A spate of data released within the past year indicates that Jews in their 20s and 30s are not affiliating with American Jewish institutions or otherwise connecting with organized Jewry. This has caused many lay and professional leaders of synagogues, communal organizations and philanthropies to craft a new set of strategies designed to engage these so-called millennials on what the research indicates are their own terms.
Three purported solutions to the problem of affiliation have gained particular popularity of late. First, refashion religious institutions to provide multiple entry points for those whose affinities do not extend to matters purely liturgical. Second, emphasize the universal in Judaism while downplaying the tribal. And finally, invest heavily in Jewish cultural programming at neutral — that is, non-Jewish — venues.
Communal leaders wishing to reach out to unaffiliated 20- and 30-year-olds are now cautioned against employing the language of authenticity. Dubbing something “authentic” is considered too judgmental, and this target audience, according to the research, recoils at the suggestion that there is a right or wrong way to do or be Jewish.
As an outgrowth of this tripartite effort to reach the elusive younger market, synagogues now sponsor yoga classes, ski trips and a smorgasbord of other spiritual options on Saturday mornings; collegiate groups are focusing on social-justice programs because they are more appealing and easier to participate in with non-Jewish friends, and Jewish foundations fund arts and culture programs that insinuate a positive Jewish flavor while making few demands or judgments on audience members.
These approaches to engaging young Jews call to mind the H.L. Mencken quip, “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong.” The idea that by adopting any one or all of these stratagems, young unengaged Jews will be enticed to join Jewish organizations or otherwise formally affiliate with the community is naive and offensive, and ignores both current realities and historic patterns.
On the issue of synagogue affiliation, for example, veteran observers of the American Jewish community have long been aware that membership patterns correlate to age and child-rearing needs. That large numbers of singles or young couples without children are not formally affiliating with congregations is hardly news or unique to the 21st century.
Nonaffiliation has much more to do with lifecycle factors than the absence of a Sabbath-morning tai chi class. There may be merit to embracing the model now being called “synaplex,” in which a diversity of extra-liturgical offerings are featured, but doing so as a way to attract new members ignores the larger context in which contemporary religious institutions operate.
The same must be said of the fascination with Jewish cultural programming. Despite all the hype surrounding hipster Hanukkah blowouts and chi-chi film festivals, there is mounting evidence to suggest that those who participate in these programs are not the unaffiliated Jews targeted by the organizers. Indeed, while many young Jews are attracted to cultural programming — and are quite turned off by the world of synagogues, Jewish community centers, federations and Israel advocacy — those who participate in these events can hardly be considered unaffiliated and unengaged.
On the contrary, the evidence suggests that they are, in fact, people with moderate-to-high levels of Jewish engagement — Jews from backgrounds of personal observance, day-school training, Jewish camping, synagogue youth groups, Jewish campus activity or an Israel experience. There are legitimate reasons for investing in Jewish culture, but an enterprise that does so because it will result in the development of a sustained new audience of young, unaffiliated Jews is destined to be greatly disappointed.
Jewish groups wishing to engage young Jews must begin by understanding that painting all 20- and 30-year-olds with the same brush is hardly effective. There are important differences between committed young Jews who have serious issues with the state of institutional Jewish life and those of their peers who are so thoroughly dissociated from all things Jewish that they couldn’t care less.
To confuse dissatisfaction with disinterest, or to conflate a desire for creativity and experimentation with a preference for “Jewish-lite,” is to miss this point. Outreach efforts that fail to embrace these distinctions will fall short of desired expectation.
Further, no outreach strategy will succeed if it ignores the perspicacity that has become this generation’s signature. Twenty-first-century Jews are far more sophisticated and nuanced than is suggested by those who think engagement can be secured by programmatic modifications alone. Thoughtful young Jews are quite capable of distinguishing between Jewish groups that proudly perform acts of kindness and righteousness as a sacred Jewish imperative, and those desperate to cultivate new markets that capitalize on the zeitgeist by universalizing classical Jewish precepts.
Conceptualizing Jewish culture as a means to an end not only misjudges the audience, it also does a gross disservice to the artists and performers. The depiction of Jewish music, art, literature, dance or film as more acceptable to an unengaged population because such expressions pose few demands and lack rigor offends boundlessly.
As is true of ethics, deracinating culture from other aspects of Judaism reduces a magnificent and richly textured tradition to a monochrome. Jewish cultural programming deserves the attention and support of the American Jewish establishment — not because it will secure additional members or expand the ranks of potential donors, but because culture, along with learning, worship, morality and love of Israel, is an authentic component of the total Jewish experience.
No purpose is served by dumbing-down Jewish options. Severing acts of loving kindness, theological exploration or cultural expressions from the broader historical context in which they exist simply as a marketing ploy is irresponsible and destined to fail.
The onslaught of recent survey research lays bare many of the realities and challenges of contemporary Jewish life. Those charged with planning and designing policies for the American Jewish community must resist the tendency to craft simple solutions to complex problems, merely as a reaction to the latest findings. Creative marketing, however nobly conceived, cannot be allowed to trump authenticity and integrity.
Hal Lewis is an associate professor of contemporary Jewish studies and dean of public programming and continuing education at Spertus College in Chicago. He is the author of “From Sanctuary to Boardroom: A Jewish Approach to Leadership” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006).
