A Report from the JFNA General Assembly in Jerusalem

Jeffrey K. Savit addresses Pew Report

PROVIDENCE – The recently published Pew Report describing the interests, affiliations and concerns of our American Jewish population has sparked nonstop debates, worries and concerns. I suspect I occupy a minority position, but I believe there is very little that is newsworthy or novel about the findings. Is it shocking that we, as a “people,” have become increasingly secularized and intermarried, while correspondingly less observant and community-minded? Not remotely!

Doesn’t this study merely confirm that many of us are living the Jewish American dream? As one of my wonderful mentors rather winsomely told me when we first met, “We won,” because, for decades, we have been the board chairs, donors and consumers of the very same non-Jewish organizations, country clubs, hospitals and schools that used to deny us admission. Not surprisingly, our Jewish communal agencies and institutions are at risk of becoming increasingly irrelevant unless we react strategically, responsively and empathetically to this secularization phenomena and, hence, to the needs and wants of 21st century Jews.

In light of the Pew Study, we are debating worldwide what being Jewish actually means. And what exactly defines a Jewish Community? During last week’s Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly, which I attended in Jerusalem, the Pew Study was the dominant discussion topic. There seemed to be as many leaders who believed that the Report presented an exciting opportunity as there were those who bemoaned that it highlighted an opportunity lost. General Assembly keynote speaker, Dr. Steven Cohen, Research Professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Reform and Director of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at NYU Wagner, argued that local federations must explicitly change our time-honored policies to balance content and meaning with social connection building in order to create effective engagement for our younger generations and our interfaith families. Therefore, our success will be determined by our ability to change the communal engagement paradigm – every Jewish individual must be cultivated, nourished and accepted, with all preconceived notions cast aside.

Interestingly, our national Jewish community has created so many winning engagement initiatives, such as PJ Library, One Happy Camper, and Mother’s Circle, but we need to go further to recapture the attention of our millennials and younger community members. We send our kids to day/Hebrew schools and/or summer camps and we send our teens to Israel on Gap Year Programs or Birthright. But we must also continually engage our “children” within the fabric of our Jewish communities in partnership with our synagogues, teen experiential learning programs, Hillels, Next Generation initiatives and community social justice offerings. And in so doing, we have our best opportunity to recapture and harness our next generation’s passions for community building and engagement locally, in Israel and abroad. This, then is what former Alliance Board Chair Richard Licht has described to be “the conversion factor,” or the process by which younger Jewish community members will not only be involved programmatically, but additionally start participating as volunteers and donors in the redesign of our Jewish Community.

We at the Alliance are doing our best to meet the needs of all of our community members. Our new Alliance website and Facebook page, as well as our gorgeous new Parenting Center, Creativity Center, gallery (401) and renovated Early Childhood Center and Health/Fitness spaces at the soon-to-be handicapped-accessible Dwares JCC, demonstrates adaptability and modernization. The ongoing challenge, however, is to create a multiplicity of innovative sets of solutions to respond to the clarion call of the Pew Report. And if                  successful, we will be positioned to celebrate and engage our local Jewish community members, whoever and wherever they are, and whatever their family tree.

The implementation of this new Jewish Alliance 21st Century paradigm depends upon all of us. Those of us who are baby boomers, and beyond, must stay engaged and mentor our next generations so that our Jewish community shall remain viable. But if we neither continue nor begin to support our local agencies, synagogues and most vulnerable, and work collectively to rejuvenate our greater Rhode Island Jewish community, then trust me, few others will. In other words, it takes two to tango. And if not, such will signal the needless demise of our glorious local Jewish community that does not deserve such a fate.

Jeffrey K. Savit (jsavit@jewishallianceri.org) is CEO and president of The Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island.

Editor’s note: For a copy of the Pew Report, download http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/