People Want Commitment and Not [Necessarily] Programs

I believe people want commitment. They yearn for commitment. They’re lonely…and they are suffering for it. They want to connect to a community. They want meaning and commitment. Even young people. What better way to create that than to give it to them – to motivate them to be part of something. That’s what they want. They don’t want programs. Who wants programs? No one wants a speaker. No one wants a one-off thing. You go to the program…and then you go home. So what? Programs don’t work. It’s all about microcommunities and relationships and intimacy and commitment.

Rabbi Joel Nickerson, quoted in Dr. Ron Wolfson, Relational Judaism: Using the Power of Relationships to Transform the Jewish Community (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2013), 106.