Joining the Jewish Future!

Participants at this year's Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly (GA) in New Orleans had a unique opportunity to imagine and shape the future of Jewish education and the Jewish community.

On November 8th, the GA hosted the first-ever Jewish Futures Conference. This extraordinary event brought together visionary thinkers, passionate leaders, and fresh voices to chart a course for the future of Jewish learning and life.  "The goal of the conference," stated Harlene Appelman, Executive Director of the Covenant Foundation, one of the event's co-sponsors, "is to excite and stimulate thinking about the potential of creative and thoughtful Jewish education."  The conference did this, according to David Bryfman of New York's Jewish Education Project, a co-sponsor, "by providing a space to dream, learn, and engage in purposeful conversation.  At a time when the Jewish community is at a crossroads, this is an ideal opportunity to showcase some of the best thinking in the Jewish educational world."

The Jewish Futures Conference was keynoted by several provocative speakers, including Ori Brafman, acclaimed author of The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, and Laurie Karr, a marketing and branding expert on families and youth, who will explore the social, cultural, and technological trends that are shaping our world. Their talks were followed by a GA first: presentations on the implications of these trends for Jewish learning and life by several speakers being chosen from an open video competition.  "The competition is a way to ensure that emerging voices are given the respect and space they deserve," stated Bryfman.  "In today's world, ideas can come from all angles - established organizations and young people alike."

Participants in the conference also had a chance to add their own ideas to the mix.  There were opportunities to discuss how to bring new ideas to fruition in their own communities during roundtable discussions which will conclude the conference.  As with the mix of presenters, the aim was to attract a diverse group of participants.  "We believe that the conference was valuable for anyone who is involved in trying to enrich the Jewish present and future, and especially worthwhile for those who are themselves involved in transformational learning initiatives or have a major role in allocating resources for Jewish education," said Jonathan Woocher, Director of JESNA's Lippman Kanfer Institute, also a co-sponsor of the conference.

Bringing the Jewish Futures Conference to the General Assembly enhanced and broadened this premier event on the Jewish communal calendar.  "Our goal is to open the GA to new audiences through innovative and forward thinking programming like this conference," stated JFNA's Andrea Fram Plotkin, one of the key organizers of the event.  "We will be successful if participants made connections with stimulating ideas and other people and left inspired to try something new in their organization or community," added Bryfman.

Full coverage of the Jewish Futures Conference is available at www.jewishfutures.net.

The Jewish Futures Conference is sponsored by Jewish Education Project, The Covenant Foundation, JESNA's Lippman Kanfer Institute and The Jewish Federations of North America.

For general information and media relations contact: Rika Levin, Chief Marketing Officer, JESNA at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 212-284-6703.

We would like to thank the Lippman Kanfer Family Foundation, the Covenant Foundation, and the Mandell L. and Madeleine H. Berman Foundation for their generous financial contributions to this conference.

From The Jewish Week:

In response to a changing attitude toward Israel on college campuses, the Israel advocacy group StandWithUs lauched in 2001. Its goal was to serve as an informational guerrilla unit of sorts and work with established campus organizations like Hillel to combat anti-Semitism and anti-Israel propaganda. With calls for universities to divest from Israeli companies still occurring on campuses across North America, StandWithUs has found itself growing in recent years and working harder to reach more college students.

Recognizing the need to connect with these young adults through new technology, the organization has released a mobile phone app aimed to encourage this demographic to share positive information about Israel.

Read the full article in The Jewish Week...

From The Boston Globe:

NEWTON - Eighteen months after the startling news that Hebrew College planned to sell its celebrated campus to retire $32.1 million in mortgage debt, its leaders say the school has regained its financial footing and will now stay put.

Rabbi Daniel L. Lehmann, the president of Hebrew College, said the school is in the final phase of renegotiating its loan in a complex deal that will reduce the institution's debt to $7.4 million.

Read the full article in The Boston Globe...

From jWeekly:

The Azrieli Foundation made a $10 million donation to Yeshiva University in New York City in honor of foundation founder David Azrieli's 90th birthday.

The donation, the largest in the foundation's history, is earmarked for the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration.

Read the full article in jWeekly...

From eJewishPhilanthropy:

Hebrew College and Boston University's Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership will launch a first-of-its-kind certificate program in organizational leadership for rabbinical students and rabbis.

The program, supported with funding from The Samuel Bronfman Foundation, will provide students with a strong foundation in development, finance and marketing while also developing their reflective and strategic leadership skills. The program is unique in the Jewish world in bringing together a rabbinical school with a highly acclaimed leadership institute.

Read the full article in eJewishPhilanthropy...

From eJewishPhilanthropy:

In partnership with the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) will host access to the Institute's entire Visual History Archive – nearly 52,000 video testimonies of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust in 32 languages and from 56 countries.

Penn's partnership with the Shoah Foundation Institute is supported by the joint efforts of the Annenberg School for Communication, Penn Libraries and Penn's Division of Information Systems and Computing.

Read the full article in eJewishPhilanthropy...

From eJewishPhilanthropy:

Hillel has served Jewish college students for almost 90 years. Our success is the result of constantly innovating the way we engage students, and we continue that trend with the development of Hillel Connect, a mobile application aimed at the student campus community that provides an interactive and lively means for Jewish students to stay connected to Jewish life. Because Hillel serves the most technologically advanced audience on the planet – college students – Hillel Connect strives to take advantage of existing social media channels and offer students something familiar, useful and attractive as they seek to engage with Jewish life on campus.

Read the full article at eJewishPhilanthropy...

From The New York Times:

CLAREMONT, Calif. — When Maria Klawe became president of Harvey Mudd College in 2006, she was dismayed — but not surprised — at how few women were majoring in computer science.

A mathematician and computer scientist herself, she arrived at Harvey Mudd (the smallest of the five so-called Claremont Colleges) in the midst of a nationwide downturn for women in computer science. As recently as 1985, 37 percent of graduates in the field were women; by 2005 it was down to 22 percent, and sinking.

Read the full article in The New York Times...

From eJewishPhilanthropy:

This week, 400 Jewish young adults from countries throughout the world will participate in Building Future Leadership (BFL), Masa Israel's annual leadership conference in Israel. Following an intensive application process in which they exhibited their passion for Israel and their Jewish communities, these individuals will gain the tools they need to become positive and inspiring change agents back home.

Masa Israel has created BFL to motivate and prepare exceptional participants to become the leaders in their campus Hillels and in their local Masa alumni communities. JFNA's Mandel Center and Hillel are both playing central roles in the conference, focusing on training Masa Israel participants for involvement once they return to the USA and Canada.

Read the full article in eJewishPhilanthropy...

From eJewishPhilanthropy:

There is a debate escalating in American Jewish circles between those who favor Israel advocacy and those who favor Israel education for high school and college age Jewish students.

For many years, the establishment favored Israel advocacy. It armed young Jews with the basic skills of communication and argumentation, and gave them "the facts." It sent them back to places like the college campus in the hopes that their new-found confidence and knowledge would sway opinion in Israel's favor. Many who favor this approach believe that Israel education that embraces critical views of the Jewish state can undermine communal unity on Israel.

Read the full article at eJewishPhilanthropy...