Research and Learning

Updated

updated April 14, 2026
A new case study, commissioned by the Foundation and authored by Susan Wolf Ditkoff, reveals the behind-the-scenes story of the Hebrew College–Temple Reyim Shared Campus: its roots from the perspective of each partner, its intertwined trunk as the “deal” grafted together (and nearly unraveled), and its budding branches that each partner hoped would grow as new opportunities emerged in the years to come. The history of this Shared Campus unfolded over four broad phases: Dreaming, Exploring, Aligning, and Launching (conveniently, “DEAL”). In reality, these phases were not quite so linear. But with 20/20 hindsight, the phases of the deal are clear.

  • Phase I: Dream. When an organization considers any new collaboration or alliance, the goal of the initial Dream phase should be to dream big before homing in on the best path forward. At this stage it is critical to open the aperture and tackle “the Big Why” without getting bogged down in the details of any specific path forward. The Dream phase should cast a wide net and lean into the theme of imagine, imagine, imagine.
  • Phase II: Explore. Once the Dream phase has identified a high potential option, then what? The goal of the Explore phase is to zoom in from the big dream starting point and ask the clear-eyed, no-kidding questions about what it might really take to bring a collaboration to life. The Explore phase should inform the dream by developing different scenarios and options, and lean into the theme of learn, learn, learn.
  • Phase III: Align. As the ancient Greek proverb warns, “Many’s the slip ’twixt the cup and the lip.” It’s hard to imagine more sage advice for the Align phase of a collaboration. The goal of the Align phase is to hammer out the niggling, seemingly endless details and land a signed financial and operating agreement. The theme of this phase is negotiate, negotiate, negotiate—the more granular the better.
  • Phase IV: Launch. Once the deal is signed, the work is far from over; in fact, it’s just beginning. The goal of the Launch phase is to share the new plans with each entity’s constituents, answer questions from the broader public, and generate excitement about the move. The theme of this phase is communicate, communicate, communicate.

updated February 4, 2026
A new study, Ideas that Influence: Understanding and Supporting the Ecosystem of Jewish Thought Leadership, conducted by Mission Bloom and funded by Maimonides Fund and the Jim Joseph Foundation, addresses a critical challenge: the need for strategic development of Jewish thought leadership beyond serendipitous growth. While cultivating these essential voices is valued, systematic approaches to do so have been limited. Through interviews with 30 established thought leaders, an informal survey of over 250 Jewish communal professionals, and extensive field analysis, this research mapped a subsection of the landscape of contemporary Jewish thought leadership and explored the experiences of thought leaders influencing public discourse and decision-making in mainstream pluralistic organizations and communities. It reveals distinctive qualities of Jewish thought leadership and identifies crucial support systems required for its strengthening.

Key Findings: 

  • Jewish Thought Leadership Is Distinctive
  • A Diverse Ecosystem of Voices Exists, Supporting Different Methods of Influence
  • Development Is Non-Linear and Multi-Pathway
  • A Complex Ecosystem Sustains and Supports Jewish Thought Leadership —
    But Faces Challenges

In addition to key findings and recommendations for the field, the report includes four “deep dives” on specific aspects of the research:

  • The Nature of Jewish Thought Leadership: Explore the fundamental characteristics, roles, and types of influence that define Jewish thought leadership today, drawing distinctions from related concepts.
  • Personas and Pathways: Understand the distinct approaches Jewish thought leaders employ, examining their developmental journeys, motivations, and strategic pathways for impact.
  • Mapping the Landscape: Analyze the human infrastructure and contextual environment that supports or constrains Jewish thought leaders, including mentorship, networks, and institutional dynamics.
  • Framework for Action: Discover actionable insights and strategic points for cultivating the next generation of Jewish thought leaders and fostering a vibrant future for the field.

View the executive summary, report summary and deep dives for Ideas that Influence: Understanding and Supporting the Ecosystem of Jewish Thought Leadership.

updated December 3, 2025
Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation’s study, From Calling to Career: Mapping the Current State and Future of Rabbinic Leadership, conducted by Rosov Consulting, provides the first data-driven picture of the contemporary American rabbinate and rabbinic pipeline. Its goal is to clarify what is happening across the rabbinic pipeline in the US and inform coordinated strategies to strengthen the field.

Key Findings: The State of the Current Rabbinate

  • Deep meaning and widespread burnout coexist – 97% of rabbis report their work as rewarding, while burnout and emotional overload are forcing exits
  • Congregational roles remain dominant, but are losing appeal (non-congregational roles are growing yet remain underpaid and structurally weaker)
  • The rabbinic workforce is aging: (of the 4,144 rabbis active, only 6% are under 35, while 26% are over 65; an age profile older than Christian clergy)

Key Findings: The Future of the Rabbinate

  • Enrollment has declined at large denominational seminaries but appears to be reaching a new equilibrium
  • Smaller and non-denominational seminaries are growing
  • Students entering today are demographically distinct (majority second career; more women; more LGBTQ+; more Jews-by-Choice and those raised in multi-heritage households; more Jews of Color)
  • The calling remains extremely strong, but practical training and career barriers (financial, time, relocation, career viability) are the most powerful deterrents

Key Insights:

  • Burnout is the silent emergency shaping the present and the future of the rabbinate.
  • We are not replacing rabbis fast enough to keep pace with aging exit patterns.
  • The challenge is not inspiration. The challenge is that the path is too costly, too risky, too hard to access.
  • Institutional architecture is behind where rabbinic leadership is naturally emerging (nondenominational, multisector, diverse identity, innovation-driven spaces).
  • The barriers are practical, not ideological. They can be addressed.

updated December 3, 2025
Leading Edge released Talent Unlocked: Recruitment Solutions for the Jewish Nonprofit Sector, with insights on how the Jewish nonprofit sector can better recruit talent to work in this field. The overarching question guiding this work was, “What’s stopping the sector from recruiting outside talent?” Key findings included the following:

  • Government workers and nonprofit workers are an incredible talent opportunity in this moment. With layoffs affecting the federal workforce and nonprofits, copious skilled and experienced talent is up for grabs.
  • Compensation is key. When considering a new job, compensation is the top factor for all groups. Mission counts too but salary is still by far the biggest factor.
  • Jews like Jewish nonprofits — but only when they know them well. Jewish talent isn’t always familiar with Jewish organizations, but when they are, they perceive them positively and are willing to consider working there.
  • “The Surge” is real — more Jews are interested in working in the sector — but we need to address rising antisemitism to leverage that interest.
  • Gen Z is here — and they’re different. Gen Z professionals have more varied expectations than other generations, and Gen Z Jews have different relationships to Jewish and pro-Israel organizations.
  • The biggest barriers for top non-Jewish talent are fit and familiarity. Few non-Jewish workers are familiar with our field and even fewer are likely to consider working in it. But these barriers are surmountable; when people get to know the reality of Jewish organizations, they’re much likelier to consider joining.

updated September 29, 2025 
M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education released findings from its first-ever Hope Study, a survey of nearly 950 Jewish communal professionals across North America. Conducted in the summer of 2025, the Hope Study is the largest effort of its kind to understand how Jewish professionals are sustaining — or losing — hope during a time of unprecedented crisis.

  • The study found that only 24% of Jewish communal professionals often feel hopeful about the future, compared to 82% of the U.S. population, with internal divisions within Jewish communities — not external threats — emerging as the greatest obstacle to sustaining hope. Respondents most often described political disagreements and sensitivities around Israel as the hardest challenges to navigate. Leadership shortcomings were the second most common barrier to hope, while external antisemitism, though deeply affecting personal well-being, was cited less often as undermining professional hope and resilience.
  • Internal communal division is the greatest obstacle to sustaining hope. Professionals report that tensions and political disagreement within the community erode their confidence and leave them uncertain about the future, making it harder to feel resilient in their work. Leadership gaps compound this challenge, while external antisemitism was cited less often as a direct threat to hope.
  • External threats weigh heavily on personal well-being, but less on professional resilience. 65% said the situation in Israel affects their personal well-being, and 59% worry extensively about antisemitism. Yet only 26% reported antisemitism significantly affecting their work performance, underscoring that hope in professional life is challenged more by internal dynamics than external threats.
  • Belonging and purpose fuel hope. 73% report feeling a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people often or very often, and 55% said they often feel energized by their work. The most important source of hope, cited by 85%, was the impact of their work on others, followed closely by support from colleagues (73%).
  • Principled leadership is a key generator of hope. Respondents said they are sustained when leaders provide moral clarity and communicate with conviction, especially in moments of crisis.
  • Collective supports are valued over individualized ones. 63% requested clear guidance for sensitive conversations, 48% asked for forums to process current events with colleagues, and 44% requested peer support groups. By contrast, 42% prioritized individualized mental health resources. These preferences show that professionals find hope in shared spaces, practical tools, and communal solidarity.

Based on these findings, M² recommends building authentic community infrastructure that restores and strengthens hope across the field. This includes training leaders to combine moral clarity with empathy, equipping staff to navigate sensitive conversations, creating systems to make professional impact more visible, and deepening professionals’ connection to Jewish belonging.

“The Hope Study makes clear that what undermines hope most is division within our own community and a lack of clarity from leaders,” said Shuki Taylor, Founder & CEO of M². “Yet the study also shows where hope is being replenished — in belonging, in meaningful work, and in colleagues who lift each other up. Our responsibility is to nurture those sources of hope so professionals can continue to serve the Jewish people with strength and conviction.”

updated September 16, 2025
Jewtina Y. Co released Latin-Jewish Los Angeles: A Secondary Data Analysis of the 2021 Study of Jewish LA, which is an in-depth secondary analysis of existing data, “uncovering patterns and insights that can inform meaningful actions to support and uplift Latino/a Jews within the broader Jewish community.” The report’s introduction notes:

Understanding the experiences of Latino/a Jews is crucial for fostering a more inclusive and equitable Jewish communal life. Many Jewish institutions operate within frameworks that primarily reflect white American Jewish cultural norms, inadvertently sidelining Jews from Latin American, Sephardic, and Mizrahi backgrounds. This study illuminates the specific experiences of Latino/a Jews in areas such as racial, ethnic, and cultural identity, household composition, and Jewish engagement. Latino/a Jewish identity is dynamic, shaped by a blend of linguistic, cultural, and historical influences. Bringing these narratives to the forefront, can help reshape communal perceptions of Jewish identity and expand the frameworks through which Jewish belonging is understood and nurtured.

Most importantly, this study is not just about gathering knowledge—it is about taking action. By examining these important facets of Latino/a-Jewish life in greater depth, we are able to provide Jewish organizations, leaders, and advocates with concrete, evidence-informed recommendations to better serve Latino/a Jews in Los Angeles. In the long term, the impact of this work will be measured by how effectively Jewish communal spaces adapt to become more inclusive and representative of all who identify as Jewish. By ensuring that Latino/a Jews feel seen, heard, and valued, we move closer to building a Jewish Los Angeles that truly embraces the richness of its diverse members.

