For Young Jews, Time To Grow Up

by Rabbi Jay Henry Moses
Special To The Jewish Week

The evidence, both academic and anecdotal, about Generations X and Y are familiar to many of us by now: Jews who are in their 20s and 30s do not feel engaged by established Jewish institutions. Synagogues, federations, JCCs and other organizations are not sufficiently welcoming, flexible or relevant to the Jews whose idea of community is very different from that of their parents.

Despite a small (and growing) number of exceptions, these criticisms are valid. Jewish institutions are indeed slow to change. Part of it is a mix of inertia, fear, myopia, and lack of visionary leadership. But part of the reason is a result of the very same historical and psychological dynamics that allowed Jews to persevere and survive 2,000 years of

wandering and persecution.

Regardless, established Jewish institutions make an easy target, and Jewish communal thinkers, leaders, funders and young people themselves have made pretty good target practice of them.

As a member of this generation — I’m 38 — I think it is time for a corrective to that narrative. We need not look far for this corrective: most of us are never that far from a mirror.

We are a generation with a short attention span and an allergy to commitment. We have been raised largely in privilege, and we have extended our childhood not only past college, but often through our thirties and beyond. We reserve the right to switch jobs, careers, relationships, and identities at will, as often as we want, and we orient our lives so that such choices cause us as little psychic damage as we can get away with. In short, we resist not only traditional institutions, but many of the traditional responsibilities of adulthood — with the notable exception of our freedom to do as we please.

Most of all, we are seekers — sometimes of meaning, yes, but more often of pleasure and material gratification. Most everything has come easily to us, and we have little tolerance for those things that require patience, persistence, loyalty, and hard work. We work hard, but usually in pursuit of our bliss or the latest technology to customize and ease our lives.
When it comes to Judaism, we want “hip.” We want “low barriers to entry.” We want as much distance as possible from anything our parents “forced on us” as kids. We want to be surrounded only by those who match our image of what we’d like to be (cool, edgy, and forever young). We want it to last an hour or less. And we want it to come easily, make us feel good, and be there for the taking, cheap if not free. We don’t want it to demand anything of us.

The truth is that the texts, traditions, rituals, ideals and values of Judaism — which make up the content that Jewish institutions were created in order to perpetuate — have within them everything that young Jews seek. But they are not superficially available in sound bites and visual images. It requires time, work, patience, and commitment to access Judaism’s riches. Some of them have to be “translated,” not just from Hebrew but from cultures far removed from our time and our space. Some of them require “unlearning” simplistic, child-oriented stories and ideas. Some of them require sharing our sense of community with other Jews who are different from us: older, or less fortunate or less hip.
Real community emerges around a shared commitment to perpetuating a piece of that content — for its own sake. Pursuing the Jewish vision of healing a broken society; mining our spiritual tradition for timeless wisdom in a complex world; and celebrating the rhythms of the seasons and of our lives: these ideals are reached only by a sometimes messy process of give and take among real people with limited resources. It requires stakeholders who are willing to endure the messiness involved in a commitment to something deeper, and willing also to show up, become a member, write a check.
My generation has not shown a readiness to engage fully in this process. We claim that our Jewish identity is important to us. But if it requires us to be in proximity to the elderly, weak, or geeky, or commit to showing up anywhere regularly, or sit through a sermon or class in order to find the deeper meaning behind something, or wait our turn to be in charge, or literally or figuratively “pay our dues” — we are out of there.

The more informal, ad-hoc, “emerging communities” that have sprung up in this vacuum are a hopeful development. In some cases they will force establishment institutions to adapt and shed their dysfunction and dead weight in order to survive. But such informal gatherings will never be a full replacement for institutions with history, resources and real estate. Big-tent organizations send an important message about Jewish unity while they potentially achieve large-scale good work that no wandering minyan ever could. And to trash our synagogues, federations, and other Jewish organizations because of their obvious warts is short-sighted and disrespectful to our predecessors who made great sacrifices to establish and sustain them for us. It is also an easy way to abrogate the responsibility that we have to engage with them, including working from within to help them adapt.

Just because our generation’s worldview causes established institutions’ weaknesses to stand out in glaring relief, that doesn’t mean that the Jewish community owes it to us to contort or implode itself to meet our every whim. Why should it? Given our track record, how can anyone expect us to step up and responsibly fill the gap that would be left in the wake?

The Jewish community may need to wake up to the changing world around it embodied by Generations X and Y, but the message to our generations is equally clear: it’s time for us to grow up. n

Rabbi Jay Moses is director of the Wexner Heritage Program.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization