2007 GA SPOTLIGHTS NEXT GENERATION

Nov. 12, 2007

The Next Generation took the opening spotlight at the 2007 UJC General Assembly in Nashville Monday, with a range of young Jewish and Israeli activists, Web bloggers, an Oscar-winning filmmaker and others describing their visions of community building and the power of the collective.

"Our generation lives generously, but gives differently," said Esther Kustanowitz, senior editor of PresenTense Magazine and author of the My Urban Kvetch blog. "We need to feel it in our hearts and in our minds."

More than 3,500 people are participating in the 2007 GA, which runs from Nov. 11-13 and is being co-hosted for the first time by multiple Jewish communities -- the Jewish Federation of Chattanooga; the Knoxville Jewish Alliance; the Memphis Jewish Federation; and the Jewish Federation of Nashville. This year's theme, "One People, One Destiny," is focusing on the power of the collective continental federation system to build Jewish community worldwide through education, social action and advocacy.

This year's GA is also integrating next-generation speakers and programs to an unprecedented degree, reflecting UJC's new strategy to engage younger Jews and foster Jewish peoplehood for the next generation. At Sunday's opening plenary, hundreds of students from Hillel: the Foundation for Jewish Campus Life marched into the event with their

Kustanowitz urged federations to increasingly adapt the newer technologies young people use to create community -- email, instant messaging, Web logs, e-letters, and social networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace.

If federations intend to "stay relevant to 'generation tech', they must increase their technological fluency," she said.

Daniel Sieradski, founder of such Web logs and Jewschool, Shul Shopper, Radical Torah and Corner Prophets, said the "next big thing" in Jewish life won't likely come from institutions but from individuals. At the same time, he said the federation system should continue to support such projects as Bikkurim, an incubator for new Jewish ideas which shares offices with UJC.

"You need us and we need you," he said.

Sieradski urged federations to adapt such measures as creating resource centers for new ideas at smaller and mid-size federations, creating an online archive of Webinars devoted to non-profit skill-building and a Jewish version of the Robinhood Fund, which facilitates micro-giving and micro-lending in an online setting.

UJC President and CEO Howard Rieger, in the earlier board meeting, said the continental federation system may not always initiate programs, but it alone has the extensive resources to build and maintain programs over a longer term.

"We don't have to invent everything, but we have the ability to put a machine behind it that no one else has," Rieger said.

Also speaking was Sarah Chasin, a 21-year-old George Washington University student who joined the Hillel Alternative Spring Break in 2006 to help rebuild the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. Chasin, informed by her Jewish values of tikkun olam and community building, returned to the area with Americorps Vista for a year to help people recover.

Chasin said she realized she helps others not out of a sense of duty, but "I do it to feel connected. I do it to learn," she said. Furthermore, "this experience is going to be a platform for everything I'm going to do in my whole life."

Matan Dahan and Dany Glicksberg are shaping the lives of young Israelis through their program Ayalim, supported by UJC/Federation and the Jewish Agency for Israel, which re-imagines Zionist ideals and brings young people into under-developed areas in the Galilee and the Negev Desert to build community through Zionist ideals.

Ayalim is about "Zionism, settling the land, and caring for one another," Dahan said. "They said America is the land of opportunity -- I say Israel is the land of opportunity," Glicksberg added.

Idit Klein, of Keshet, a group dedicated to creating community for gay and transgendered Jews, recalled how the Jewish texts she learned as a child in day school informed her sense of community building, by encouraging contradictory yet simultaneous interpretations of texts -- a sense of "radical inclusion," she said.

Ari Sandel, who won a 2006 Academy Award for best short film for "West Bank Story," his first feature production, told of how he networked endlessly, creating an organization in college to join successful industry veterans with students, and prodded people to mentor him. The son of an Israeli, Sandel's comedy about competing Israeli and Palestinian falafel stands showed at the Sundance Film Festival and even in Dubai, which sparked an intense discussion with a local audience.

The film "allowed a dialogue I never anticipated," he said.

Also on Monday, the UJC Board of Trustees/Delegate Assembly adopted a resolution calling for increased advocacy efforts by federations on the dangers posed by Iran.

The resolution, sponsored by the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, was approved unanimously. It urged federations to further coordinated efforts to advocate for an economic divestment from Iran in order to build pressure against the Islamic republic from acquiring nuclear capabilities and from seeking to threaten its neighbors, including Israel.

UJC's board adopted a series of other important policy resolutions as well.  The resolutions ranged from a call for the federation system to continue to advocate for freeing captured Israeli soldiers Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev; to support education and legislation concerning Jewish genetic disorders; to deepen commitments to Israel, as the Jewish state nears its 60th anniversary; to mark the 40th anniversary of the Soviet Jewry movement; and to thank the Tennessee GA host communities.

(To read the full text of the resolutions, click here.)

The GA opened Nov. 11 in Nashville, Tenn., with appearances by Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean; Israeli Minister of Diaspora & Society Isaac Herzog, Rabbi Dr. Jacob. J. Schacter of Yeshiva University's Center for the Jewish Future, and others. Click here for more details.

The GA is also featuring scores of speakers in dozens of smaller forums and breakout sessions, many of them designed to give participants valuable tools to help build their own communities. For details on all GA events, please visit www.ujc.org/ga or read the GA Daily e-letter, which includes video clips of speakers, audio podcasts of important sessions, and more.