Key Findings:

  • Community Snapshot: Latino/a Jewish households in LA are diverse, multigenerational, and geographically spread across the city; 40% speak Spanish at home and 30% are foreign-born.
  • Identity & Values: Judaism is deeply important (74%); core values include family, tradition, ethics, and social justice, with many households raising children Jewish.
  • Engagement Patterns: About half belong to synagogues or Jewish orgs; engagement is shaped by factors like friendships, intermarriage, converts, and experiences of antisemitism.
  • Lived Experiences: Focus groups revealed identity complexity, joy in connecting with other Latin Jews, but also challenges of racism, colorism, and access barriers in Jewish spaces.
  • Recommendations: Increase Latino/a Jewish cultural visibility, expand bias training and leadership opportunities, provide bilingual/affordable education, and adapt programming to interfaith and multigenerational families.

updated September 15, 2025
R&R: The Rest of our Lives is a future-of-work nonprofit dedicated to fostering thriving work environments. In a new Impact Summary, R&R shares key findings and lessons learned from its BREAKWEEK grant pilot, a synchronous one-week break for organizations to disconnect from work to rest and recharge. Key Data from the survey:

  • 99% of participants had a positive or very positive experience
  • 92% reported reduced stress or burnout
  • 91% want BREAKWEEK to return next year
  • 71% said their productivity improved after returning to work
  • A survey participant shared:
    I finally slept. For real. For the first time in months.
    I came back with clarity and more creative ideas than I’ve had in a while.
    Knowing everyone was off made it easier to truly disconnect — no guilt, no fear of missing out.

updated August 26, 2025
JIMENA: Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, released the first-ever National Demographic Study of Sephardic & Mizrahi Jews in the United States, conducted at NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service under the direction of Dr. Mijal Bitton. As part of the research, scholars at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies (CMJS) at Brandeis University conducted a review of existing quantitative data from national and community studies on Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in the U.S. Researchers also closely examined four distinct communities—the Syrian community in Brooklyn, NY, the Persian community in Los Angeles, the Bukharian community in Queens, NY, and the Latin Sephardic community of South Florida. Key findings from Sephardic & Mizrahi Jews in the United States: Identities, Experiences, and Communities:

  • An estimated 10% of Jewish Americans identify as Sephardic or Mizrahi.
  • 27% of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews are considered economically vulnerable, compared to 18% of Ashkenazi Jews.
  • Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews tend to be younger, with a median age of 48, compared to 56 for Ashkenazi Jews.
  • 88% of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews report that being Jewish is somewhat or very much a part of their daily life, and 69% donate to Jewish organizations.
  • Sephardic identity primarily originates in ancestry and religion.
  • 31% of Mizrahi Jewish Americans hold Israeli citizenship, compared to 5% of Ashkenazi Jews.

Along with more detailed recommendations, the research includes five new recommended frameworks to approach diversity work in the Jewish community:

  • Avoid viewing Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews only through the lens of exclusion, marginalization, and victimhood narratives. Recognize that strong Sephardic and Mizrahi communal identities exist even as barriers and biases exist within Ashkenazi-majority institutional frameworks.
  • Avoid centering Judaism in the U.S. exclusively around European Jewish experiences and Ashkenazi cultural norms as the dominant narrative (i.e. Yiddish as the primary language of Jewish tradition and denominational structures as the only legitimate form of Jewish identity). Understand Judaism in the U.S. as encompassing multiple historical experiences, with diverse cultural expressions and norms across Jewish communities, a range of Jewish languages and religious practices, and multiple forms of communal affiliation and engagement.
  • Avoid creating inclusion projects that assume everyone agrees with a single set of values (e.g., liberal values) or tools for inclusion (DEI frameworks). Create inclusion projects that allow for diverse viewpoints, values, multiple religious perspectives and norms, and a plurality of political views within Jewish spaces.
  • Avoid assuming that universal frameworks and solutions for inclusion will be effective for all and that shared priorities exist across all Jewish communities. Inclusion requires acknowledging complexity and differences, utilizing multiple approaches, and a commitment to ongoing learning is essential for meaningful progress
  • Avoid viewing diversity in Jewish spaces solely through US racial and ethnic categories. Jewish diversity should recognize the central role of family origins and communal networks in shaping Jewish identity; the complex intersections of ancestry, ethnicity, religion, and culture; and the migration patterns and geopolitical histories that shape identities, perspectives, and communal structures.

updated July 28, 2025
Resetting the Table (RTT) works to equip community leaders with tools and skills to enable “collaborative deliberation” in the face of strong differences on contentious issues. The goal is to transform ideological disagreement and conflict into an engine of strengthened relationships and problem-solving, ultimately to build healthier communities and a more cohesive, resilient society. In 2023-24, Research Success Technologies conducted an in-depth evaluation focused on RTT’s work with leaders working within American Jewish organizations at the time of their participation. The purpose of the evaluation was to assess the cumulative impact of RTT’s training programs and to provide insights for the organization’s future development. Key information and select findings:

  • RTT has developed a toolkit of processes, including communication skillbuilding workshops, facilitated community dialogues, narrative training for media makers, multi-perspective educational resources, 10-month intensive trainings, 4-6 session professional development and learning cohorts, and decision-making forums. To date, RTT programs have directly reached more than 80,000 participants across the United States, including people who hold vastly different political views as well as professional roles, ranging from clergy from various faith traditions to TV writers to leaders of national and regional community organizations.
  • Immediately after participating in RTT programs, participant surveys show increased skills, tools, confidence, and preparedness to foster productive communication across differences on contentious issues.
  • The large majority of respondents reported that the RTT training made a significant contribution in several key areas, including: (1) their interest in engaging in conversations on charged issues, and (2) an enhanced comfort level in participating in difficult discussions. They also reported: (3) acquiring useful skills for facilitating productive conversations across divergent viewpoints; and (4) increased ability to support their community or institution in navigating charged issues across differences. While the positive effect was strong for all training intensity levels, it was strongest for the higher intensity training programs.
  • Alumni apply RTT skills and strategies across a diversity of settings to a broad array of contentious issues. The outcomes are: (1) Pluralism and Cohesion: enabling healthier communities in which diversity and difference are valued, and constructive communication occurs across generations, backgrounds, and viewpoints; and (2) Resilience: enabling professionals and their organizations to better respond to volatile moments and discord among their constituents, or between their constituents and others.
  • RTT’s success depends on engaging leaders and staff within organizations who play one of two roles:
    • Integrators: These are leaders who recognize the importance of and are ambassadors for communication across differences. They are not necessarily themselves well-suited to facilitate formal processes where contentious discussions are the focus.
    • Facilitators: These are leaders with the confidence and ability to initiate and facilitate contentious discussions.
  • A crucial element of RTT’s impact lies in the development of both integrators and facilitators within organizations and communities. Integrators are leaders who actively promote a culture of communication across differences, modeling respect and honoring diverse viewpoints, even if they do not directly facilitate discussions. When leaders actively engage in and encourage dialogue, it sets the tone for others to do the same. Facilitators, on the other hand, are trained to initiate and guide contentious conversations, using RTT’s techniques to create spaces where meaningful dialogue can occur.

updated June 6, 2025
Alex Zablotsky, executive director of PJ Library at the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, and Alex Pomson of Rosov Consulting shared additional insights from Understanding the Aspirations of Jewish Families Today and the Parenting Challenges They Face — the study the Jim Joseph Foundation commissioned with the Harold Grinspoon Foundation and Crown Family Philanthropies. Excerpts from their piece in eJewish Philanthropy:

  • For researchers, it can be deflating when a study concludes with findings that readers claim they “already knew.” But when it comes to how we operate our foundations and nonprofits, affirmational outputs can actually be incredibly valuable, demonstrating what we’ve been doing right.
  • Reach families where they are. We’ve long known that families with young children are increasingly hard to reach. Data from the study confirm that we shouldn’t conflate this trend with a lack of interest. Economic pressures are pushing families farther from established centers of Jewish life. We should stop trying try to lure them to these centers—they’re not coming. Instead, we have to get resources to them, where they are. 
  • Create meaningful content. Even before the post-Oct. 7, 2023 surge in Jewish engagement, we knew that parents of young children were hungry for Jewish content. The study makes that clear: parents want their children’s lives to be filled with meaning. If Jewish tradition and Jewish wisdom can provide that meaning, then all to the good, especially when Jewish content is competing for attention with cultural content associated with other identities of importance to families. The challenge is figuring out how, in a congested cultural marketplace, to provide access to Jewish content in ways that go beyond surface-level exposure. 
  • Represent stories, not just statistics. This study underlines the aphorism that stories beat statistics (dare we say it, 100% of the time). We have long known that the demographic makeup of the next generation of our Jewish communities will be different from previous ones. Pew Center data and numerous Jewish community studies have provided signals of these changes. The Jewish Families Today study confirms with vivid narrative the increasing diversity of those who identify as Jewish, and the tensions within families and communities created by these changes. These trends are not new, but reading the stories of the people behind these trends calls us to give the greatest possible attention to thinking about how we serve our ever-changing people. 

updated April 8, 2025
Dan Ostrower of 3rd Horizon shares key findings from the Emergent Strategy team’s research conducted by Sense Worldwide on “Reinventing Hebrew School.” Read Dan’s full piece here. key excerpts include the following:

  • Hebrew school enrollment has plummeted in the last several decades. While the research project was known as “Reinventing Hebrew School,” the clearest takeaway was simple: families today want individualized and varied opportunities to engage in Jewish life. Even as many congregations have worked to improve their Hebrew school, with many making real strides toward positive outcomes, the findings show that for Jewish families like those in our study, even a reimagined Hebrew school isn’t the answer.
  • To be clear, these unserved Jewish families — about 70% of American Jews — aren’t a monolith. They are diverse in terms of upbringings, family makeup, socioeconomic status and sense of Jewish identity. But the research does show that they tend to fall into three broad groups:
    • Those who reject Judaism outright. They’ve opted out for a variety of reasons, and no version of Hebrew school (or other program for that matter) will bring them back.
    • Those who are open to traditional affiliation but have not affiliated. For some, barriers to congregational engagement like cost and location are too much to overcome; yet a fun, innovative and engaging Hebrew school remains appealing. Many new offerings like Your Jewish, Jewish Kids Groups, Makom, Fig Tree and redesigned congregational programs have emerged from a flurry of innovation in the space. These efforts are working to serve these kinds of families.
    • Culturally Jewish families who want something entirely new from their Jewish experience. This is the biggest group. As parents reconsidering Judaism after disconnecting from it, they reject the inflexible, closed and ritual-oriented version of Judaism they remember from their childhoods and don’t know what to replace it with; or they are parents newly considering Judaism, but they don’t feel welcomed by Jewish institutions. Often, Judaism is but one of multiple identities for these families, so Jewish engagement competes with other activities; dedicating two of their kids’ afternoons every week to Hebrew school, for example, feels unfeasible and undesirable. The Jewish experiences they do describe wanting are modern, personalized, positive, relevant, and include and reflect their lived experience.
  • There are five major opportunity areas for creating new Jewish family experiences that would reach this audience:
    • Main character energy: Since young parents and children are increasingly influenced by cultural content (at the tip of their fingers), creators need to develop and champion Jewish archetypes and stories that are resonant and impactful, stretch the imagination of what it means to have a Jewish experience, and fit seamlessly into mainstream culture. Parents want inspiring stories and content to share with their children that makes Judaism modern relevant and cool.
    • Step by step: Judaism shouldn’t just be an educational experience for kids, it should be a lived experience for families. There need to be more holistic, family-wide approaches to engagement that are integrated into important moments of family life and through which families learn and live simultaneously. These approaches should align with the parents’ version of Judaism and should be easy to adopt in incremental steps
    • What to Expect, Jewish Edition: A couple that is expecting or just had their first child is experiencing a moment when we can demonstrate how meaningful, valuable and supportive Judaism can be in their lives—that it truly offers guidance in this next chapter. These are times when parents who had little or no past Jewish engagement might explore and be open to raising their child(ren) in a modern Jewish home.
    • Bnei mitzvah 2.0: Many families want a relevant and meaningful bnei mitzvah experience outside of institutional frameworks. Leaders need to fundamentally rethink this important lifecycle event and develop creative new approaches that families deeply connect to.
    • Afterschool care: Day-to-day, if Judaism is a vehicle to provide convenient, high-quality afterschool care with an “and Jewish” bonus, parents will feel supported in a very concrete way. This is an example of meeting parents where they are and meeting their needs.

