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Fall 2008
Jewish Education Update
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Welcome to the autumn issue of "News & Views", JESNA's newsletter for decision-makers in Jewish education. We're in the midst of what the purported ancient Chinese proverb might call "interesting times". Change is coming -- on all fronts -- and the individuals and groups featured in this e-newsletter, representing social entrepreneurship at its best, act as agents of change in the Jewish community and far beyond. Here at JESNA, we're embracing all kinds of positive changes of our own. We're especially proud of the changes we've made to enhance and turbo-charge our website, and we invite you to explore our new and expanded array of features and resources at www.jesna.org today!
As always, our goal is more than just informing you about the great work being done by others. We hope our new website and these articles and the related links will offer valuable inspiration, practical support and useful ideas for you and your organizations in these challenging times.
Ellen Goldstein
Vice President for Institutional Advancement
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Drinking from the Fountain of Youth |
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 As part of our focus on social entrepreneurship, we wanted to look again at a JESNA-initiated program that has been quietly promoting Jewish innovation for nearly a decade. Bikkurim: An Incubator For New Jewish Ideas provides resources and counseling to the most promising Jewish 'start-ups', housing them on-site at JESNA / UJC's New York offices. Martin Kaminer, founder of the program, shares his views on what Bikkurim is and what it means to him: |
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JESNA as an Innovation Hub |
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JESNA is recognized as a vital “knowledge hub” for the field of Jewish education, disseminating learnings about “what works,” why, and how, and helping communities and educators apply these to improve their educational endeavors. But, JESNA is also an “innovation hub,” a resource and catalyst for ideas, people, and programs that break new ground and offer new ways of engaging and enriching Jewish learners. |
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The Search for Social Entrepreneurship by Paul Light |
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.jpg) Research on social entrepreneurship is finally catching up to its rapidly growing potential. In The Search for Social Entrepreneurship, (2008), Paul Light explores this surge of interest to establish the state of knowledge on this growing phenomenon and suggest directions for future research. Light begins by outlining the debate on how to define social entrepreneurship, a concept often cited and lauded but not necessarily understood. A very elemental definition would note that it involves individuals, groups, networks, or organizations seeking sustainable change via new ideas on how governments, nonprofits, and businesses can address significant social problems. That leaves plenty of gaps, however, and without adequate agreement on what the term means, we cannot measure it effectively. The unsatisfying results are apple-to-orange comparisons that make replication and further research difficult. |
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A "Sampling" of the Transformers |
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Just as business entrepreneurs create and transform whole industries, social entrepreneurs act as the change agents for society, seizing opportunities others miss in order to improve systems, invent and disseminate new approaches and advance sustainable solutions that create social value. The job of a social entrepreneur is to recognize when a part of society is stuck and to provide new ways to get it unstuck. He or she finds what is not working and solves the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution and persuading entire societies to take new leaps. |
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Transformimg Jewish Lives