I”m new to this blog, but you’ll get to know me quickly. I”m the kvetcher, the one who bitches and moans about crap everyone else is to scared to bring up lest they bite the hand that feeds them. I don’t care because I’ve got no investment.
So just in time for the High Holidays, I go to the Kehilla site to sign up for a cheap ticket, cuz, you know, I’m broke, don’t feel like disclosing my last tax filing to some membership director I don’t know and want to go to a shul where I’m am literally counted among those who count toward a minyan. And I”m greeted with this:
“Kehilla is no longer offering synagogue membership/high holiday tickets. Please contact a Kehilla partner synagogue for young adult rates.” This from the Kehilla website.
Rather than post a full 2 page rant on the front page of this blog on my first post, I’m gonna let you read on after the jump. And if you care at all about Jewish young adults, so called “continuity” and the future of our people in Chicago, then swallow hard and do read on…
The news may come as a surprise to people, but it shouldn’t because the response Kehilla overall seems to be, “who cares?” After all, how many people really actually belong to Kehilla in the first place? 200? Out of what, 20,000 Jewish young adults in Chicago. As one of them, it angers me that once again, young adults are brushed off like we don’t matter. Our elders, many of whom participated in a massive youth culture movement of their own 40 years ago, wonder why we walk away from Jewish life and fund studies to discover why we hate being asked to donate and join.
ITS BECAUSE OF SHIT LIKE THIS! ITS BECAUSE YOUNG ADULTS AREN’T TAKEN SERIOUSLY, ARE NOT OFFERED A SEAT AT THE TABLE LET ALONE A SHARE OF THE MEAL AND ARE THEN EXPECTED TO PAY THROUGH THE NOSE TO PRAY ON THE HOLY DAYS! Why would I buy a $40,000 car with $3.50 a gallon gas prices when I can take the CTA for $70 a month and get to the same destination?
There is some serious resentment about the Jewish institutional world, and if ever there was an ass backward program with the wrong approach, Kehilla is it. It is designed to serve the needs of the institutions, not the constituents, who paid a flat $180 membership to get access (including high holidays) to any of five urban congregations (who never saw a cut) plus a jcc membership that was worthless because the j offers ZERO programs to begin. The hope was those same young adults would magically turn into full blown synagogue members after two years, but the proposition offered little value, so few people really cared to join. HINT: you can’t do outreach to an institutionally retisant population with a program that’s all about institutional membership.
The question on the minds of the Kehilla folks now must be what is Kehilla. Most of us have been asking it for a long time. Without membership income to fund a programming beyond a staff person, its more pressing… One might ponder the benefit of having even the best staff person without a programming budget. If its only real program, Makor, does it actually require a staff? Who can’t coordinate a catered dinner for 100 people. Its not brain surgery. (BTW in the age of DIY web 2.0 technology, proof of how out of touch it is requires a glance at Makor’s suckass website).
The question they SHOULD ask, and for that matter, the whole community (yes you, Peter Friedman), SHOULD ask, is, why is Kehilla? If the answer is “to get youg adults to join congregations” the battle is already lost, because as the numbers show, most of us simply don’t. We can’t afford to, don’t want to, and don’t bother. If prayer is important to us, we can do it and be Jewish anywhere and everywhere, not just a few out of the way shuls.
If the answer is “to reach out to young adults through peer oriented social networks that revolve around other Jews and engage them in activities directly or obliquely raising interest in Jewish identity, affinity and life,” then you’ve got game. But nobody is, and that brings up other interesting questions. Like, why not? And who should be?
What, if anything, is JCC’s of Chicago doing for young adults in this town if Kehilla is really just monthly Makor dinners and the occassional overpriced bar party? And now that JCC’s nationally are absorbing the GesherCity program , what purpose will that now staffless mirror entity serve locally, since its only major programs seem to be, surprise, the exact same Makor dinners and bar parties Kehilla does.
Noticing a pattern here? No programming budget, duplicated staff people and overhead but little actual programming or results to show for it all… Merge them together to realize efficiency and you could call it results, but only on the bottom line and not when it comes to actually doing anything. If the savings are applied to programming, great, but it doesn’t seem that way.
Apparrently there’s no regional JCC funding available for young audlt Jewish programming unless it is self-generated, ala Kehilla membership. Seriously, where does all the money go?? If you make a donation to JUF this year, part of it goes to JCC. 6 Million bucks a year is allocated to JCC’s , which apparently have no program for young adults.
Really? And I still should join because, why? They’re scratcing their heads about continuity and assimilation and are still doing absolutely nothing for the target population? Here’s an idea- find ten funders to donate a modest $10K each. $100,000 shouldn’t be hard in Chicago, not for a mongo supported agency like JCC. Use that funding for Jewish programming outside of the institutional world. A JCC without walls. Charge $1 for everything so that the barrier to entry is low. People would turn up, sign up and get involved. That’s a good investment.
Better yet, use it to make micro-grants to support people in the community who ARE doing cool stuff and ARE capturing young adults’ attention and attendance. Let it be about developing community from the ground up around issues we care about, rather than from the top down about agendas that aren’t are own and therefore don’t interest us. Provide the tools and resources needed to empower change agents and then stand back and watch what happens.
Instead, Kehilla announces that it is no longer offering access to cheap high holiday tickets. Its not even a relevant question anymore, because nobody’s paying attention to the fact that there’s been a change. Kehilla means community, and ironically, thats the one crucial thing that it has never been able to foster. It has been a Kehilla by and for the clergy of the member synagogues, but community has never been about institutions, its been about the people, in this case we young people, that make them up. In the end, its precisley that, and the need to address their needs rather than those of institutions, of which Kehilla and its members have lost sight.
That’s my kvetch. If you agree that the whole thing is BS, post a comment.
I knew that they lost their main staff person, had months to replace her and did not. And I recently saw that they cut the HH program, which is a shame. I didn’t join Kehilla, because the only benefit was H tickets and I’m a member of a shul. And you didn’t have to be a member to do stuff and most of the people who took advantage of the programming wasn’t in the demographic.
I guess, for me, the answer is this.
This. Jewish Fringe. Organizing events that speak to us Jewishly. This is getting my Rabbi to agree to host a monthly JF meeting. It is Adam setting up an IDF fudraiser. It is the monthly shabbat dinner and services at private homes.
Make your own Jewish community. You’ll probably hear what I’m hearing at my shul, “We wish we were young enough for Jewish Fringe and Loosely Defined.” And I say, “If you share our spirit, come along, we don’t say no to anyone.”
So, um, build it and they will come.