my feet sank deeper into learning more and more about leadership programs: What’s out there, and what works? Who are the key players? Where does the Jim Joseph Foundation currently invest, and what might a more focused leadership investment strategy look like? I remember the first presentation and discussion I led with my Foundation colleagues, based on researching our current and previous grants in the space, creating a rudimentary leadership rubric to determine which grants are “leadership grants,” and proposing a few high level ideas to inform strategic investments going forward. While some of those early ideas stuck (we led a successful Leadership Retreat in summer 2018, and are considering leadership capacity grants), others are still in formation (what would it look like to provide a coach or mentor to every Jewish professional? What would it look like to fund CEO sabbaticals?).

From this initial research, I was encouraged to explore secular leadership programs and strategies, while also continuing to dig deeper into the concept of “Jewish leadership.” Similar to my listening tour to better understand Jewish foundation professionals, I embarked on a series of conversations, focus groups, conferences, and think tanks that explored leadership from myriad angles. I met Phil Li, President & CEO of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, whose approach to networked leadership led to the creation of the Sterling Network to bring together cross-sector leaders in New York City. I met Claire Peeps, Executive Director of the Durfee Foundation, who provides leaders in Los Angeles with a Durfee Sabbatical, and other leaders with a longer Stanton Fellowship to support them to think deeply about a complex challenge. I met Holly Delany Cole, Director of the Flexible Leadership Awards, a Haas, Jr. Initiative that provides supplemental funding to core grantee organizations to more deeply invest in customized leadership capacity solutions. These three colleagues, and many others in the Leadership Funders Group, as well as Fund the People, helped nourish my soul and quench my thirst for knowledge, introducing me to new ways of thinking and new people to meet, all of whom focused their attention squarely in the leadership space.

There are too many books, articles, blogs, and publications to recount that also informed my thinking and helped me on my journey as a foundation professional learning about leadership. But a few that sparked lasting ideas around effective leadership investing are GEO’s Investing in Leadership Strategies, HBR’s On Leadership, and Bridgespan’s Leadership Pipeline Alliance Report, which led to the formation of Leading Edge. I am indebted to my friends and colleagues at the Schusterman Family Foundation and Wexner Foundation, for their continued teaching and meta-leadership in this arena. I will always be thankful to my friends and colleagues at the Jim Joseph Foundation for their patience with my numerous questions and their desire to also think big with me. And especially to the Jim Joseph Foundation’s two senior leaders with whom I worked—Chip Edelsberg and Barry Finestone. They each mentored and coached me in their own distinct way; I am eternally grateful for the opportunities they gave me.

This July, my family and I are moving to Long Beach, where I grew up, to be closer to our kids’ grandparents. It is a very bittersweet transition, not only to leave my colleagues here, but to leave my community in San Francisco, where I have lived for nearly 25 years. We will surely grow new roots in Southern California, with the gracious and generous help of our parents, friends and relatives. I feel good about the work we’ve done together. I remain optimistic about our future. The Jewish people are strong. We are resilient. We are creative, and innovative, and educated. We are not wont for leaders or leadership—they are sitting and standing among us. I know that the skills and relationships I have formed here are without a doubt some of the strongest I have made in my lifetime, and I will carry them with me into this next phase of my career. They are built on curiosity, on humility, on vulnerability. And perhaps that is what leadership must teach all of us—to be curious, to be humble, to be vulnerable—with ourselves, and with each other.

Godspeed, my friends.

Seth Linden was a Program Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation for 3.5 years. He is now a philanthropy consultant focusing on board culture and governance, leadership and talent development, and designing and facilitating learning retreats. He can be reached at [email protected] and you can read more at www.gatherconsulting.org.