Rishe Groner
It’s never been more clear that people are starving for meaning, spirituality, connection and community, and they’re not receiving it from organized religion. The thesis that Judaism requires out-of-the-box revitalization and new ways of approaching spiritual community is evident by my own work over the last several years in Brooklyn. Jewish involvement is not dying. […]
Rabbi Dan Goldblatt
I serve a Bay Area suburban congregation that is predominantly secular with a smattering of Jewish searchers and seekers. For many years, we had a community dominated by families with young children. At one point we had about 280 member units and approximately 235 children in our Religious School (through B’nei Mitzvah). Because B’nei Mitzvah […]
Rabbi Avi Finegold
I read with great interest the opening chapter of Jewish Megatrends and the manner in which the ideas were presented made me reexamine my own work in the Jewish community. While I can fairly say that my work touches on all of the ideas presented in some way I would like to focus on two […]
Julie Emden
Embodied Jewish Learning (EJL) at Jewish LearningWorks offers an alternative point of connection to Jewish life through workshops and teacher trainings in experiential body-based text study. Our work is aligned primarily with the values of Chochma (Wisdom), Kehillah (Community) and Kedusha (Holiness). In addition, we employ the values of Mishkan (Embodied Spirituality), Yetzirah (Creativity and Transformation) and Shlemut […]
Jessica Deutsch
The motivation behind my work is to find the light and relevant holiness in this world. Primarily, I’m a visual artist, however, this is not to say that my work is limited to paper and pen. While I’m working on a piece in my studio, I’m almost always simultaneously dreaming up a vision for community […]
Cheryl Cook
“My family is looking for help finding temporary housing. My parents were on vacation in Boston (from CA) and my mom was run over by a truck while crossing the street. She is currently in the ICU in stable, but critical condition. We are expecting her recovery to take at least 6 weeks.” This email […]
Rabbi Sara Brandes
The Jewish world has shifted since the publication of Megatrends, and many of the insights offered therein have been integrated into Jewish organizations, especially those in the NPSCI network. The mission of Or HaLev, a lean non-profit, founded in 2006, unencumbered by institutional history, a mortgage, etc. is fully in line with Schwarz’s four propositions, […]
Carrie Bornstein
Since 2004, Mayyim Hayyim Living Waters Community Mikveh and Education Center has welcomed nearly 8,000 people for close to 17,000 immersions. The overwhelming majority of our visitors, who range in age from infancy through seniors and everything in between, would not know anything about a mikveh, much less want to visit one, were it not […]
Rabbi Tiferet Berenbaum
I first read this essay when it came out in 2013, just before graduating rabbinical school. It was an invaluable tool for communicating my vision with my synagogue and the greater Milwaukee community. As I am preparing to leave Congregation Shir Hadash, I want to consider my work in the context of three of the […]
Matt Bar
Excluding strange mystic experiences and perplexing dreams that whispered lech lecha into my soul at night, I had a perfectly outlined ‘covenantal identity’ childhood. My family was not religiously homogeneous nor observant. I was bar-mitzvahed at a Reform synagogue. I was a High Holiday Jew, a covenantal Jew. I would argue I have since become […]
Joshua Avedon
First as one of Ikar’s founders, then at Synagogue 3000, and currently at Jumpstart, I’ve had the privilege to work in the U.S., Europe, and Israel with leaders of new organizations and communities of all types and persuasions. I came to this work as someone who grew up disaffected from Jewish life, but who came […]
Hannah Kapnik Ashar
“Jews are in fact seekers of wisdom (dorshei chochma), seekers of social justice (dorshei tzedek), seekers of community (dorshei kehillah), and seekers of lives of sacred purpose (dorshei kedusha).” What if we want to treat Jews not as consumers of these four domains, but as co-creators? What balance do we want organizations to strive for […]
Wendy Aronson and Rabbi Brian Field
On page 13 of his essay in Jewish Megatrends, Rabbi Schwarz describes a twenty-year-old, non-Orthodox Jew named Bill. Bill is engaged to a person of another faith and when he places a call to his childhood rabbi to see if he will officiate their wedding, he receives a response that makes Bill feel rejected. It […]
Rachel Gildiner
My work as an educator and Jewish leader has always been about (1) fostering kehillah, and (2) deepening kehillot with kedusha. I believe wisdom, learning, confidence, further involvement, Jewish risk-taking, asking questions, engaged Jewish life, emerges from positive experiences of community first and foremost. And it has been my experience that as we grow older, […]
Rabbi Shawn Zevit
Chochmah (Wisdom), Tzedek (Justice), Kehillah (Community) and Kedushah (Sacredness), the four propositions Rabbi Sid Schwarz outlines in his opening essay for Jewish Megatrends, are core Jewish values that are a winding thread throughout the millennia of the Jewish People’s journey. I have found all these areas resonant in my decades of avodah– work in sacred […]
Zahara Zahav
The four propositions that Sid suggests will shape and inspire meaningful, relevant Jewish communities today contain strong echoes of central themes found in the traditional wisdom of the Torah. Chochma, kedusha, tzedek and kehillah are rooted in the famous mishnah of Pirkei Avot 1:14: Shimon the Righteous who said, “On three things the world stands: […]
Lawrence Yermack
It’s probably best to preface these remarks with a brief statement of how I came to Jewish Spirituality because that will help to explain why I agree that the four concepts presented in the book quite accurately depict the aspirational side of today’s Jewish community. We will only succeed if we meet those aspirations with […]
Rob Weinberg
The work of the Experiment in Congregational Education (ECE), the nation’s first and longest lasting synagogue transformation project, aligns—to a greater or lesser extent— with all four propositions. How? ECE operates on multiple levels. At the p’shat level, our work is about transforming Jewish education including changing the Jewish learning goals, process, context, structures, and […]
Karla Van Praag
I believe that our work aligns with all four propositions. Wisdom/Chochmah There is a middle ground between giving people what they want and giving people what they need. Organizers, like rabbis and educators, need to meet people where they are if we want them to be responsive, but we can’t just encourage them to sit […]
Rabbi Rachel Timoner
As the new senior rabbi of CBE in Brooklyn, I was recently asked by my board of trustees to write up my vision for the congregation. All four of the propositions in Megatrends appeared in my vision. In order to accomplish any of them, however, our first work must be to surprise people with Judaism. […]
Organizational Co-Sponsors