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Jewish Marketing: The Synaplex Syndrome There is a growing concern among the Jewish professionals that the “millenials”, those Jews in their twenties and thirties aren’t affiliating with the Jewish community and there is a growing fear that assimilation is on the rise. So, what’s new? This has been happening for as long as I can remember! There were the same concerns growing up in the sixties and seventies. The concern however wasn’t coming from the Orthodox community and for several reasons: The Orthodox community invested their money in day schools and yeshivot, while the liberal communities were committed to the public school system with supplemental after school religious education. The orthodox were role models for their kids. There was a consistency between the Jewish practice at home and that taught in the day school and yeshivot. Children had the feeling that they were living their lives without mixed messages. In contrast, the liberal movements consistently demonstrated a gap between t Jewish practices at home verses what they were taught in the religious school, synagogue or camp programs. The liberal movements haven’t learnt much over the past forty years. While they have studied their past mistakes, for some unfathomable reason they can’t get it right. They seem to have locked themselves into a cycle and can’t manage to orbit out. To their credit they have built day schools and invested in the development of overnight camps modeled after the orthodox camps. In a way it feels like buying “knock off” Christian Dior sunglasses. The “knock offs” don’t have the same weight, glitz or finish. When you look at a pair of “knock offs” you can intuit that they’re phony. The liberal schools pattern themselves after the Orthodox but somehow it doesn’t ring genuine, and you can intuit it. Many of their teachers are drawn from the Orthodox community. One can well imagine the gap between what the student learns in school and what is practiced at home. An example of this problem is inherent in their overnight camp programs. Ironically one of the camp systems in particular does not offer an option of one month, but all campers are required to attend for the entire two month program. The reason as explained to me is that they require the two months, the maximum, so as to inculcate in these kids the maximum and give them what they don’t receive all year at home. That is probably one of the principal reasons why there are so many young adults who feel disaffected and disenfranchised from the Jewish community. The sixties and seventies were no different. What saved many of the disaffected from Jewish oblivion were some of the causes that crossed over all denominational lines. The Save Soviet Jewry movement and the Israel’s popularity after the six day war served as magnets to Jews who hitherto hadn’t been associated formally with the Jewish community. Others were attracted to Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach who appealed to that very generation of disaffected and was able to communicate with them in a language they understood. Unfortunately, it appears that much of the concern these days amongst the Jewish leadership isn’t so much about the issues, but more about concern with the future financial support of our institutions in light of so many disaffected. Less is their concern for genuine core Jewish values, and more is their concern for the drop in synagogue membership which translates into less money collected for federation and other Jewish organizations. After all, buildings, infrastructure and Jewish bureaucrats that has been built over the past fifty years requires increased membership and revenue in order to fuel the machine. The problem has never been with young adults. The problem has always been with the adult leadership, who haven’t a clear notion as to where they want to lead the community. The lack of altruism is alarming. One of their latest ploys is the “synaplex” approach to increase synagogue membership. The “synaplex syndrome” is really symptomatic of a systemic problem running through the leadership of the Jewish community. Realizing that there is a problem with interesting young adults in synagogue life they sought to solve the problem by employing marketing strategies. Their hope was that enhancing synagogue membership would be a crucial step in increasing involvement (giving money) in Jewish organizational life. The Jewish community has invested millions in analyzing the “market” as if it were the Gap Stores competing with Banana Republic in increasing its market share. These issues won’t be solved by marketing strategies. Young adults like anyone else respect honesty and integrity. When the Jewish community moves off of marketing strategies and commits itself, body and soul to Jewish values, then will there be a chance of influencing the disaffected. Until then we’ll continue to invest our money and energy in misguided enterprises such as “synaplexes” which haven’t a snowballs chance in hell of succeeding.
That's why I wish I could stay with Chabad, and why my daughter refuses to go to the Conservative shul where we now live. Neither of us want cute or popular or an insistence on CONSERVATIVE Judaism. My daughter says, "At shul, I was just there, and nobody made a fuss." We just want to daven and be able to ask the rabbi what's kosher.
The professor hints at an important factor in Jewish outreach that has been missed by the liberal movements, a reason for Orthodxy's success in outreach that has been overlooked: "theological exploration." Why are liberal Jewish leaders so afraid to approach the "G" word (that's God, by the way)? What liberal movements don't address is exactly what many modern people are looking for: a connection to God. Dynamic spiritual seekers who could be contributing to liberal Jewish communities are becoming Orthodox, converting to other faiths, or calling themselves "spiritual but not religious" because the liberal Jewish world rarely addresses their deep spiritual yearnings. When The New York Times prints an article about the sharp rise in spiritual pursuits among college students ("Matters of Faith Find a New Prominence on Campus," May 2), the leaders of the liberal Jewish world need to think again before they resort to marketing strategies. Encouraging observance works when people feel that their actions connect them to something larger than themselves. Jews can go anywhere for yoga and tai chi; what they need is a community that will nourish their souls.
Unfortunately, the American Jewish community is unable to agree on what exactly is the problem that it wishes to confront. Moreover, there isn't really an establishment to which one can register a complaint and expect some remedy. The real issue is the loss of identity. It was the "dream" of the earlier generations to be "American" - and their "dream has come true". Now that the Jews have totally adopted the American identity, the question has become: How does one stay Jewish? In other words, when Jewish identity was self-evident the dream was to be American; and when the American identity has become self-evident, the new crisis is trying to maintain Jewishness. Language is the chief tool of group identity. As long as American Jewry remains solely English-speaking, the crisis of identity will never be solved. The American identity will always be obvious, and the Jewish identity be always be an uphill (and losing) battle. Yiddish has been abandoned, Hebrew is a dismal failure - and it is simply pointless to redefine a Jewish identity that does not have its own language. Real solutions are indeed difficult, as the article claims. The time has come to make Hebrew literacy and creativity the top priority of Jewish life in the Diaspora. "Jewish culture" and "Jewish education" are simply empty terms without it.
Happy New Year 2008.!