updated March 7, 2025
Foundation for Jewish Camp’s “Census Report: State of Jewish Camp 2024” provides important insights into the Jewish camp space and the families who are a part of Jewish camp. Key findings from the report:

  • Increased Participation: Jewish camps engaged 189,000 youth, teens, and young adults in 2024, a 5% increase from 2023. Overnight camps grew by 4% and day camps by 1%, with the entire field exceeding pre-pandemic numbers.
  • Rising Financial Need: Financial aid distributed by camps increased to $37 million, yet significant unmet demand persists, highlighting rising tuition and financial accessibility challenges.
  • Enhanced Social and Emotional Wellbeing: Camps increasingly support camper well-being, with 91% of overnight and 74% of day camp families rating activities for social-emotional health as excellent or good (up 14 and 19 points, respectively).
  • Strengthened Jewish Identity: 96% of overnight families reported that camp created an environment where their child felt proud to be Jewish, further solidifying camps’ role in Jewish identity building. 92% of overnight families reported that their camper’s identity was deeply and positively impacted at camp, up 4% from summer 2023.
  • Seasonal Staff Surge: There was a 25% increase in new North American young adult staff.
  • Global Connections: Over 3,000 Israelis worked in camps, fostering cultural and communal ties between North American and Israeli communities, marking an 11% increase from 2023.
  • Sustained Camper Satisfaction: Overnight parent satisfaction has remained around 93% since 2021, increasing to 94% this summer. Day camp parent satisfaction has remained around 87% for the last three years, increasing to 89% this summer.

updated February 11, 2025
JFNA’s BeWell Initiative released a new report–Strength, Stress, and Support: A Portrait of American Jewish Teen Well-Being–that explores Jewish teens’ communal involvement, interpersonal connections, and perceptions of themselves as Jews relate to their overall well-being.  Researchers conducted a national survey of nearly 2,500 American Jewish teens, examining multiple dimensions of their well-being. The study, conducted during Spring 2024, investigated both sources of stress and systems of support, enabling us to identify key factors that enhance or diminish their overall well-being. This research revealed three key insights about Jewish teens’ well-being:

  • KEY FINDING 1: Teens who said that being Jewish is important to them reported higher levels of well-being. Among the factors studied, teens’ sense of well-being was most strongly connected to the personal importance they placed on being Jewish. This relationship was evident across all five dimensions of well-being measured in the study: engagement, perseverance, optimism, connectedness, and happiness. Teens’ perceptions of how important being Jewish was to their families also showed a positive relationship with their well-being, though this association was less pronounced than the link between personal importance and well-being. Participation in Jewish teen programming exhibited a minimal, yet still positive, correlation with teens’ overall sense of well-being. Teens cited the relationships they experienced with their peers in Jewish teen programs as being particularly influential in helping them feel like they could be their full, authentic selves, however, most teens felt that adults involved in Jewish teen programs had a limited understanding of contemporary teen experiences.
  • KEY FINDING 2: American Jewish teens face a dual burden: They contend with the universal challenges of adolescence while also grappling with unique pressures that arise from being Jewish. Alongside common stressors for teens like academic key findings performance and social dynamics, Jewish teens are experiencing heightened tension over recent geopolitical conflicts and increasingly prevalent antisemitism. Those who reported that being Jewish is important to them experienced higher levels of overall well-being but also tended to experience more stress related to Jewish-specific issues. The interplay between identity, stress, and resilience mirrors patterns observed in other minority adolescent populations, highlighting the influence of cultural identity on adolescent well-being.
  • KEY FINDING 3: Jewish teens have multiple contexts and people in their lives that allow for authentic self-expression, which supports positive well-being outcomes. Most survey respondents indicated that they feel free to be their full selves with Jewish friends and family. About half of all teens reported feeling the same sense of freedom with non-Jewish friends. When seeking advice, Jewish teens said that they were most likely to turn to friends and parents and far less likely to turn to Jewish leaders (i.e., clergy and youth program leaders). This study sheds light on the tension at the heart of American Jewish teens’ well-being, where identity centrality emerges as both a source of strength and a potential driver of increased stress. This complex portrait presents a challenge for Jewish organizations, communal professionals, and educators who work in teen-facing settings. While teen engagement strategies have focused on enhancing teens’ sense of their Jewish selves, our findings suggest the need for a more nuanced approach that acknowledges the relationship between social stressors, well-being, and teens’ expressed sense of Jewish importance. Supporting Jewish teens may require providing opportunities for authentic self-expression, equipping them to engage in challenging discussions, and empowering them to ask difficult questions. While the path forward is neither simple nor straightforward, this report provides empirical grounding from which innovative responses might emerge.

updated February 4, 2025
Between February and June 2024, the Jim Joseph Foundation supported a partnership between The Jewish Education Project and The iCenter, aided by M² and the Jewish Agency for Israel, to bring 324 educators on short trips to Israel as part of 13 different groups. These trips were launched with the goal of helping educators and educational leaders connect with Israelis, see for themselves the ways in which Israel has changed since October 7, 2023, and engage in joint reflection on what these changes mean for their work and for their responsibilities as Jewish educators.

Rosov Consulting first surveyed the educators in July, and then between August and October 2024, in order to explore longer-term outcomes created by these experiences and to probe more deeply into the extent to which the Israel education practices of the participants and their organizations have changed during the past year. In August, 324 participants received a short survey to which 224 individuals responded (a response rate of 69%). The findings are summarized in the report, Jewish Educators Returning from Israel. Reconceiving Israel Education in the Midst of Seismic Events.

  • Key Finding: This study began as an effort to track the contribution of a set of short, Israel-based experiences for educators and educational leaders in the wake of the events of October 7th. To a large extent, these experiences have indeed made a profound contribution to how educators think about and approach the work of educating about Israel. This is even more apparent six months after the various programs’ end than it was in their immediate aftermath.
  • Impact of the Trip:
    • A major part of the survey explored the extent to which the educators’ trips have shaped both the participants’ own practices and their organizations’ approaches to Israel education.
    • While a majority (57%) reported having “incorporated what I learned into my practice,” 30% were still in a planning phase (“I have some ideas and am getting clear what it would take to actualize them”), and 13% are still in a contemplation phase (“I am thinking about how best to do this, but I don’t have concrete ideas yet”).
    • This constitutes a marked change from the weeks immediately after the program when close to half of the participants were still in a planning phase and only a quarter had implemented their learning. Even so, these reactions still underline the extent to which educational change is a slow-moving process.
    • Interviews with camp educators suggest that their work was more immediately shaped by the trip than those in most other sectors. These educators returned to North America ahead of the summer camp season, needing to consider what, if anything, they would do differently during the coming months. Educators in other settings did not face such pressing deadlines. They are only now implementing changes in the early part of a new academic year.

updated January 23, 2025
A new study conducted by Rosov Consulting, Understanding the Aspirations of Jewish Families Today and the Parenting Challenges They Face, explores the experiences, aspirations, and challenges faced by Jewish families with young children in the United States. Amid shifting social, economic, and cultural landscapes, these families navigate diverse identities and circumstances, often striving to balance Jewish values with inclusive practices that reflect their multifaceted lives. Commissioned by Crown Family Philanthropies, the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, and the Jim Joseph Foundation, the study provides insights into the needs and aspirations of contemporary Jewish families and the roles Jewish institutions currently play and might play in supporting their Jewish lives.

Jewish Families Today presents findings from 40 focus groups and 40 one-on-one interviews with select focus group participants, detailing key features of many families and showing that they are 1) Increasingly diverse; 2) Divided in their commitment to multiple aspirations for their children; 3) Geographically dispersed; 4) Comfortable with a DIY approach but still wanting guidance; and 5) Desperate for their children to experience a community. These features are reflected in core aspects of their lives:

Parental Priorities and Aspirations:  

  • Many Jewish parents share several core priorities and aspirations in raising their children as they try to build strong, inclusive Jewish identities while fostering empathy and respect for diversity.
  • Raising children with a strong sense of self, compassion, and moral responsibility is essential.
  • Community is a critical component in their children’s Jewish identity and parents aim to instill a connection to something larger than the self (this is especially true for families far removed from extended family networks).
  • Many parents emphasize cultivating homes that are culturally rich, Jewishly meaningful and tolerant and inclusive of multiple heritages, faiths, and ethnicities, reflecting the diversity within their families and communities. 

Bumps, Obstacles, and Difficult Contexts:

  • Significant barriers limit families’ ability to engage fully in Jewish life, including financial costs, such as synagogue memberships and Jewish school tuition, and geographic distance from Jewish centers or family networks.
  • Political polarization, both within Jewish communities and the broader public, is a challenge. Families with marginalized identities—interfaith, LGBTQ+, or multiracial—often feel sidelined within traditional Jewish institutions.
  • As a result, some families choose to disengage from formal Jewish spaces, focusing instead on cultivating Jewish practices and connections at home.

How Families Make It Work:

  • Jewish families exhibit resilience and resourcefulness in fostering Jewish life. Parenting practices can be characterized as seeking to repair, replicate, or innovate.
  • Parents find online resources essential to support their children’s Jewish education and to celebrate Jewish traditions at home.
  • For some, informal peer networks and small, grassroots, community-led gatherings provide a supportive environment.
  • Parents tailor Jewish practices to meet their family’s unique cultural mix, blending traditions and finding meaning in practices that reinforce both Jewish values and a broad sense of inclusion. 

Israel: Ever More Complicated:

  • The topic of Israel has grown more complicated for many Jewish families. While many parents want their children to appreciate Israel’s historical and cultural significance, they often feel caught between polarized viewpoints in Jewish and general communities.
  • Parents desire a balanced approach to Israel, allowing for nuance and critical thought. They worry about their children encountering polarized discourse that reduces a complex reality to stark oppositions.
  • Parents want spaces where questioning and open discussion is allowed so they can explore Israel’s role in Jewish identity without feeling pressured into a particular stance. This topic, more than ever, influences where families choose to engage and reflects broader challenges in maintaining community cohesion.

updated December 10, 2024
The Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education and Research Success Technologies conducted research in partnership with The Jewish Education Project and M² (and commissioned by the Foundation) that surveyed Jewish educators and engagement professionals about their experiences in work environments after October 7th, 2023. View the research and a presentation on it here. View a subsequent call for action for Jewish education here. The research highlights the following:

  • Since the events of October 7th, 2023, Jewish educators have found themselves at the center of an unprecedented challenge, guiding learners through a landscape shaped by intense emotions and complex questions. The research findings show that Jewish educators are experiencing considerable emotional strain, with many expressing anxiety and despair as they navigate teaching in the post-October 7th environment.
  • Educators also report their learners experiencing similar negative emotions including confusion, anger, and isolation in response to the unfolding events. Many feel unprepared for addressing the crisis within their existing frameworks, revealing gaps in training and resources to navigate these challenging topics.
  • This moment, while difficult, offers a unique opportunity for rethinking how Jewish education responds to crisis and challenge whether involving Israel, or other areas of life that involve emotional challenge and/or the need to address diversity of opinion and behavior. In such moments, individuals must respond to the world around them, and Jewish educators should see themselves as a resource and guide for doing so. Our focus here is the post-October 7th crisis, and the way Jewish educators are responding.
  • The power of the events playing out is such that educators realize they need to respond. Events include the war in Israel, the ideological prism through which the war is covered in the media and accompanying public discourse amplified by the 2024 Presidential election, the increased diplomatic isolation of Israel, and the sharp rise of antisemitism. The post-October 7th events are existential in nature, causing many Jews to assess their relationship to the Jewish People, to the society around them and to Israel.
  • We call for an integrative approach that emphasizes forging positive emotional bonds between Jews while recognizing the need to enable learners to grapple with both complexity and criticism. Our call is for educators to lead the integration of Israel into Jewish life as a positive force for Jewish belonging and identification. In a moment of crisis, can Jewish educators bring learning and engagement with Israel to serve as a source of constructive bonding between Jews, rather than a catalyst for division?

