Category Archives: Jewish Community

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“…the Jewish innovation sector would benefit from new tools, beyond logic models, to help plan, assess and evaluate the work of the innovation sector”

Logic models were first developed in the early 1970s based on engineering models that rely on quantifiable inputs and outputs. Logic models provide a managerial tool for program planning and to evaluate the effectiveness of programs. Logic models often ask people to think and plan by reverse engineering – starting from the ultimate outcomes or desired results in order to devise the best path to achieve those results.

But how can Jewish innovators and their supporters create a logic model (based on those engineering models that rely on quantifiable inputs and outputs), when so much of what Jewish innovators AND Jewish traditionalists do is largely unquantifiable, focused on producing “meaning” and “engagement,” and appears qualitatively slippery?
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A consensus emerged from this conference: the Jewish innovation sector would benefit from new tools, beyond logic models, to help plan, assess and evaluate the work of the innovation sector. This could help innovative organizations strengthen their work as well as help funders make funding decisions. The development of new tools to engage these questions was beyond the scope of the meeting. But one clear outcome of the meeting is that coming up with new ways to capture and map the creativity, flexibility, vitality, and dynamism of the Jewish innovation sector using different visual, conceptual, and analytic tools is a challenge and opportunity.

Caryn Aviv, “Haskalah 2.0”, Jumpstart Report 2 (Summer 2010), 11-13.

“Is it any wonder that many Jews opt out of involvement in a community that can be unwelcoming or even intimidating?”

Our Jewish community currently focuses its energies on threats: threats from anti-Semitism, threats to Israel, and the threat of Jews leaving the fold through intermarriage. Such concerns have their place; to be unmindful of threats abandons our responsibility to adopt strategies that successfully address them. However, in the pursuit of these strategies arises perhaps the greatest threat of all: discord among Jews that makes our community a dysfunctional family, driving some of its members out and causing those on the periphery to be wary, if not fearful. Is it any wonder that many Jews opt out of involvement in a community that can be unwelcoming or even intimidating?

Larry Sternberg, “Biggest Campus Threat Is Jewish Disunity, Not BDS”, The Jewish Week (4 Oct 2013), 22.

We find the money for what we prioritize as a community

Let’s not claim that we don’t have the money. We find the money for what we prioritize as a community. If you do not provide people with meaning, it is very hard to raise money successfully in the long-term. Knowledge is the glue of peoplehood. And we can’t leave Jewish adult education to individuals. It has to be a burning institutional concern.

We also use the term shtark to mean learned. We all need a shtarker image.

Erica Brown, “The Shtarker Image”, The Jewish Week (6 September 2013), 70.

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A problem is that Jewish organizations have largely let go of the Jewish learning renaissance

[T]he real problem is that Jewish organizations have largely let go of the Jewish learning renaissance that was all the “rage” about a decade ago. Jewish study franchise programs are diminishing in attendance, recruiting for synagogue classes has become burdensome and there is hardly anyone in classes under 50 anymore.

Our larger culture extols posts, tweets and sound-bytes making comprehensive study much harder. Learning takes personal and institutional commitment. We have not given the message that leadership of federations, JCCs and social service institutions should involve the Jewish self-confidence that comes with literacy. We have high general educational expectations of ourselves and our children, but we are too often infants in our Jewish lives, and it matters too little.

Erica Brown, “The Shtarker Image”, The Jewish Week (6 September 2013), 70.

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Jay Sanderson on not pushing away young Jews from the Jewish community

Our young people are redefining their Judaism. We need to be an active part of that redefinition process. It is up to the Jewish community to reach out, engage and embrace them.

…we are committed to not just engaging our young people, but engaging them in our reimagination and our transformation. They are not the problem. They are a part of the solution.

Many of our organizations have built models based on philanthropy first. We need to move away from “pay-to-play” Judaism. If young people are meaningfully engaged, they will become philanthropists. But we are pushing too many of them away by expecting them to give before they connect.

Jay Sanderson, “Crisis and Opportunity – Reflections on the Pew Report”, The Jewish Journal (11-17 October 2013), 44.

