Designing Jewish life, not just defending it

In late December 2025, I opened a newsletter from a major Jewish organization announcing a strategic shift for 2026: moving away from community building toward civic engagement and fighting antisemitism.

It was not the first message of its kind. I’ve read several similar statements in recent months, each thoughtful, serious, and grounded in real concern. Yet as I continued reading, one question stayed with me: What Jewish future are we building?

After more than two years of relentless mobilization and emergency campaigns, a subtle yet significant shift is underway. National Jewish organizations are increasingly doubling down on antisemitism response and advocacy. That instinct is understandable. The threat is real, and ignoring it is not an option. But as I look back at what we endured and think ahead to the year before us, both as a COO and as someone deeply connected to Jewish life, I sense an emerging imbalance.

If we are not careful, we risk designing a Jewish future that weakens the very ecosystem that gives Jews a reason to stay connected. When funding, talent, and attention tilt too far toward combating hate, we may win critical battles while overlooking the long-term work that sustains Jewish life.

The past two years, following October 7th,  have demanded extraordinary resilience and rapid response. I saw it up close. Teams pivoted overnight. Communities reorganized in real time. We have demonstrated creativity and courage. Donors stretched themselves again and again. It was inspiring. It also exposed painful realities about our safety and assumptions about allyships. Still, Jewish identity and connection must remain the foundation. When the communal agenda becomes dominated by antisemitism response, we unintentionally pull energy away from the forces that sustain Jewish life from generation to generation.

After two years of pivoting and emergency response, 2026 can look different. It can be a design year: a moment to ask what Jewish life we want to architect for the next decade and whether our communal energy is structured to get us there. We have an abundance of raw material for innovation if we choose to use it intentionally and reorganize our assets to support Jewish continuity: rethinking rituals that meet families where they are, building global networks as engines of belonging, creating Israel engagement that expands literacy and connection, and developing leadership pathways accessible to all.

When I speak with women in Momentum programs, community leaders, and partners across continents, I hear the same longing. People want connection. They want meaning for their families. They want Jewish life to feel personal and relevant. And they want the confidence and tools to raise children with a strong sense of Jewish identity, not just as a reaction to threats. Research supports this. The Pew 2020 study found that the strongest predictors of long-term Jewish engagement are meaningful Jewish friendships, participation in community life, ritual practice, and learning that shapes identity.

This is not a call to step away from civic engagement or public action. Standing tall and speaking out matter. But they cannot lead alone. At Momentum, we saw this clearly in 2025. More than 80% of women participating in our Israel trips reported increased confidence to take action, up from 30% before. That shift did not come from advocacy training alone. It came after days of reconnecting to Jewish values, wisdom, spirituality, community, and relationship to Israel. Identity came first, action followed.

I am not suggesting reducing resources for antisemitism work. I suggest that we right-size it. A healthy ecosystem must hold two portfolios at once: protection and purpose, security and spirituality, advocacy and identity. That means investing in Jewish identity and community building as core infrastructure, shaping narratives around who we are, sustaining a dual philanthropic focus, and measuring belonging, learning, ritual engagement, and leadership growth alongside incident response.

As we step into this new year, with hopefully less urgency but no less responsibility, we face a leadership choice. We can continue to let crisis define our imagination, or we can let imagination redefine how we recover from it. We can build a Jewish future organized primarily around the threats we face, or around the identity we share. If we choose the latter, if we choose to design, to innovate, and to build from within, 2026 can be remembered not as the year after the crisis, but as the year Jewish life became bold again.