Jewish students on campus do not need heavily curated fact-sheets or pro-Israel YouTube videos on Facebook to combat anti-Israel agitation. They need Shabbat dinners, vibrant prayer communities, opportunities for Torah study, and other circumstances and[…]
In addition to more funding and more personnel to expand projects of the pluralistic kind that I’ve described, what we need now is a paradigm shift in our educational vision and our methods. We must[…]
“You can’t ignore the Internet,” [Rabbi Juan] Mejia said. “It’s where millennials are living their Judaism, it’s the main force behind Judaism in Latin America. Every emergent community in Latin America started in an Internet[…]
Our dilemma today is that at the very time that we desperately need an ideological linkage between powerful Israel experiences and the creation of robust Jewish communities for young Jews in America, Zionism is absent[…]
Take young Jews, 18-26, on a free trip to Israel and they will return rededicated to Jewish life, says the conventional wisdom. This model would have worked a generation ago. Jewish identity for the baby[…]
Like synagogues, the Jewish federation system (usually referred to simply as “Federation”) is another area that once defined community for North American Jews. The federation system is the central address of Jewish charities, and each[…]
…if we want real institutional change, all areas of the Jewish community should seek to foster young leadership. In every commencement speech, we hear youth described as our future. This is most certainly true, and,[…]
…let’s redirect funds used for fighting anti-Semitism toward Jewish renaissance programs. I have publicly stated that it is a waste of the Jewish tax dollar to spend so much money on so-called defense organizations. Anti-Semitism[…]
Traditional Jewish institutions must seek guidance from creative young leaders, and some have begun to do so. Young Jews are finding ways to be Jewish outside of traditional Jewish institutions, but that does not mean[…]
The problem with the whole idea of “affiliated” and “unaffiliated” is that it depends on an outdated model for Jewish community. The fact that young Jews are not affiliating in the old-fashioned way indicates there[…]