updated December 10, 2024
The Foundation released research conducted by Dr. Ari Y Kelman, How People Learn in Jewish Education. This was the first research the Foundation publicly released that emanated from our Emergent Strategy work. Stacie Cherner and Yonah Schiller discussed this research and strategy in eJewish Philanthropy. The research highlights the following:

  • Jewish education has taken shape around two primary questions: What do people need to know in order to live Jewish lives? What is the best way to deliver the answer to that question?
  • Jewish communities have differed greatly in their responses to both with some favoring knowledge that emerges from Jewish textual traditions, while others prefer to emphasize other dimensions of Jewish life, from the embodied to the expressive. Despite the creativity and diversity of responses to these questions, the focus on these two questions has left a decidedly one-sided Jewish educational landscape informed primarily by concerns about the provision of knowledge: what to teach and how to teach it. The result has been a profoundly lopsided landscape populated by countless pedagogies and curricula, but utterly devoid of any insight or understanding of how people learn in Jewish education.
  • Although the phrase “Jewish learning” is fairly common, it refers most often either to studying (usually text), or, ironically, to teaching (often text). This report is an attempt to shift the conversation about learning in Jewish education away from these uses and toward a more systematic, research-and-theory-grounded understanding of learning as a distinct Jewish educational phenomenon. It is also an attempt to advance a third question to join the first two: How do people learn in Jewish education?
  • This report extends and deepens Jon Woocher’s proposal for a “learner centered Jewish education” by shifting the focus from an approach to Jewish education that caters to learners to one guided by an understanding of learning. It offers a challenge, a charge, and a provocation to Jewish educators and supporters of Jewish education to imagine what might happen to the field if we shift its focus from what Jewish education teaches and instead explore how people learn.
  • What follows is not a theory of learning in Jewish education; for that, we will need a good deal more research. Instead, the report begins with an overview of some basic approaches to general theories of learning to establish a framework for exploring their implications for the field of Jewish education. Hopefully, it will serve as an invitation and an instigation to consider what Jewish education might look like if it places the ways that people learn at the center.

updated November 6, 2024
The Foundation released a cross-portfolio evaluation conducted by Rosov Consulting—Powerful Jewish Learning Experiences: Mixing the Personal and Collective to Make Powerful Jewish Learning Experience—that focuses on the impact of signature grantees BBYO, Foundation for Jewish Camp, Hillel, Birthright Israel, and Moishe House. Stacie Cherner highlighted key findings of the study in eJewish Philanthropy, including the following:

  • The experiences provided in each setting were aligned, creating a similar potent mix of Jewish community and personal growth…those individuals who participated in all five of these experiences gained something new at each stop along the way…Each experience added something distinct along with other outcomes that were generically familiar.
  • All five experiences provided by these organizations helped participants find and become part of Jewish community in ways appropriate to their ages and stages in life.
  • All five experiences helped participants develop important life skills and grow as well-rounded individuals. This was because these settings offer increasing levels of personal autonomy and are spaces where participants feel safe to fail forward.
  • The experiences provided by “powerful Jewish learning experience” grantees are all highly experiential, involving learning through doing. Learning of this kind helped participants become familiar and even proficient in basic components of Jewish culture and practice.
  • Variations on the word “joy” surfaced in reflections on almost all these experiences. It was a deep feature of some of the experiences that influenced how participants thought about what it meant to be Jewish or to engage in Jewish practices.
  • Participating in intense, often immersive experiences among peers often fostered deep and lasting friendships.

updated October 8, 2024
The Foundation released From Kedem to Kadimah: 10 Lessons from 10 years of the Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative with a thought piece in eJewish Philanthropy authored by Rachel Shamash Schneider, Aaron Saxe, and Josh Miller, who each had the Funder Collaborative in their portfolio at different times.

  • This public release follows more than 70 personal emails and advanced copies of the report that we sent to our local funding partners and professional leaders who were a part of the Funder Collaborative’s efforts in its ten communities. We have encouraged the local funding partners to leverage the report toward their continued sustainability efforts.
  • Kedem to Kadimah is primarily authored by Sara Allen, Executive Director of the Funder Collaborative, and Rabbi Dena Shaffer, the Funder Collaborative’s Director of Education & Learning, with a couple of sections authored by the Foundation that highlight how the Funder Collaborative has informed other aspects of our work and express our gratitude for the many local professionals who led to the Funder Collaborative’s positive outcomes.
  • As the report’s title implies, it offers both a look back at the evolution and lessons of the Funder Collaborative and offers insights about how those lessons can inform others in the field moving forward. The lessons cover areas including how to hold space for both innovation and proven models; how best to collaborate and engage different audiences; the importance of mission clarity and leadership development; and how to build initiatives and programs designed to be sustainable; among others.  
  • The Funder Collaborative was a major investment and experiment for the Foundation when it launched over a decade ago. With the grants concluded and the Funder Collaborative now housed at JFNA, we mark and celebrate the end of significant part of our grantmaking portfolio that is well positioned to continue to impact Jewish professionals and youth for years to come.

October 8, 2024
Boundless released a new study from global research firm BSG that examines the views of young American Jews (ages 18-40) on Israel and Jewish identity in the wake of October 7th and the subsequent war. The key findings were as follows:

  • Young Jews (51%) who feel they received a fair and balanced Israel education report the strongest connection to Israel and a strong belief that Israel is a core part of their Jewish identity.
  • 76% of young American Jews feel connected to Israel while 90% responded that they care about Israel. Connection drives connection – young Jews who already felt connected to Israel are most likely to feel more connected to Israel and their Jewish identity post Oct 7.
  • 85% of young Jews overwhelmingly believe that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state and 75% believe that both Jews and Palestinians have a right to self-determination.
  • Almost half (42%) don’t know what the word “Zionism” means. There is a huge opportunity for education as just giving people a definition increased their likelihood to identify as a Zionist by more than 20 percent.
  • 81% of young Jews are closely following news about Israel; they are most likely to get information from mainstream news outlets and social media.
  • Since the war started, more than half of young Jews (55%) said they have felt unwelcome or excluded because of Israel or their Jewish identity.
  • Young Jews (82%) are looking to become more knowledgeable in general about Israel, learn from a variety of viewpoints, hear multiple narratives, and find ways to advance peace.
  • Most young Jews (67%) are satisfied with the Israel education they received; they believe their education left them well-informed and provided knowledge about Israel’s history and culture.

updated September 12, 2024
The Foundation released the final report from Dr. Eitan Hersh of Tufts University providing an unprecedented look spanning three years of the experiences and views of Jewish and non-Jewish students on college campuses both before and after October 7th, 2023. With the perspectives of thousands of students, A Year of Campus Conflict and Growth: An Over-Time Study of the Impact of the Israel-Hamas War on U.S. College Students details a campus climate in which Jewish students continue to feel ostracized and socially isolated.

This research includes and compares survey responses and interviews from Jewish college students who participated in the study in April 2022, in November and December of 2023, and in March and April of 2024. The study also includes detailed analyses of focus groups from a wide range of students who talked through their feelings on the conflict on campus and the conflict in the Middle East. The report was covered in JTA, Religion News Service, eJewish Philanthropy, and other outlets. Key findings include the following:

Jewish Organizations and Community

  • There was a temporary spike in attitudes or behaviors in the immediate aftermath of the Israel-Hamas War, but then a reversion back to pre-October 7 levels by the end of the year.
    • The percentage of students who said they feel very close to a Jewish community increased in fall 2023 but then fell back to 2022 levels by spring of 2024.
    • The percentage of students saying they attended Jewish events on campus rose and then fell.
    • Jewish students also self-assessed their mental health much lower in the immediate aftermath of the war, but their assessment reverted to a healthier state by the end of the school year.
    • Most Jewish students did not attend any programs directly related to the Israel-Hamas war during the 23/24 school year.
    • Jewish students who attended Jewish programming on campus primarily participated in Shabbat/holiday or social events.
  • Between 2022 and 2023, there were elevated rates of Jewish students saying they need to hide some of their opinions to fit in at Jewish activities on campus.
    • Students with less robust Jewish backgrounds were most likely to feel they needed to hide their opinions in Jewish spaces.

How Social Dynamics Have Changed from 2022-2024

  • In the 2023-2024 school year, 1 in 4 Jewish students said they felt the need to hide their Jewish identity to fit in on campus, 1 in 3 students said they were judged negatively for participating in Jewish activities, and more than half said that Jewish students pay a social penalty for supporting the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. These were all increases from 2022.
  • One in five non-Jewish students deliberately aim to socially ostracize Jewish peers who support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. They see students who support Israel as endorsing a hateful position, and they do not want to be friends with people who have bad values. Jewish students recognize this social isolation and largely blame a toxic culture of social media and polarization.
  • Between the fall and spring of the 2023-2024 school year, there was a large increase from 22% to 32% of non-Jewish students saying it would be very hard for pro-Israel and pro-Palestine students to be friends.
    • A third of Jewish students said they personally lost friends because of conflicting views on the war. A third of Muslim students also reported having lost friends, compared to only 9% of all other students.
    • Almost half (45%) of Jewish students on elite campuses said they lost friends.
  • In 2024, one in five non-Jewish students say they wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who supports the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Forty-five percent said they were not sure.
    • One in 12 students said they avoid socializing with Jews because of Jewish students’ views on Israel. Agreement with these statements is highest among students who identify as very liberal, students of color, Muslim students, and LGBT students.
  • From 2022 to 2023 to 2024, a significant increase in students reported they had been directly exposed to antisemitic slurs in classrooms and said they feared antisemitism; over that same period the percentage (half) of Jewish students who said their Jewish identity is very important to them also increased significantly.

Political Views, Campus Climate, News Consumption

  • Jewish students blame Hamas for the war more than they blame Israel. Conversely, non-Jewish students blame Israel for the war more than Hamas.
    • Very liberal non-Jewish students overwhelmingly blame Israel. Very liberal Jewish students blame Israel more than Hamas, but not at the same rate as non-Jewish students.
    • Across several measures, very liberal Jewish students have views somewhere between the views of other Jewish students and the views of very liberal non-Jewish students.
  • Fifty-five percent Jewish students who said they had no opinion on Israel’s existence in 2022 formed an opinion in support of a Jewish state in 2023 and 2024.
    • Over all three years, 10-15% of Jewish students said they believe there should not be a Jewish state in Israel-Palestine.
    • Twenty-seven percent of Jewish students aren’t sure whether Israel as a Jewish state should continue to exist.
  • While Jewish students are equally likely to follow news about the war, regardless of whether they support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, this is not the casefor non-Jewish students.
    • Non-Jewish students who oppose Israel’s existence as a Jewish state are much more engaged in the topic—following the news, attending a Pro-Palestine event—than non-Jewish students who support a Jewish state.
    • Many Jewish students utilize social media for news (Instagram is the most popular platform). Even still, they often express frustration with social media due to its potential for spreading misinformation and its toll on mental health.
  • Non-Jewish students overwhelmingly sympathize with Palestinians rather than with Israelis in the current war. While Jewish students mainly sympathize with Israelis, most Jewish students who had an opinion rated Netanyahu poorly.
    • Students from more engaged Jewish backgrounds rate Netanyahu significantly worse than students who are from less engaged backgrounds, even though these students are mostly likely to support the existence of a Jewish state.
    • Jewish and non-Jewish students alike believe that their campus community is far more sympathetic to Palestinians. The views are particularly lopsided on elite campuses, such as Ivy League schools.
  • There is a profound difference between Jewish and non-Jewish students in how they perceive the political orientation of their schools.
    • The Jewish students see the schools as overwhelmingly aligned against Israel, evidenced by the opinions expressed by faculty, staff, and students.
    • The non-Jewish students tend to see the schools as overwhelmingly aligned with Israel, as evidenced by opinions expressed by their schools’ senior leadership.

