Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future - Hardcover

Schwarz, Rabbi Sidney

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1580236677 ISBN 13: 9781580236676

Publisher: Jewish Lights, 2013

Synopsis

Visionary solutions for a community ripe for transformational change―from fourteen leading innovators of Jewish life.

"Jewish Megatrends offers a vision for a community that can simultaneously strengthen the institutions that serve those who seek greater Jewish identification and attract younger Jews, many of whom are currently outside the orbit of Jewish communal life. Schwarz and his collaborators provide an exciting path, building on proven examples, that we ignore at our peril."
―from the Foreword

The American Jewish community is riddled with doubts about the viability of the institutions that well served the Jewish community of the twentieth century. Synagogues, Federations and Jewish membership organizations have yet to figure out how to meet the changing interests and needs of the next generation.

In this challenging yet hopeful call for transformational change, visionary leader Rabbi Sidney Schwarz looks at the social norms that are shaping the habits and lifestyles of younger American Jews and why the next generation is so resistant to participate in the institutions of Jewish communal life as they currently exist. He sets out four guiding principles that can drive a renaissance in Jewish life and gives evidence of how, on the margins of the Jewish community, those principles are already generating enthusiasm and engagement from the very millennials that the organized Jewish community has yet to engage.

Contributors―leading innovators from different sectors of the Jewish community―each use Rabbi Schwarz's framework as a springboard to set forth their particular vision for the future of their sector of Jewish life and beyond.

CONTRIBUTORS:
Elise Bernhardt · Rabbi Sharon Brous · Sandy Cardin · Dr. Barry Chazan · Dr. David Ellenson · Wayne Firestone · Rabbi Jill Jacobs · Anne Lanski · Rabbi Joy Levitt · Rabbi Asher Lopatin · Rabbi Or N. Rose · Nigel Savage · Barry Shrage · Dr. Jonathan Woocher

About this title

About the Author

Rabbi Sidney Schwarz is a social entrepreneur, an author and a political activist. He founded and led PANIM: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values for twenty-one years. He is also the founding rabbi of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, Maryland, where he continues to teach and lead services. Currently, he serves as a senior fellow at Clal―The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership where he is involved in a program that trains rabbis to be visionary spiritual leaders. He is the author of Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future; Finding a Spiritual Home: How a New Generation of Jews Can Transform the American Synagogue and Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World.

Rabbi Sidney Schwarz is available to speak on the following topics:

• Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future
• Tribal vs. Covenantal Identity: Jews and the American Public Square
• Finding a Spiritual Home: Redefining the Religious Enterprise
• Reaching the Jewish Community of the 21st Century: Educating for Jewish Citizenship
• Between Conscience and Solidarity
• Can Social Justice Save the Jewish Soul?

Click here to contact the author.

From Booklist

According to the author, the American Jewish community is at a crossroads. Its traditional institutions, synagogues, Jewish day schools, and Jewish community centers, are losing membership. They no longer meet the needs of the Generation Xers and Millennials who should be joining them. Instead, younger people seek out other opportunities for spiritual development and social action. Schwarz, a Reconstructionist rabbi who works to build innovative Jewish communities, examines the reasons for the decline of the traditional institutions and offers ideas for reinvigorating them. He notes that Jewish life needs to be based on wisdom from sacred texts put into a contemporary context: social justice throughout the world, community as a source of support and celebration, and sacred purpose that provides meaning for life. This is an excellent book for Jewish professionals and those who wish to create new spiritual institutions. --Barbara Bibel

About this edition

• Publisher: Jewish Lights
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1580236677
• ISBN 13: 9781580236676
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288