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The Decline of Ethnic Judaism in America & of Big Jewish Organizations

America loves your religious identity, it doesn’t care for your ethnic identity. If you want to have a Catholic school system in America, “That’s great, we respect your religious difference”. “Oh, you want to have a Presbyterian school, בסדר, we have one of those.” “Methodist school? Great!” “A Polish school? I don’t think so.” “Oh, you want to have a Catholic parish? Great.” “You want to have a Spanish-speaking school district? No way.” America is founded on religious difference and a tolerance for religious difference and a great, agitating inhospitability to ethnic difference. And so, as a result, the Jews who come from 1920-1960 to the United States have to figure out a way to do Jewish. And the way they do it is they cloak their ethnic experience in religious terms. The symbol of that is the social hall in the synagogue. You will never find a social hall in a synagogue in Eastern Europe, because it doesn’t make sense. A social hall is where you go to hang out with other Jews, because you can’t build a Jew club; America won’t let you do that.
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Institutions like Hillel, the Anti-Defamation League, Hadassah, UJA-Federation; any of these big organizations are outgrowths of that ethnic Jewish expression. And what we are facing in those organizations right now is a crisis in the decline of ethnic Judaism. That’s why Federation dollars go down, why the ADL is not as relevant, why young people are not so interested in the parochial concerns of Jews all around the world any more. This is one of the two master stories: the decline of ethnic Judaism.
The last gasp of this effort was the Richard Joel line of “Jews doing Jewish with other Jews”. That is the definition of ethnic Judaism: make a building on-campus, you’ll feel safe here because you won’t be tolerated anywhere else, and you’ll just hang out with other Jews.
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When the majority of people who are not Orthodox in the United States intermarry, why would you have a building for Jews doing Jewish with other Jews? That doesn’t make sense.

Rabbi Daniel Smokler, “Jewish Enrichment”, Hillel Institute (Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life: St. Louis, 30 July 2013).

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The challenges to Orthodoxy are how to deal with its burgeoning numbers

While the other movements are engaged in soul-searching on how to deal with dwindling and aging membership in synagogues, the challenges to Orthodoxy are how to deal with its burgeoning numbers: how to cost-effectively educate the hordes of children the Orthodox are having, how to expand ever-growing synagogues, and where to establish new communities where housing costs—for large homes—are low. But from college campuses, to urban communities of singles and young couples, to suburban communities with families and empty nesters—the numbers all show that Orthodoxy is an attractive type of Judaism, one that is easily replacing any fall-off, and is actually expanding through a relatively high birthrate and an expanding professional outreach movement.
It would stand to reason that Orthodoxy’s greatest challenge—in America, Israel, and around the world—would be having too much self-confidence and sense of triumphalism.

Rabbi Asher Lopatin, “Challenges and Opportunities for a Robust Orthodox Judaism”, Conversations Issue 17 (Autumn 2013/5774), 51.

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It will be fascinating to see what insights women bring to matters, and if a woman’s perspective affects how halakhah is decided

I agree that it isn’t “fair” that while men can be given the title “rabbi” simply by learning sections of Yoreh Deah, the women must do a lot more to be accepted. But that is required any time new developments come into place. I have been assured by people in the know that the day is coming when we will have first-rate women halakhists and talmudists. It will be fascinating to see what insights they bring to matters, and if a woman’s perspective affects how halakhah is decided. But we haven’t reached that day yet, and just as importantly, the Orthodox world as a whole is not yet ready for that day, as they have not yet become comfortable with the idea of a woman poseket.

Marc B. Shapiro, “Answers to Quiz Questions and Other Comments, part 2”, The Seforim Blog (25 March 2012) {http://seforim.blogspot.com/2012/03/answers-to-quiz-questions-and-other.html}

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There is no mention of bringing anything niddah-related to a rabbi in the Meam Loez

R. Moshe Maimon called my attention to the Meam Loez’s discussion of the laws of niddah, addressed to both men and women, and there is no mention there of bringing anything to the rabbi. This omission was rectified by R. Aryeh Kaplan, who in his translation (vol. 1, p. 136) adds: “When in doubt, a competent rabbi should be consulted.”

Marc B. Shapiro, “Answers to Quiz Questions and Other Comments, part 2”, The Seforim Blog (25 March 2012), n. 2 {http://seforim.blogspot.com/2012/03/answers-to-quiz-questions-and-other.html}

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The title “rabbi” is indeed significant re: “rabba”

The title “rabbi” is indeed significant. This can be seen by the fact that when Sara Hurwitz was called Maharat there wasn’t any outcry, but when she was given the title “rabba” that is when the controversy really broke out, even though her job description didn’t change in the slightest. Does this mean that there was no objection to a woman functioning as a rabbi as long as she didn’t have the title? Only after she was renamed “rabba” did the RCA adopt a resolution rejecting the “recognition of women as members of the Orthodox rabbinate, regardless of the title.” Yet despite that resolution, there are synagogues where women are still serving, for all intents and purposes, as members of the rabbinate minus the title.

Marc B. Shapiro, “Answers to Quiz Questions and Other Comments, part 2”, The Seforim Blog (25 March 2012), n. 6 {http://seforim.blogspot.com/2012/03/answers-to-quiz-questions-and-other.html}