Demographics

  • Several demographic characteristics correlate with Jewish students’ views on Israel, including their political ideology, their sexuality, and their family’s Jewish background.
    • Student’s socioeconomic class also is a major predictor – students from wealthier families are much more supportive of a Jewish state. This pattern is especially strong among students without robust Jewish backgrounds.
    • The same relationship is visible in non-Jewish students too. Jewish and non-Jewish students from upper class homes are twice as likely to believe a Jewish state should exist in general and twice as likely to blame Hamas rather than Israel for the current war, compared to students from lower- or working-class homes.
  • Of “activists” who attended campus advocacy events, Jewish activists who oppose a Jewish state and attended pro-Palestine events during the school year have different backgrounds and demographics than Jewish activists who support a Jewish state and attended pro-Israel events during the school year.
    • The former group mostly grew up with less robust Jewish backgrounds. The majority identify as LGBT and as very liberal. They are also mostly lower/working and middle class.
    • Conversely, the latter group of activists overwhelmingly come from families affiliated with denominations and had many Jewish experiences growing up. They are mostly heterosexual, upper-middle or upper class, and do not identify as very liberal.

“This study, conducted over three years, reveals extraordinary detail about the experience of American college students during an historic period of tensions on campus,” said Dr. Hersh, professor of Political Science at Tufts University. “Our focus groups give voice to students from wildly different backgrounds about what they think of Jewish students, Israel, and the protest movements at their schools. The survey analysis shows how differently Jewish and non-Jewish students experienced the last year on campus and hints at what can be expected in the future.”

updated September 12, 2024
For the Sake of Argument released a new study conducted by Rosov Consulting showing the outcomes on participants in its programs, and areas for growth. The study was conducted over the course of two blocks of time as part of collaborations with Limmud UK and UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. At Limmud, participants took part either in a 45- minute, one-off session or a series of four 45-minute sessions over the course of four days. In Toronto, they participated in either a one-time 90-minute session or two 90-minute sessions. 190 participants completed a survey at the start of their first FSA sessions and also at the end of their last one; 15 session participants were also interviewed about three months after their sessions.
Key findings of this research:

  • Both shorter (90-minute) and longer (180-minute) dosages of FSA programming are associated with positive gains in participants’ understanding of different types of arguments. FSA provides participants with a cognitive map that helps them approach such situations with greater confidence and composure.
  • Longer exposure to FSA is associated with strong skill-building outcomes. Shorter exposure has a weaker effect in this respect.
  • Positive emotional outcomes (confidence to participate in arguments and emotional resilience) are
    produced both by shorter and longer exposures to FSA. Shorter exposure matches the impact of longer exposure.
  • Both survey and interview data suggest that enhanced cognitive outcomes contribute to enhanced
    emotional outcomes    . Becoming smarter about arguments seems to help people become closer to those with whom they argue.
  • Survey data point to strong gains in knowledge about issues in contemporary Israel and in
    participants’ interest in learning more, thanks to participating in FSA sessions. Greater knowledge gains are also correlated with higher levels of interest to learn more.

updated August 26, 2024
Leading Edge released findings from its latest survey, Jewish Workforce Snapshot Spring 2024: Engagement, retention, communication, and the post-October 7th era in Jewish nonprofits.

  • In April 2024, Leading Edge surveyed 10,854 employees at 192 Jewish nonprofit organizations in the Spring cycle of its Focused Engagement Survey. The 2024 survey is focused on the engagement questions that its data has shown are the most powerful for driving organizational culture change.
  • The purpose of the survey is to help each participating organization identify ways to improve employee engagement, retention, and performance. Leading Edge also uses aggregate data from all participating organizations to inform the field about trends over time.
  • Key findings expanded include:
    • Engagement has held steady — for now?
    • Leadership, belonging, and well-being drive engagement.
    • Internal communication is more vital than ever.
    • At risk: retention of the youngest, newest, individual contributors.

updated June 27, 2024
An evaluation offers insights and learnings on the sabbatical grants pilot from R&R The Rest of Our Lives. Key findings include the following:

Research participants described positive outcomes related to sabbaticals for leaders, organizations, and the Jewish communal ecosystem.

  • Leader Outcomes:
    • Leaders returned from their sabbatical noticeably recharged.
    • Leaders gained insights they intend to apply.
    • Sabbaticals amplified ways to increase Leaders’ efficacy.
    • Sabbaticals enabled leaders to gain perspective about their career and life goals.
  • Organizational Outcomes:
    • Sabbaticals offered new perspectives on organizational capabilities.
    • Sabbaticals enhanced working relationships.
    • Sabbaticals increased organizational capacity.
    • Sabbaticals highlighted areas for enhancement.
  • Ecosystem Outcomes:
    • R&R has begun to move the largely theoretical conversation about sabbaticals toward a discussion that is more strategic and practical.

updated June 27, 2024
The Foundation received the third evaluation on the Cohort-based Experiences Initiative, conducted by Tobin Belzer, PhD. Key findings from “Cohort-based Experiences Initiative: Phase III — A project of Gather Consulting & Conscious Builders in collaboration with The Jim Joseph Foundation” include the following:

  • The current report illustrates how the immediate outcomes of participation have continued to evolve over time. In previous evaluative finding, research participants described the benefits of their cohort experience in terms of support, affirmation, and learning. The latest findings illustrate how participants have leveraged those initial benefits.
  • Over time, support from cohort members has led to deepened relationships, the affirmation they experienced has led to their increased confidence, their learning enabled them to gain skills, insights, and perspective:
    • The Cohort experience positively affected most research participants both personally and interpersonally.
    • The most significant aspect of the cohort experience is the relationships that are fostered.
    • Most survey respondent have increased their confidence as professionals.
    • Participation in their cohorts led most survey respondents to learn from others, reflect, and gain insights which they have incorporated into to their work.
    • Cohorts gave research participants perspective about the Jewish communal sector.
  • This report also presents information about facilitators’ experiences and perspectives, including their suggestions for amplifying outcomes through program enhancements.

updated May 22, 2024
Hillel released results of a new survey showing that the majority of Jewish college students say they feel less safe due to encampments, and 61% report antisemitism during campus protests. The survey was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group from May 6 to May 8 and included 15-minute interviews with 310 Jewish students. The margin of error is 5% and the full topline data can be viewed here. Other key points from Hillel’s press release on the survey results include the following:

  • A majority of Jewish college students feel less safe because of anti-Israel protests and encampments at their school, and report the use of antisemitic, threatening or derogatory language toward Jewish students during those protests. As commencements begin on campuses across the country, a majority of Jewish students are concerned that protests and encampments will disrupt graduation ceremonies, with nearly three-in-four saying they want schools to remove the encampments and/or protests to eliminate the possibility of disruption to commencement and graduation.
  • Jewish students also say that campus protests and encampments have had a detrimental impact on their ability to learn, study, and even attend class. 6 in 10 Jewish students (58%) say the encampments have made it more difficult for them to learn, study or concentrate. And more than half (51%) have had their classes canceled, interrupted, moved to Zoom, or been blocked from attending.
    • 61% of Jewish students say there has been antisemitic, threatening or derogatory language toward Jewish people during protests at their school
    • 63% of Jewish students feel less safe because of the protests and 58% feel less safe because of the encampments
    • 72% want schools to remove the encampments and/or protesters to eliminate the possibility of disruption to commencement or graduation
    • 40% have felt the need to hide their Jewish identity from others on campus
  • The new survey was conducted on behalf of Hillel International, the largest Jewish campus organization with a presence on more than 850 campuses worldwide. Hillel has tracked nearly 1,600 incidents of campus antisemitism since October 7 alone, including assaults, vandalism and hate speech, with more than 400 of those incidents targeting individual students. In just a single week, a Hillel-led petition demanding that university administrators do more to support their students and safeguard commencement ceremonies has garnered nearly 30,000 signatures.

updated May 3, 2024
The iCenter released “Israel Education in North America: A Landscape Analysis of the Field,” which summarizes the status of Israel education in North America in 2023. It is based on information gathered during website reviews, interviews with 43 key Israel education leaders and staff, and selected reviews of research studies. Data gathering occurred primarily before October 7, 2023. The data gathered for this report show the following:

  • Israel education in North America is thriving. There is a growing number of organizations provide Israel education and an increased amount and quality of the materials and professional development available to educators. There is strong evidence of Israel education being incorporated into preschools, K-12 settings, colleges/universities, summer camps, synagogues, and other settings that serve Jewish people. Many settings have a dedicated Israel education professional that provides Israel education or supports educators in their integration of Israel education into their teaching and learning approaches.
  • Israel education is increasingly being viewed as a vital part of any Jewish education endeavor. There is a growing belief that connection to Israel is a critical part of Jewish identity/identities formation and that all Jews should be exposed to Israel education activities.
  • Israel education is being professionalized. Over the past 5-10 years, the field has developed certifications, Master classes, Master’s degrees, and advanced learning opportunities and has increasing numbers of participating educators and students.
  • Israel education has increasingly featured high quality educational experiences for its participants. Several leading Israel education organizations provide opportunities for deep learning, immersion, active engagement, and multiple learning styles. Evidence shows that these pedagogies produce greater retention of knowledge and skills, confidence in teaching, and adoption of strategies in educational settings. Israel education is becoming more learner centered and more often recognizes the complexity of Israel as a country and people.
  • Israel educators agree that Israel education is integral to Jewish education. They also agree on many aspects of Israel education that should be included in any approach being implemented. However, they disagree on many aspects of Israel education, including the ways to address complexity, and other field-building aspects, such as the need for standards, multiple narratives, and collaboration.
  • Israel education is being offered as a key component of most Israel travel experiences for all ages. There is evidence that nearly all Israel travel experiences increasingly include meaningful and engaging programming to promote a sense of belonging to Israel and to see the connection to Israel as part of one’s Jewish identity. The number of the travel experience organizations has grown and has attracted a more diverse set of travelers. Participation is strongest among Jewish teens and young adults.
  • Israel education is integrated with most advocacy organizations. Most have some components of Israel education, enlightening others about history, culture, and need for preserving Israel as a homeland.

updated March 26, 2024
As you know, the Foundation released new research from Dr. Eitan Hersh, “U.S. College Students and the War in Israel: Jewish Engagement and Social Tension on Campus.” Our press release noted that this “is unique because it includes survey responses from Jewish college students who also participated in a study conducted by Dr. Hersh in 2022.” The research has garnered significant media coverage, including:

In the press release, Hersh noted: “The students from both surveys are a direct link between pre-October 7 Jewish life on campus and post-October 7 Jewish life on campus. The data show a campus environment that is a much different place for Jewish students. They felt a big social change. Many of their non-Jewish peers of all political perspectives act differently toward them.”

