Search results for: Jewish engagement

The Jewish People Policy Institute has released two action-oriented papers that focus on the deep challenges facing Jewish continuity in North America. “Family, Engagement, and Jewish Continuity among American Jews,” was prepared at JPPI by Profs. Sylvia Barack Fishman and Steven M. Cohen. The second paper – “Learning Jewishness, Jewish Education, and Jewish Identity” – was prepared under the lead of Prof. Barack Fishman and Dr. Shlomo Fischer, a JPPI Senior Fellow in cooperation with the Institute’s experts in the field.

CASJE, the Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education, has announced the next steps in its long-term research project to explore how Jewish early childhood education (ECE) can serve as a gateway for deeper and more sustained involvement in Jewish life. While broadly conceived, the study will include a focus on ways that ECE institutions can better engage interfaith families and families that are not currently involved in a synagogue or other Jewish institution.

Since the release of the Pew study in 2013, there has been much hand-wringing in the Jewish community, with some calling this, again, a time of crisis. There is fear of increasing rates of assimilation and growing disaffiliation from traditional institutions. This was especially apparent in the recent statement, Strategic Directions for Jewish Life: A Call to Action, signed by many respected colleagues. We do not accept this doom and gloom picture of a dying Jewish community, and we think the analysis and recommendations in the document are too limited. As leaders of Jewish social justice initiatives, we see instead an incredibly exciting moment in Jewish life, in which Jews of all generations are experimenting with new modes of practice, diving into learning, creating new Jewish cultural expressions, and drawing on Jewish wisdom and our Jewish traditions to inspire engagement with the world. Rather than mourning the changes in modes of affiliation, we should celebrate this moment and determine how the many different parts of our community might respond expansively and creatively. We want more new voices at the table and more ideas for next steps to be shared.