Archives for 2010
Joshua Bloom is a consultant to Rabbis for Human Rights and B’Tzedek’s LIFE Program. He currently lives in Jerusalem. He submitted a series of great ideas. These are just two of them. Free JDate for Birthright Alumni So you returned from Taglit-Birthright Israel without finding your “bashert” (b’sheret), but you feel more Jewish than you’ve [...]
This idea comes from Jennie Starr, the director of Tarbuton, an Israeli cultural center in San Diego. Existing centers for dialogue about Jewish education should invite local innovative programs to participate in their forums, in their newsletters, in their meetings. A novel concept. Open the doors of existing Jewish organizations like JESNA, PEJE, other official [...]
Having worked with over 350 non-profit organizations, with a major emphasis in the Jewish community, we see wonderful acts of kindness every day; however, there seems to be a strong sense of division among our community. While we commend all participation within the Jewish community, we believe that our community needs an immediate call to [...]
This idea comes from Julia Levy, the NYC-based Director of Advancement for Cornell Hillel. I was a skeptic of meetup.com for years. Until I attended a meet-up with 400 attendees and 10,000 members in the wings on their mailing list. Suddenly, I understood its power: the ability to self organize in your community around a [...]
Now that 28 Days, 28 Ideas has run its course, we’re opening up the blog to even more ideas from a variety of folks throughout the community who have been in touch over the last month asking to share their ideas. So be on the lookout, and be in touch with an editor at one [...]
Writing at Jewschool.com, David A.M. Wilensky proposes the creation of what he dubs Beit Cafes. By day, it’s just a (kosher) coffee house. By night, it would be a center of Jewish culture and learning. For the Jews who live in the neighborhood, it would become a gathering place. Though all are welcome, you would [...]
Jay Michaelson calls for the creation of Spiritual Birthright, which would subsidized a seven-day immersive spiritual retreat for young people aged 22-30. It would be a way to connect the hundreds of thousands of young Jews interested in spirituality — especially the tens of thousands who leave Judaism in order to find it — to [...]
Stefanie Pervos of OyChicago!, an online community launched by Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, shares insights into building an online community that brings younger Jews into the JUF fold with a soft landing by being willing to share the channel with the target audience, rather than speaking to them. Campaigns from the United [...]
Rabbi Joanna Samuels, director of strategic initiatives at Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community, explains how the community can hold its leadership accountable for gender equity within Jewish organizations. Among other action-steps, Samuels suggests that organizations conduct internal salary audits and publicize the results — and then track their progress — on a new [...]
Perhaps, Robert Hyfler writes, instead of thinking “outside the box”, we need to look inward — examine our long and noble traditions — to see what may be ripe for learning, change and innovation. Read the full post at eJewishPhilanthropy.
Writing for Jewcy, Daniel Septimus, the CEO and editor in chief of MyJewishLearning.com, suggests that the Jewish community abandon the rhetoric of building Jewish identity and stop programming and funding with the goal of strengthening Jewish identity. Not that the Jewish world should abandon all the programs that mention Jewish identity building as their aim, [...]
Simon Greer of Jewish Funds for Justice and Ruth Messinger of American Jewish World Service unveil a plan to invite all B’nai Mitzvah to participate in at least one free service-learning immersion experience on a program of their choosing, either with their families or independently. They would participate in pre- and post-trip programming, and, upon [...]
Jewschool‘s dlevy proposes that a standardized, user-friendly Augmented Reality platform be developed for Jewish communal use. If you want to know what all this means, read the full post.
Charles Lenchner, an online organizing consultant, says the Jewish community needs a think tank dedicated to formulating a fallback plan in case our most important assumptions unravel only to be replaced by any combination of unthinkables — the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, a global rise in political extremism and upheaval, [...]
Patty Jacobson, the director of JewishBoston.com, tells the story of the genesis of that newly launched community-core site: We know that the first place that people look for information is on the Web. And we know that, in general, young Jews are more interested in what their friends are doing than what organizations are offering. [...]
Rochelle Shoretz, the founder and executive director of Sharsheret — a national organization that provides support services to young Jewish women facing breast cancer — proposes an annual “Day of Empowerment” for Jews with serious illnesses. The gathering, which would follow the Limmud model, would “generate positive (and not pathetic) discourse about illness among Jews, [...]
Lisa Capelouto, director of JHub — a London-based incubator that focuses on Jewish social action and innovation –- presents a European perspective to the conversation about innovation, and looks at how the old world is learning from the new (and sometimes the other way around). Read the full post at eJewishPhilanthropy.
Audrey Lichter, the executive director of Chai Mitzvah, explains the purpose of her project: to provide individuals a chance to “grow their Judaism” throughout different stages of their life; a refresher course in faith if you will. As a Chai Mitzvah, participants identify something personally meaningful that they want to study, adopt or deepen the [...]
Graham Hoffman, the associate vice president for strategy at Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, and Dan Libenson, the executive director of the Newberger Hillel Center, University of Chicago, wants a new kind of matchmaker. Instead of fixing up couples, he or she would customize experiences to reach each Jew and deepen the impact [...]
Aryeh Cohen, associate professor of Rabbinic Literature at American Jewish University, proposes a Web site to host the development of “open source” curriculum for learning how to learn Talmud and other texts in Hebrew/Aramaic. There are many, many sites for introducing the unaffiliated and the uninterested, he says, but the interested and affiliated who want [...]
Today’s idea comes from Eli Valley, a writer and artist living in New York. His comics appear monthly in The Forward, and he is the author of The Great Jewish Cities of Central and Eastern Europe. His website is evcomics.com. His idea is Birthright Diaspora, a global initiative to provide Jews with immersion experiences in [...]
Driven by the tragedies that have hit too many Jewish communities, Kim Greenhall of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle steps to bat for the Jewish Federations of North America with the Collaborating for Community Safety initiative. She proposes using her organization’s SAFE Washington program, which has pulled together 35 local Jewish agencies to try [...]
Musician Sarah Aroeste, the leader of the Sarah Aroeste Band — a contemporary Ladino music group — proposes a new record label with a focus on Jewish music created by women. According to Aroeste, the label would help “ensure that female acts are fairly represented in festivals and cultural offerings, and that our music is [...]
Seth Cohen weighs in with a novel idea: “Let’s invest in WiseGen too.” He explains: Our Jewish organizations are often so busy focusing on how to engage NextGen that they tend to overlook the fact that WiseGen still have much to offer — and to learn. While they often populate our boards and serve in [...]
Let’s pool our resources and build the strongest technical backend we can for the organized Jewish world, says Bradford R. Pilcher, the director of communications at The Temple in Atlanta. Read the full post.
