"Why aren't Millennials donating to or serving on the boards of Jewish organizations the way their parents and grandparents did?"
"Why aren't Millennials joining synagogues?"
"Why aren't my Millennial children doing Jewish the way I did Jewish?"
"Are there any books that focus on Jewish Millennial engagement and education post-college, sharing strategies and best practices from the field?"
For a religion that is hyper-focused on "
l'dor v'dor
" - transmitting the Jewish tradition "from generation to generation" - the notion that Millennials just aren't interested in carrying on Jewish practices or embracing the Jewish commitments of those who came before them poses quite a challenge, both on interpersonal and organizational sustainability levels. As a result, it seems much of the Jewish organizational world is concerned with how to engage Millennials in their offerings. But, if the data collected from reliable sources such as The Pew Research Center are any indication, there is much more work to do.
Enter "The Well," founded in the summer of 2015 in Metro Detroit to embrace this specific call to action, and which has been doing on-the-ground research and development for Jewish Millennial engagement and education since. Repeatedly recognized as one of the 50 most innovative Jewish organizations in North America and included in the Slingshot Fund's inaugural "10 to Watch" list in 2020, with funding from both local and national donors, a number of models created by The Well have been embraced by organizations nationally. From custom Jewish-holiday-themed escape rooms that were designed, piloted, and licensed out to other communities around the country, to a blitz fundraising model that has since worked for campus Hillels and JCCs, to a remixed approach to Jewish text study that was a semifinalist for the inaugural Lippman Kanfer Prize in Applied Jewish Wisdom and which received national philanthropic support to pilot in additional cities, The Well - never with an annual budget of more than $500,000 or more than 4 full-time staff - has helped to transform the Millennial engagement and education landscape in Metro Detroit and beyond.
Just Jewish: How to Engage Millenials and Build a Vibrant Jewish Future
shares proven techniques and models ready to be adopted by the Jewish world's myriad organizations, touching on everything from branding, to fundraising, to programmatic approaches, to relationship development, and more, extrapolating lessons from The Well so they can be applied to the Jewish community writ large. As more seasoned generations start to take steps back from Jewish communal leadership, the time to meaningfully engage Millennials to ensure future leadership pipelines (both professional and volunteer) and Jewish vibrancy is NOW, and this book exists to help make it happen!