The largest
challenge facing the North American Jewish community may be summed up by the
most challenging question that my almost five year old has ever asked, “Why?”
This question is difficult because she is not satisfied by the stock answer of
“because I said so” or “because it’s the rule.” She is trying to make sense of
the world around her and she really wants to the know the answer to her
question because she is on a constant quest to create meaning and relevance.
The North
American Jewish community has found itself in a similar position. The
marketplace of ideas and opportunities are overflowing with options and we are
not making a compelling case to our youth (or even adults in many cases) that
Jewish life is rich and vibrant, and most importantly, meaningful and relevant.
There are a myriad of Jewish opportunities available from youth groups to day
school to gap year programs. Are they truly having the impact that we desire?
During my
senior year of college, I conducted research looking at what factors enhanced
Jewish identity in college students. My results were disheartening. Despite a
reasonable sample size and a focus groups to help interpret the qualitative
data, the only tangible result that I could present was that supplementary
school experiences had a negative impact. No other result presented as
statistically significant in either direction.
As a product
of a combination of religious school, youth group, Jewish summer camp, Hillel,
and an observant home life, this data continues to haunt me. I wonder why so
many of my peers have not chosen to live Jewishly engaged lives. In my role as
a day school administrator, I worry that we are working with a model that
reaches to too few. At the same time, while day school education has been shown
to create leaders in the Jewish community, I encounter many who left their day
school experience turned off from Judaism.
As a leader
in the Jewish community, I clearly see the need for us to embrace the challenge
of relevance and meaning. Judaism is an incredible product whose multi-faceted
nature has the ability to reach out to a diverse number of Jews. As an
educational leader, I want to be in the trenches working to create the
experiences that will bring relevance and meaning. I want to be working expand
on the successes of successful models of engagement while trying to understand
while other models have failed and learn from those failures. We need to create
partnerships and synergies that allow us meld together the most effective
interventions and programs and I want to be part of solutions that change the
landscape of Jewish education and engagement.
Within the
day school world, we need to become exemplars of educational practices for both
general and Jewish studies. While minimally engaged families may not be
initially attracted by the Jewish studies program, we need to make the case for
the deeper skills, such as empathy, critical reading, and problem solving, that
Jewish studies build and how they enhance, not just general studies, but the
entire child. We need to learn from the success of youth groups and camps that
build a love of Judaism through their affective programming that does not over
intellectualize Judaism.
I would be
remiss, however, if I did not mention that even the most meaningful and relevant
experiences are useless if they are not accessible. Building towards this grand
vision of learning environments that create engaged Jews is useless if we
cannot tackle the affordability question. Without a doubt, Jewish life as it is
currently construed in North America is an expensive proposition and in a world
with some many competing demands for our dollars, we need to make sure that the
experiences that we create are worthy of the financial support of our
constituents. While creating a compelling product will not solve the
affordability question, it will go a long way towards creating the demand and
desire that will impact the financial issues.
We simply
need to answer the question, “Why?”
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