Can We Be Honest About ‘The Surge’ in Jewish Communal Interest?

Shortly after the horrific massacre of October 7, 2023, the ensuing muscular response by the IDF and a violent eruption of antisemitic incidents, JFNA reported growing numbers of Jews engaging or re-engaging in Jewish organizations and activities.  The increase was deemed to be “nothing short of historic,” and the phenomenon was dubbed “The Surge.”

These past two years have been extraordinary, God willing never to be repeated in the way they unfolded.  And while two years is not a long time, it is still fair to ask how the Jewish community is adapting to this apparent increase in Jewish communal interest.

CASJE (The Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education) attempted to address this in a recently released composite summary comprised of separate studies done independently by several organizations on the effects of The Surge two years later.

Having attended the CASJE Zoom presentation and reviewing the findings they shared online, here are some takeaways,

• Nearly half of all the Jews (40% of 83%) who were “only somewhat,” “not very,” or “not at all engaged” prior to October 7 began to “show up in larger numbers” after October 7.
• Jews (whether those “Surging,” or those previously engaged, called “Core”) are looking for opportunities to be with others, to network, to learn, to feel belonging as part of the community, and they are looking to Jewish organizations to provide more of such opportunities.
• Now, two years after the initial Surge, most responding organizations recognize “slippage” in the number of people who are participating in Jewish communal activities. While The Surge was initially greatest among those not previously engaged, this is also the group where slippage is the greatest now.
• JFNA summarizes its findings this way, “The Surge continues, but is not going to last forever. If we are going to meet people’s needs, we must respond now.”

CASJE is to be commended for assembling the group and encouraging them to share and present their findings.  Had they not, it is likely that these organizations’ findings may not have been shared in such a venue, one in which we all may learn.  But what we also learned is that there is still much more to learn.

In reviewing the documents provided by the presenting organizations, there seems to be nothing about how, or even if these organizations made policy or program changes to accommodate this renewed interest. There is no narrative about new initiatives to meet the expressed needs of those who were surging. One organization reported creating “Surge Committees,” but we do not know what they learned or did as a result.  And two years on, only two of the organizations have indicated that they are doing the qualitative research to understand “Why?”  Why did you choose the activities you did?  Why are you still involved?  Why are you stepping away?

It is unrealistic to expect that maximum levels of participation, or even interest, will be sustained over time.  Yet, it is astounding to me that some organizations believed then and still believe two years later that the same activities, programs, strategies, and attitudes that were barriers to participation to those who either were once engaged and fell away, or who for decades were resistant to becoming engaged in the first place, would somehow attract newcomers now and hold them in ways that are meaningful to them.

The studies lead to yet more unexplored terrain.  The questions posed by the researchers are directed outward to the people in the community, which seems like the natural thing to do.  Equally essential in the development of good professional Jewish communal practice is to be reflective, to understand how and why organizations responded in the ways that they did.  We do not know if there was any risk-taking or even risk-thinking as they faced an ever-shifting communal reality. Did they request/monitor ongoing feedback to learn how to adjust their offerings to meet the nuanced needs of different groups of people?  Did they expand their definition of involvement beyond those who “came into our doors,” to reach out and include people who were open to engagement in living rooms, coffee shops, and playgrounds?  Did they provide any training for their professionals to value, welcome, and to gain the trust of people who were either never in touch with these organizations before, or in more fraught situations, people who used to be involved but who turned away?

The organizational researchers missed a historic opportunity to delve into understanding if and how Federations, synagogues, camps, schools, youth movements and JCCs might learn, adapt, pivot, grow, evolve (choose the cliché du jour) when a horrible crisis yielded unprecedented opportunity.  If this information exists within the memories or records of the practitioners who did/are still doing this, that information should urgently be sought, compiled, and shared.

Jewish communal leadership should step back now and consider two fundamental shifts in how to proceed – not in regards to this crisis – but as a consistent way of doing professional Jewish business going forward, employing strategies that are catalyzed by what we are learning from this crisis.

IT WAS NOT A SURGE; IT WAS A TSUNAMI. STILL, WE SHOULD PLAN FOR CALMER WATERS

What we saw in people’s reaction to the war and the increase in antisemitism was incorrectly interpreted as a renewed surge of attraction towards Jewish organizational activity. That is a wishful interpretation, and quite backwards.

Think of Jewish organizations as hotels on the beach.  The staff is busy with registered guests in their restaurants, in the gym, in the casino.  Out on the beach are people who just want the beach.  They do not need hotels.  In some cases, the hotels’ luxury, high prices, restricted hours, and dress codes make them feel awkward, even unwanted.  They are happy to bring their own towels, sit in their own chairs and pursue their own interests with other like-minded sun bathers.

One day a tsunami catches everyone by surprise and threatens to wipe out the beach, swallow their towels, their chairs, and their lives.  Everyone on the beach surges to the hotels for shelter.  The hotels welcome the tsunami escapees.  The staff introduces their new guests to the rules, the hours, the dress code.