updated March 26, 2024
Leading Edge released a new report, “Jewish Nonprofit Boards: CEO Perceptions & Actions for Better Governance.” Based on data from a survey of 304 CEOs in May 2023 and a qualitative research project based on 36 CEO interviews in summer 2023, this report shares findings on how CEOs of Jewish nonprofits perceive their boards and actions boards can take to improve their effectiveness. Leading Edge’s Alicia Olberman shared insights in eJewish Philanthropy, “How are Jewish boards different from all other boards?” Key findings of the report are:

Leading Edge notes five key findings that are especially relevant for the Jewish nonprofit sector:

  1. CEOs overwhelmingly agree that their boards add value and feel favorably about many elements of their boards’ performance. Professional leaders know how vital their boards’ partnership and governance are to their organizations’ success. Jewish nonprofit CEOs are especially favorable and appreciative regarding how their boards make a positive impact on the organization; provide support and thought partnership to the CEO; communicate well, both with the CEO and with one another; respond well to crises; and fiscally oversee the organization responsibly.
  1. From CEOs’ perspectives, many Jewish nonprofit boards could perform better around accountability, fundraising, CEO succession planning, and strategic governance. Fewer than half of Jewish nonprofit CEOs report that their boards operate with clear goals; evaluate themselves against those goals at least every two years; provide appropriate fundraising support; and have either a long-term CEO succession plan or an emergency CEO succession plan. Slightly over half (52%) of Jewish nonprofit CEOs agree that their boards set the vision and long-term strategy of the organization.
  1. Board chairs play a vital role and need more support. Jewish nonprofit CEOs overwhelmingly report favorable experiences with their board chairs — often reporting more favorable experiences with their board chairs than with their boards as a whole. CEOs also feel that the board chair role is an extremely important one. Compared with the general nonprofit sector, Jewish nonprofit board chairs are more likely to have previous experience as board chair of another organization (or even previous experience as board chair of the same organization at another time). This level of past experience has upsides — experience brings skills and wisdom — as well as downsides — the field could be elevating and supporting new people into board leadership.
  1. Board culture and trust drive board effectiveness. Jewish nonprofit boards could benefit from focusing more on building their cultures. As it is with professional teams, so it is with boards: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Board culture can make or break board performance. CEOs perceive that Jewish nonprofit boards are communicating well in their formal meetings, fostering an environment in which multiple perspectives are welcome. At the same time, many CEOs believe their boards could use additional opportunities to build trust and connection among board members. Many CEOs also report that their boards don’t operate from an explicitly stated and agreed set of shared values.
  1. Jewish nonprofit board composition should be broader and more representative. Only about half (52%) of Jewish nonprofit CEOs believe their board is representative of the diversity of the communities their organizations serve. Our data on board chair demographics also suggests that board chairs don’t reflect either the racial/ethnic nor the gender makeup of the field’s professionals, or of the Jewish community. Echoing a finding we see in CEO demographics as well, the gender imbalance of male board chairs is particularly stark among organizations with the highest budgets. This challenge will not be easy to address, since a majority of CEOs report that board member recruitment is a challenge in general.

updated March 7, 2024
The Jewish Education Project and M² released a new report on the experiences of Jewish professionals confronted by the ongoing war and its impact on their personal lives, communities, and students. The report delves into the experiences of Jewish professionals in the wake of October 7th, highlighting their feelings of isolation and confusion, noting:

  • Faced with events of historical magnitude, there is across the board recognition of the need to respond, coupled with uncertainty about the best course of action. Post-October 7th, during the survey period, these professionals were seeking clarity, facts, safety, and hope, while grappling with fundamental questions about the unfolding events and their implications.
  • The report underscores the inherent difficulties in facilitating conversations about challenging issues; including, but not limited to, those related to Israel. These challenges existed prior to October 7th and in the immediate aftermath were on full display. Issues fundamental to living life in contemporary society at this particular moment in time were raised. For example, in the age of social media as a primary source of information, “what should we believe?” The jarring experience of feeling oneself as part of a persecuted minority, “why do they hate us?”
  • These experiences and questions lead to a desire to speak and process. Some of the survey respondents provide purposeful responses to the war, which demonstrate how these large existential issues can integrate into a Jewish professional’s repertoire in a manner that overrides narrow disciplinary or context-specific approaches to Jewish education and community. The focus is on responding to this moment and seeing one’s membership in the Jewish People as an asset for tackling life’s big issues.
  • The report draws on the answers to the survey questions to propose a framework for purposeful communication to help Jewish professionals navigate the dynamic and changing post-October 7th landscape. This framework emphasizes the importance of identifying one’s professional narrative; including, specifying the big questions posed by learners, educational and institutional considerations, and dilemmas in order to craft an appropriate educational strategy. Ideally this process occurs through discussion with colleagues.

updated January 10, 2024
Prizmah’s newest enrollment trend report covers October 7 – December 8th, 2023, presenting a snapshot of the responses from enrollment professionals and heads of school from 110 schools in the United States and Canada. The report highlights a significant increase in inquiries and temporary enrollments from Israeli students and transfer students from public and independent schools into Jewish day schools and yeshivas in North America during the Israel-Hamas war. Key highlights include:

  • Thirty-nine percent of schools reported inquiries and or enrollment from public school students interested in transferring mid-year. Top reasons schools reported that public school transfer families provided: Wanting their child(ren) to be in a Jewish environment (73%); Fear of antisemitism in school or community (68%); and Response from their current school around the war in Israel (32%)
  • Twenty percent of schools reported receiving inquiries and or enrollment from independent school students interested in transferring midyear. Top reasons schools reported that independent school transfer families provided: Wanting their child(ren) to be in a Jewish environment (80%); Response from their current school around the war in Israel (50%); Fear of antisemitism in school or community (40%)
  • Since the last enrollment trend report, the number of inquiries from temporary Israeli students nearly doubled (944 total inquiries reported in October to 2,020 total inquiries from October through December). Over 1,000 temporary Israeli students enrolled in the schools that responded to the survey (schools reported they need mental health support and English language learning support).

updated January 10, 2024
The Foundation announced the first-of-its-kind longitudinal study to understand how professional development programs influence the growth and career advancement of Jewish educators and Jewish educational leaders throughout their careers. A research team at Rosov Consulting will survey participants of Foundation professional development programs multiple times over the next five years to follow their continued professional learning and career trajectories. The study’s launch was covered in eJewish Philanthropy:

  • “Effective professional development is key to attracting and retaining these individuals in the field,” said Stacie Cherner, Director of Learning and Evaluation at the Jim Joseph Foundation. “This unprecedented study will help grow the pipeline of talented, highly skilled leaders and educators who are vital to Jewish communities. We are grateful to all of the educators that take part in the study as we all learn together.”
  • Rosov Consulting will survey educators and educational leaders who work in Jewish serving organizations and participated in a professional development opportunity in 2023 that was supported by the Jim Joseph Foundation. Those include programs offered by: Birthright Israel, Foundation for Jewish Camp, Hillel International, M²: Institute for Experiential Jewish Education, Jewish New Teacher Project, Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Leading Edge, Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools, Repair the World, Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, SVARA, The iCenter, The Jewish Education Project, UpStart, and The Wexner Foundation.
  • The surveys will include questions about the participants’ attitude towards professional development and career commitment; other influences in their life, such as supervisors and current events; and outcomes of participation in professional development. “We’re excited to have been given the opportunity to track the career trajectories and professional growth of educators and leaders across the various sectors of Jewish education,” said Alex Pomson, Principal at Rosov Consulting. “Real-time panel studies are quite common in general education. As far as we know, this is the first study of its kind in the Jewish community. We have a chance not only to observe how educators grow over time, but to see how their roles evolve in response to tumultuous times.”

updated January 10, 2024
A new study funded by the Foundation, Crown Family Philanthropies, and the Harold Grinspoon Foundation is exploring the interests, needs, hopes, and challenges of a wide diversity of Jewish families, including those with more than one religious or cultural tradition, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, single parents, and families experiencing economic insecurity. A press release noted that more diverse families are an increasingly higher proportion of Jewish communities and may, at times, feel marginalized in Jewish communal settings. The project was covered in eJewish Philanthropy.

The first part of the study is a review of relevant research literature on factors shaping contemporary family life, available here. Researchers also conducted 40 regionally diverse focus groups with 182 individuals. One set of focus groups was with parents raising their children as Jews who are not typically active in Jewish organizations. The second set was with parents who participate in some aspects of Jewish communal life. Researchers will next conduct follow-up interviews with select focus group participants. Key findings from the literature review:

  • Rising housing costs mean that many people are priced out of areas with greater Jewish infrastructure, impeding their ability to participate in local Jewish communities.
  • Literature on multi-faith and multi-ethnic families dispels the still-common belief that mixed-heritage families represent a “threat” to Jewish continuity.
  • Extended family networks – especially grandparents – can play an important role in children’s lives; relatedly, researchers understand households not as self-contained units, but rather as embedded in broader social networks.

updated November 27, 2023
Post-October 7th, many Jewish day schools and yeshivas began receiving inquiries from families that included Israelis who were already located in or had traveled to North America who wanted their children in a Jewish setting at this time. This report from Prizmah provides a snapshot of the trend on Jewish day schools and yeshivas, with a focus on the influx of Israeli families seeking refuge in the United States and Canada.

  • The findings of the survey shed light on the profound impact of the ongoing War in Israel on Jewish day schools and yeshivas in North America. The influx of inquiries from Israeli students has prompted Jewish day schools and yeshivas to adapt swiftly and effectively to meet the emerging needs of the students and their families. The collective resilience demonstrated by the schools, coupled with their collaborative efforts with local Jewish organizations, reflects a community-driven approach to providing comprehensive support for the incoming students.
  • In addition to absorbing costs through zero or reduced tuition, schools have identified resource gaps, including critical supplies and specialized staff requirements, highlight the pressing need for immediate collective action and support from the broader Jewish community. By addressing these challenges collaboratively, Jewish day schools and yeshiva can continue to foster inclusive and nurturing environments, ensuring the holistic wellbeing and academic success of all students during this critical period.
  • The landscape continues to change rapidly and may be significantly different within a few weeks time. Prizmah will continue to monitor and share findings to assess and support the needs of the field.

updated October 16, 2023
This report from Rosov Consulting shares findings from a 2023 survey of Sefaria users and offers some suggestions as to how these findings could inform ways in which Sefaria could proceed toward its ambitious strategic plan. The report begins with a broad overview of all Sefaria’s users in North America (United States and Canada) and their demographic profile; it then narrows down on a large subset of the users and describes Sefaria’s impact on a user subset of particular interest: young North American users (ages 18-44) excluding Jewish educators. Key findings include the following:

  • Among Sefaria’s North American users, just over one in four are Orthodox (27%) and about one in five (21%) are Jewish educators. Almost one in four Sefaria users in North America (23%) are not Jewish.
  • Just over half (55%) of Sefaria’s North American users are younger than 45 years. With few exceptions, this younger subset uses Sefaria and is impacted by Sefaria in ways similar to older users.
  • One-third (34%) of Sefaria’s North American users do not have a regular practice of studying Jewish texts. Two-thirds (67%) require some level of support or scaffolding, such as translation and contextual information, in order to engage with these texts.
  • Across all user types, engagement with Sefaria enhances a sense of connection to the Jewish people and a sense of confidence to engage in Jewish practice beyond Jewish text study.
  • Sefaria’s least Jewishly literate users (those labeled “Explorers” in this report) are more likely to be female or gender nonconforming and are much less likely to be Orthodox. Compared with the more literate “Expert” users, they are more likely to gain a sense of connection to the Jewish people from their Sefaria experience, as well as motivation to explore additional Jewish educational opportunities.
  • Users who have established a regular Torah study practice but who still require scaffolding and support to access the corpus of Jewish texts (referred to in this report as “Dedicated Explorers”) are the ones impacted most deeply across all forms of impact.
  • Sefaria’s impact peaks with more regular use. Specifically, users who engage with Sefaria more than once a month are impacted especially deeply. That said, even first-time users report considerable impact when it comes to greater comfort in organized Jewish settings and the desire to learn more

updated September 27, 2023
A new evaluation by Third Plateau looks at the Foundation’s Build Grants strategy, outlining major themes on the structure, impacts, and challenges of Build Grants to date, as well as considerations for future planning. Key Findings include:

