October Foundation News —Chip Edelsberg

Foundation News
—Chip Edelsberg, Executive Director

October 2007

The Jim Joseph Foundation (JJF) consistently finds that Initiatives it considers funding involve complex questions of Jewish identity. For each prospective Initiative, JJF professionals examine how experiences a particular organization offer engage individuals and their peer groups in Jewish learning. We try to discern, given our understanding of a substantial academic and growing popular literature on identity formation, if a potentially fundable Initiative involves learning that reliably leads to strengthening Jewish identity.

JJF Directors have determined that support of traditional institutions and established organizations in the Jewish community is one effective means for the Foundation to realize its vision. Funding Jewish day schools; BBYO; the San Francisco Federation; intermediaries such as the Foundation for Jewish Camping and PEJE; etc. reflects the foundation’s conviction that reinforcing well established identities of youth and families served by these organizations is sound philanthropy.

But Directors also realize that Jewish youth live in a world that intellectual historian David Hollinger describes as one in which “the identities people assume are acquired largely through affiliation, however prescribed or chosen.” Increasing numbers of young Jews do not necessarily have deeply rooted religious identity ascribed to them. Youth reared in interfaith families, for example, tell us that “growing up in a mixed religious household definitely didn’t diminish my spirituality, it just scattered it.” This highly voluntary nature of choosing when, how, and if to associate with one’s community of descent compels the Foundation to view Jewish identity as a dynamic phenomenon.

Yeshiva University president Richard Joel, in a paper commissioned by JJF, asserts that “catechism” and “aphorisms” are entirely inadequate means for bringing a diverse population of Jewish youth into a covenantal relationship with Judaism. JJF madrich Arnie Eisen warns in a similarly commissioned paper that “a voluntarist community of sovereign selves does not have the luxury of boredom or alienation.” Furthermore, Hollinger notes that “the practice of confidently telling people what their identity is or isn’t has gone into precipitous decline as more and more Americans recognize that identity is performative (my italics). Identity is a code word for solidarity: to prescribe an identity for someone is to tell that person with whom they should be affiliating.”

JJF takes the studied observations of reputable scholars and communal leaders to heart. The Foundation’s grant making amounts to many millions of dollars of grants awarded and commitments made in just twenty months of operation. While JJF’s Directors and professionals focus intently on the foundation’s mission and vision, we take a decidedly flexible approach to funding, believing that meaningful Jewish learning for youth takes myriad forms in what is a very complex contemporary society.

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