But even while the damage done by the tsunami is still evident, after a while the people who fled to the hotels for safety venture back out to face the ocean on their own because they were never attracted by the luxury, or the gym, or the casino.  They ran into the hotels for shelter.  Maybe some liked the hotel breakfast and will return for it from time to time.  Some will take the hotel towels to use on the beach as a reminder of their stay.  But after a while, the hotel guests and the beach goers will once again be proximate, but separate.

This is the way it was, the way it is, but not the way it could be.  Jewish organizations should not count on a “Surge,” nor God-forbid a tsunami, to begin a perpetual process of introspection, experimentation, and organizational learning.  The late and very wise Dr. Jonathan Woocher lamented that the Jewish community was caught off-guard in its response to the second intifada.  He felt it was because we never used the quiet time after the previous intifada to understand what we did right, what we did wrong, and most importantly how to educate our leaders and our community about the nuanced and mutually existential nature of the Israel – Diaspora relationship.  He said that we needed to do those things not to prepare for another intifada, but because that was what we were supposed to do.

After years of COVID, Ukraine, convulsions over Israel’s democracy, Gaza, and whatever comes next, Jewish organizational leadership may have forgotten that our mission as a People is not to respond to emergencies.  God did not say to Abraham, “I need you to create a nation to fight antisemitism.”  We depend on a cadre of skilled, wise, and caring professionals who will not be swept up in waves of emergency response, but who will lay out a clear, consistent yet flexible plan for the long game to engage people on the beach, and not only to accommodate the registered guests in the hotel.  We need lay and professional leaders who will be unbound by crises and who will “stick to the knitting,” stitching together a community that is healthy and confident about its future.  The way we respond to emergencies is heroic; we raise money and save lives, no doubt.  But tsunamis will continue to erode the beach until the time when there will be no people there at all. Before those people disappear, they should know that there are other options for them to feel valued, included and engaged other than in a hotel.

WE NEED OBJECTIVE EVALUATORS

The North American Jewish community has never been more creative.  The pace and production of programs to meet ongoing and emerging needs is unprecedented.  For some, this is cause for celebration; for others this is cause for concern.  For me, it is cause for calibration.  In this case regarding the Surge, CASJE stepped up to collate the findings of several organizations.  Had they not done this, we, collectively, would not even know the little we know now.  The organizations that were involved had their own evaluation units conduct their own studies.  The fact that many organizations have such a capacity is a welcome improvement over times when this was not so.  But organizations evaluating themselves leads one to consider that the findings may not be totally objective, or not reported in a totally objective manner.  A community as sophisticated as ours is notable by the absence of an independent evaluator, not to collate self-evaluations, but to conduct those evaluations on behalf of the Jewish community.

These evaluations will serve more than an academic purpose, but a practical one.  While the list of issues we face is inexhaustible, the funds and human capital we have to address them are not. Resources should be applied where evaluations show they work.  And they should be withdrawn from places where they do not.

A recent eJewish Philanthropy story about the Jewish Funders Network survey of organizations that fight antisemitism is illustrative.  In a field that eJP described as filled with “shambolic efforts,” the JFN researcher found that most of the 160 organizations studied had no clear definition of success; and “in many cases, people haven’t even defined what their organizations actually do.”

I raise this not to make a case for or against these programs, but to make the case that this mess, as the situation is described, is at best an embarrassment, and at worst is a desecration of precious funds. And maybe while not as messy, there are programs taking place thousands of times in hundreds of places that should be evaluated as well.

Our community deserves a core group of accepted, independent evaluators to act as a permanent feature in our infrastructure and available to the entire Jewish communal ecosystem.  These bodies should be grounded in academia and informed by the real-life workings of non-profits.  Their efforts should be financially supported with joint investment from the federation, foundation, synagogue, JCC, day school, campus and camp world which shares the same ideals, leaders, professionals, donors and constituents. Organizations would voluntarily submit to an evaluation process that will not cost them anything, and may look like this:  The organization and the evaluators agree on what is to be evaluated, and how; the findings are reviewed by the organization with the evaluators; if there are significant deficiencies that the organization believes it can rectify, they are given some time and space to do so; if the deficiency is irreparable due to a lack of resources or a change in the political/social environment rather than a lack of will or skill, this will be noted in the evaluation.  In all cases, and in exchange for the no-cost evaluation, the report will be made public, noting the organization’s successes which will serve as models for others to emulate, and its set-backs, which others may learn to avoid.  Participating organizations will hold the distinction of public recognition in having the integrity to reflect on their own work, the generosity to share their best ideas, and the courage to disclose their cautionary tales so that others may not stumble.

The tragedy of Oct. 7 created new opportunities for us to coalesce, to heal, to summon our strength, and to rise up with bold ideas, not only to regain our equilibrium, but to advance in ways we had not, nor could not, imagine before. We should not squander that opportunity. Our intellectual culture is one of questioning, challenging, risk taking, and learning. The culture of our communal institutions should reflect that.