  • Build Grants substantially impact the trajectory of grantees. Grantees reported that Scaling Build Grants significantly enhanced their organization’s growth trajectory. Grantee organizations were able to increase the size of their staff, allowing them to develop their internal capacities and increase the reach of their programs. Build funds also helped grantees improve their internal systems by working with consultants to improve marketing, data management, and evaluation practices. They also acquired new tools, such as customer relationship managers (CRMs) or more effective web platforms. The Capacity Build Grants JJF provided for strategic plans or evaluations helped recipients of the Scaling Build Grant identify and pursue growth opportunities.
  • Many of the Build Grants’ features align with field-wide best practices. Scaling Build Grants offer organizations significant, multiyear, and unrestricted funds. Build Grants provide structure to grantees by supporting the development of strategic planning and operational assessments without restricting funds to those processes. Grantees reported a relationship built on trust between themselves, JJF program officers, and other JJF staff, making aligning around Build Grant goals easier. \Grantees reported a relationship built on trust between themselves, JJF program officers, and other staff, making it easier to align around Build Grant goals. The Build Grants’ design and JJF’s investment in trusting relationships are in line with capacity building best practices.1
  • JJF could create a formal menu of options for non-monetary support. Best practice literature and grantees both suggested additional non-monetary support from JJF could further assist grantees with capacity building and scaling efforts.2 JJF could identify which supports it would be willing to offer and present Build Grant recipients with those options. The offer of support would be particularly helpful for grantees that do not have a previous long-term relationship with JJF, as this group reported feeling more hesitant to ask for additional support. Offerings could include connecting grantees with other JJF staff members for specific advice or networking, publicity through the JJF newsletter, or recommending consultants for strategic planning, financial scenario planning, or other services supportive of scaling efforts.
  • JJF could more actively help grantees build capacity around financial sustainability. Grantees consistently reported concerns over their ability to sustain the growth they achieved with the Scaling Build Grant. JJF could address this by extending the length of grants or giving grantees more time to grow their fundraising capacity while sustaining or growing existing programs. It could offer more direct support for grantee’s fundraising efforts, such as introducing organizations to prospective funders early in the grant term or offering technical fundraising support. Supporting grantees to diversify funding streams may help cultivate organizational confidence and foster leadership’s ability to sustain growth through additional philanthropic investments.
  • JJF could develop strategies to clarify expectations around post-Build relationships with grantees early in the process. Despite JJF’s efforts to explain post-Build opportunities, this topic was a consistent source of confusion and anxiety for grantees. This concern was particularly pronounced in organizations with relatively newer relationships with JJF. An increase in direct, clear communication could ensure that grantees have a clear sense of what support, if any, they might continue to receive from the foundation after their Scaling Build Grant expires. This would require communicating whether or not a Scaling Build Grant is a one-time grant without the option of renewal or further funding, or the future paths that might be available. Establishing these expectations clearly and firmly at the beginning of the grant process or before a Scaling Build Grant is awarded will help grantees plan more effectively.

updated August 29, 2023
A new evaluation by Ezra Kopelowitz shows the impact of One2One, started in 2021 by “ENTER: The Jewish Peoplehood Alliance (ENTER)” in the midst of the global pandemic. The program is an online mifgash (educational encounter) between Jewish high school aged teens who live in Israel and North America. To date, 7,200 teens have participated in an online mifgash prior to embarking on their RootOne summer, multi-week trip to Israel. The online mifgash which involves two teens, meeting once a week, over five weeks for at least 30 minutes each meeting. Kopelowitz’s evaluation notes the following:

  • “The Mifgash” is an educational methodology developed in the 1980s by travel programs bringing Diaspora Jewish teens to Israel. The Mifgash has since taken root as a basic component in many of the educational venues involving Diaspora Jews traveling to Israel, and Israelis traveling abroad, including programs aimed at adults.
  • One2One’s innovation is the development of an online mifgash. The in-person mifgash requires travel, which is costly and involves high levels of organizational and communal investment. The goal of the online mifgash is to enable the beneficial outcomes associated with in-person mifgashim, without requiring international travel. Until One2One there was no systematic development of the online mifgash in a manner that can reach large numbers of participants.
  • The report shows how One2One utilizes three elements to enable online mifgashim, 1) technology to enable the online meetings; 2) organizational partnerships which are essential for recruiting the participating teens and enabling the online mifgashim to contribute to broader educational processes; and 3) appropriate educational design.
  • The proliferation of the mifgash as an educational methodology is due to the strong cognitive, emotional, and behavioral outcomes from the experience of meeting Jewish peers.
  • For partnering organizations One2One serves as a trigger process for broader educational processes. For the Israel Ministry of Education, One2One contributes to the motivation and confidence of Israeli high school students to speak English. For RootOne, One2One provides a pre-trip experience that motivates the North American Jewish teens ahead of their summer educational travel experience in Israel.
  • The Jewish teen participants who did not know each other previously report, (1) enjoying the encounter and finding it personally meaningful; and, (2) a contribution to their lives in terms of friendships formed, their connection to the Jewish People and (for the Israelis) speaking English.
  • Where One2One succeeds, relationships are central. The discussion and recommendations build on the ongoing learning accrued over One2One’s first three years. That learning points to the importance of strategic partnerships of the type established with the Israel Ministry of Education and RootOne, and the relationships formed between teen participants. Recommendations include five areas:
    • Diverse Conversations: The recognition that teens have diverse interests, and how One2One can support what the teens themselves want to discuss.
    • The conversations are imbued with Jewish meaning which drive the Peoplehood outcomes. It is possible to achieve a meaningful and formative experience for the teens, without asking those who are not interested to discuss broader social issues or ethical dilemmas or ask them to engage in the study of Jewish text.
    • Building on One2One as a trigger event for ongoing educational processes with value for One2One’s strategic partners.
    • When working with schools, to continue to focus on experiential educational qualities that One2One brings to the table.
    • Adopting an experimental design that supports diverse conversations between Jewish teens.

updated August 7, 2023
Launched in early 2022, the Cohort-Based Experiences (CBE) Initiative was developed based on the belief that cohort participation can lead to learning, connection, and enrichment that can ultimately contribute to employee retention within the Jewish communal sector. The Initiative was designed to: 1) unlock the power of cohort experiences; 2) understand the factors contributing to their success; and 3) explore ways to democratize and expand access to cohort experiences within the Jewish communal ecosystem. You can read full evaluations of the initiative here and here. Consultants leading the initiative, along with the Foundation’s Jenna Hanauer, summarized these learnings in eJewish Philanthropy, noting:

  • People crave low-pressure connections and micro-communities. People desperately want connections to others with whom they share professional and personal experiences. Our cohort sessions were fairly informal and had some guest speakers, shared facilitation and leadership roles, and time simply for talking and reflecting. This low-pressure tenor can be accomplished both in-person and virtually. Feelings of isolation and anxiety are prevalent among all demographics, especially those professionals supporting young adults and teens. These cohorts were, as the initiative’s first documentation report details, “supportive containers.” One participant shared, “This group made me feel more confident in my position — I now have a place to better understand industry norms, brainstorm, network and bring back real data to my organization.” Having a micro-community of peers to share challenges and successes strengthens feelings of connectedness, a factor in sustaining positive mental health.
  • People want to feel seen, heard and valued. These micro-investments do that. Many nonprofit professionals feel they lack professional development opportunities and room for growth at their organizations. Only a select few are in prestigious fellowship programs designed to help professionals learn new skills and build networks. When we launched the initiative, aside from the first cohorts that the foundation identified, we solicited proposals from professionals in the field of Jewish education to ask what leadership development cohorts they wanted to design and participate in. Being asked what learning experiences they would find most impactful and helpful, and with whom — and then seeing that take shape — was a powerful validation of their worth. As one participant shared during the evaluation process, “I really appreciated having the support, knowledge and guidance of my colleagues.”
  • People seek a range of modalities to access learning. The settings and ways in which learning occurs should be dynamic and reflect learning for the whole person. Our first cohorts are now thinking about how they will continue learning together with guest speakers and retreats. Other modalities we offered or facilitated include self-care, wellness activities and book exchanges among cohort members. We found that people want both guidance and autonomy; they want to be empowered to lead and teach in certain areas. The modalities should be varied and enable people to find the learning opportunities that best suit them. 
  • The number of cohort members matters. This is key. After different scenarios and some trial and error, we found that too many people in a cohort poses challenges and makes it more difficult for the group to bond and feel connected. Somewhere between six and 12 people seems optimal. However, you need to account for cohort members who do not attend every session. If you accept 15 people, ten might show up regularly. Setting attendance parameters in advance can help to avoid this issue. 
  • Cohort-based programs should have clear goals and outcomes. Program participants want to know the purpose behind the programs in which they participate, including the long-term goals and desired outcomes. The foundation, for example, launched this to “nourish” each participant, but the long-term goal is to increase the efficacy and retention of professionals in the Jewish nonprofit sector. The evaluation shows that this experience expanded the participants’ understanding of the Jewish organizational landscape and helped them recognize there is a place for themselves in the Jewish communal sector beyond their current position. Throughout the program, cohort members asked us good, pointed questions about why we were running this initiative. The latest evaluation shows their desire to have clear answers to these questions. 

updated July 17, 2023
The Jews of Color Initiative hosted a virtual Research Compendium where recipients of its research grants shared key findings from their work. You can read the full booklet with key findings here. Below is the opening message in that booklet from Ilana Kaufman, CEO, and Gabi Kuhn, Senior Program Officer, of the Jews of Color Initiative:

We are honored by your virtual attendance at the Jews of Color Initiative Research Compendium. The
Jews of Color Initiative’s mission is to advance racial equity in the U.S. Jewish community, centering the
leadership of Jews of Color. One branch of our work is generating knowledge through original research
by and for Jews of Color. In 2021, we released the report on our major research study, Beyond the
Count: Perspectives and Lived Experiences of Jews of Color, which documents how Jews of Color
think about Jewish identity, how they have experienced systemic racism in Jewish spaces, and more.
The report established foundational communal knowledge for creating more equitable and just Jewish
communities, and called for further research on the Jews of Color community.

In response to the call-to-action in Beyond the Count, in January 2022 the JoCI announced a request
for proposals designed to expand research in the field: Amplifying Jewish Scholars of Color and Jews
of Color-Focused Research. This cycle of grants supported each of the research studies and teams
featured in our Research Compendium. Together, this collective of researchers exemplifies how
collaboration across research fields, identities, and locations can generate rich findings while centering
communities and social change. “The goal of the RFP was to amplify not only research about Jews of
Color, but research by Jews of Color,” said Gabi Kuhn, Senior Program Officer of the Jews of Color
Initiative. “The quality of the findings our research grantees produced is a direct reflection of having JoC
centered on each research team.”

We celebrate this culmination of our research grantees’ work as a milestone moment, and a mark of the
sustained efforts in the field to place JoC perspectives in the forefront of our communal consciousness.
We invite Jewish communal leaders and community members to engage deeply with our research
grantees’ findings. Their research brings clarity to intersectionality in various sectors of Jewish life,
painting a beautifully expansive picture of JoC experiences. We are eager to see their work continue to
evolve beyond the grant period and affect change in the Jewish communal ecosystem.

updated June 8 2023
Birthright Israel released a study, “Birthright’s Impact in 2022: Knowledge, Views, and Feelings Toward Israel,” conducted by Brandeis’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies. Twenty thousand young Jews from the United States traveled to Israel on Birthright trips during summer 2022. Key findings from the study include the following:

  • Participants overwhelmingly reported that the trip was both educational and fun. Sixty-nine percent of participants reported that the trip felt “very much” like a learning experience, and the same percentage reported that it felt like a journey to their Jewish roots. Over half described it “very much” as “a life-changing experience.”
  • A substantial majority of participants agreed that the trip devoted the right amount of time to discussing Israel’s history, Jewish ideas and values, contemporary life in Israel, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
  • Birthright Israel improved participants’ knowledge of core political issues in Israel. After returning from the trip, participants scored significantly higher on a “quiz” measuring knowledge of Israeli political issues.
  • Birthright participation had little or no effect on participants’ political opinions with regard to Israel’s political conflicts. Going on the trip did not make participants significantly more or less likely to agree that Israel is “guilty of violating the human rights of the Palestinian people,” nor did it lead participants to become significantly more or less likely to agree that Israel “upholds the equality of all its citizens.” Participants did become slightly more likely to agree that Israel was “under constant threat from neighbors that seek its destruction,” but the magnitude of this effect was small.
  • Birthright’s strongest impact was on participants’ connection to Israel. Before going on the trip, 30% of participants reported feeling “very much” connected to Israel. After the trip, the share of participants reporting being “very much” connected to Israel increased to 49%.
  • Participants’ connection to Israel increased after going on a Birthright trip regardless of their political views. Notwithstanding concerns about a growing political divide between the predominantly liberal American Jewish population and conservative Israeli governments, Birthright’s significant impact on connection to Israel was evident for participants across the ideological spectrum.
  • The report states: The present findings demonstrate that Birthright continues to play a pivotal role in forging connections between young adult American Jews and Israel. By providing an experiential educational program for young adults and engaging them directly with the people of Israel, Birthright nurtures this relationship in a richer and more nuanced way than do news headlines or social media feeds. In an era of contentious political debate about Israel, Birthright’s ability to educate participants about the history, culture, and politics of Israel without advancing a particular political line about the country’s conflicts or life in Israel is more impressive than ever.

updated May 22, 2023
RootOne, powered by The Jewish Education, released the first evaluation on the program conducted by Rosov Consulting. The evaluation efforts were designed not only to document the immediate and longer-term outcomes produced by programs, but to identify what impedes or enhances those outcomes, with the goal of enabling the RootOne team to continually improve its efforts. This report synthesizes the data collected during the 2022 calendar year and shows many positive outcomes of the program. Key findings include the following:

  • RootOne was launched in 2020 with the goal of maximizing the number of Jewish teens who participate in an Israel experience and maximizing the impact of those experiences. In its first two years, RootOne has approached these goals by means of three primary strategies: providing eligible teens with vouchers that make programs financially more accessible and incentivize participation; building up a continuum of newly-created educational and social experiences before and after the program in Israel; and investing in the professional development of the educators who staff the programs.
  • In 2021, in its first year of activity, when the COVID-19 pandemic was still making international travel highly unpredictable, the first cohort of RootOne participants was made up in large part of young people who had been at least moderately involved in Jewish programming and were somewhat diverse demographically: 78% of participants who received a RootOne voucher and also responded to a survey had attended a Jewish overnight camp for at least two summers, 59% had visited Israel previously, and 48% attended a Jewish day school for at least one year. In addition, 17% came from interfaith homes, 5% identified as a person of color, and 21% as non-heterosexual.
  • In 2022, RootOne succeeded in recruiting a slightly less engaged and slightly more diverse population of Jewish-identifying teens. Of the 4,768 young people who received a RootOne voucher and who also responded to a survey, 71% had attended a Jewish overnight camp for at least two summers; 51% had visited Israel previously; and 46% had attended a Jewish day school for at least one year. In addition, 19% came from interfaith homes, 10% identified as a person of color, and 22% as non-heteronormative.
  • RootOne’s work is rich with potential. The programs RootOne supports powerfully influence the ways in which teens, whatever their backgrounds, understand and relate to Israel. And the more these programs can reach people who have not previously participated in immersive forms of Jewish education and engagement, the greater their impact will be on their Jewish lives too.
  • RootOne’s work is complicated by the evolving social-emotional needs of teens, and, yet, as we have seen, if programs adapt to meet those needs, ultimately, their contribution to the personal development of young people may also amplify the Jewish and Israel-related outcomes they produce. Self-development and the nurture of meaningful relationships among participants are the platforms on which other forms of growth occur.
  • Helping programs adapt in these ways will be complex work. It will involve modifying long-established models of program design, implementing ways of narrating new and compelling master narratives about Israel, and constructing broad-based and sophisticated professional development for staff so that they are better attuned to their educational and pastoral roles.

updated April 25, 2023
The Jewish Education Project released a new report, From Census to Possibilities: Designing Pathways for Jewish Learners, that shares national data on 2019-2020 enrollment in Jewish supplemental schools. The report also includes design principles that The Jewish Education Project says can help shape Jewish learning that is meaningful and personally relevant to Jewish youth today. The report was covered in JTA, and TJEP is holding a series of webinars on the findings. The census gathering data was conducted by Rosov Consulting. Key findings from the Census:

  • In the 2019-2020 school year, there were 1,458 supplementary schools in North America, enrolling an estimated 140,728 students from pre-K through 12th grade. Our best analysis indicates that total enrollment in supplementary schools in the US for grades 1-12 has decreased at least 45% since 2006-2007.
  • Similar to 2006, only 16% of those ever enrolled in a supplemental program remain in a formal educational environment by senior year in high school.
  • There are at least 27 percent less supplemental Jewish schools than in 2006. 
  • Chabad has increased its proportion of the market from 13 percent to 21 percent of schools, and from 4 percent to 10 percent of enrollment. They generally have the smallest average school sizes. The Reform Movement continues to educate over 50 percent of the students enrolled in supplementary schools and they have, by far, the largest average school size.
  • Enrollment is clustered in grades leading up to B’nai Mitzvah; 6th grade has the highest enrollment with just under 50 percent of the available population enrolled (more than 75% were enrolled at the time of a 2009 census conducted by The AVI CHAI Foundation).

Following research by The Jewish Education Project on supplemental Jewish education programs, and building on prior research on Jewish families and life today, the report offers six “design principles” that contribute to successful educational models that meet the needs of today’s Jewish families. Those principles are:

  • Legitimizing Cultural Identities: Along with the many families that seek religious life, today’s Jewish families seek educational experiences that support a cultural approach to Jewish identity, exploring shared history, language, and peoplehood as foundational curricular components.
  • Adding Value to a Family’s Life: Like all families, today’s Jewish families face increasing financial pressures while also navigating childcare challenges and societal pressures for high academic and extracurricular performance. These factors lead to busy lives that force Jewish educational programs to make a compelling case that participation in their programs adds value to a family’s life.
  • Affirming Diverse People and Families: Successful educational programs welcome Jews of color, all family members from homes where more than one religion is practiced, and all who wish to be part of the community regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, class, or ability.
  • Putting Family at the Center: While families were already often pursuing home-based Jewish experiences specifically around Hanukkah and Passover and Shabbat, the pandemic accelerated these types of experiences at other times of the year too. Successful educational programs create learning that supports Jewish experiences that are primarily home and family based. 
  • Elevating Caring, Purposeful Relationships: The most successful programs use relationship-based pedagogies to create authentic interpersonal connections around Jewish learning experiences. They deliver learning that nurtures friendships within classes and across the entirety of the community.
  • Redefining the role of Teacher and Learner: Programs are most successful when they focus on the learners’ everyday questions and challenges. Learner-led approaches require that teachers become facilitators or guides instead of content-experts.

updated March 21, 2023
Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation released a research report conducted by the Benenson Strategy Group showing that young American Jews want more experiences with rabbis because those interactions help them feel more spiritually connected and more connected to a Jewish community. Among other outlets, the report was covered in Times of Israel. Atra is hosting a webinar on Tuesday, March 28 at 12-1pm ET to discuss the key findings and their implications. Key findings of the Rabbi Experience Research:

  • A relationship with a rabbi is important to young American Jews. 64% say it is important to them currently and only 12% of those who say it is not currently important say it will not be important to them later. 
  • Young American Jews prioritize their rabbis accepting them for who they are as people and how they want to be Jewish, while also seeking guidance and knowledge from their rabbis. 
  • Young American Jews have predominantly had positive experiences with rabbis who are welcoming, friendly, and knowledgeable. These positive interactions are impactful:
    • 91% said it made them feel more positively about being Jewish.
    • 90% said they felt more spiritually connected. 
    • 88% said it made them more confident and comfortable being Jewish.
  • Most young Jews have had an interaction or experience with a rabbi (69%) although 40% of respondents said they have difficulty finding a rabbi. While they believe synagogue is a natural place to find rabbis, it is also seen as a barrier (not accepting/too expensive).
  • Only 7% of all young Jews report having had a purely negative experience with a rabbi. Negative interactions are largely characterized by feeling that the rabbi was judgmental, rude or unhelpful, leaving young Jews disappointed, annoyed and uncomfortable. Note that positive experiences have a greater impact than negative ones, signaling the importance of positive experiences at young ages.

“The findings show that rabbis in different settings are integral to both welcoming young adults into Jewish life and, critically, helping them find a level of spirituality, meaning and connection to Jewish community they clearly want,” says Dr. Rebekah Tokatlilar of Atra. “We have an exciting opportunity to support spiritual leaders to engage people both inside and outside of synagogue walls. Rabbis can deploy wisdom artfully and connect with as many people as possible, wherever they are. Younger American Jews want rabbis–and they want their rabbis to seek them out where they spend time and in ways they can relate.”

Atra has been meeting with rabbis, scholars, and Jewish leaders to share the findings and discuss policy and investment implications. Common reactions are that the research confirms what many in the field have observed anecdotally—that rabbis matter. Many wonder how this research can inform rabbinic training in the future. Others point to additional questions this study raises about the kinds of rabbis that have the most positive impact and whether positive experiences with rabbis are one-offs or occur over time.

updated March 10, 2023
Birthright Israel shared two pieces related to evaluation learning. The first evaluation addresses Birthright’s interest in examining the classic program’s impact on the collective Jewish communal world. Rosov Consulting is testing a hypothesis that Birthright Israel has had a transformative effect on the Jewish communal ecosystem through Birthright Israel alumni who now work and volunteer across the communal system. In Phase I of this project, Rosov Consulting will hold a set of exploratory conversations with approximately 40 organizational leaders who have deep experience running their organizations as well as broad and well-informed views of their distinctive sectors and the communal ecosystem. The research will be designed to assess whether communal leaders view Birthright Israel as having distinctive organizational, sector, and ecosystem-level impacts; if so, identifying and specifying the components of those impacts; and if not, why not. The project is underway and is scheduled to run through June 2023. Existing data demonstrate that Birthright Israel alumni are:

  • 49% of young Jewish communal professionals are Birthright Israel alumni (Leading Edge, 2022).
  • 61% of residents of Moishe House (Moishe House, 2018).
  • 50% of OneTable participants (OneTable, 2022).
  • 69% of Trybal Gatherings participants (Trybal Gatherings, 2021).

These provide a preliminary glimpse into what Rosov Consulting might undercover in their exploratory assessment.

The second learning shared is a summary (TE stands for Tour Educator) from an in depth evaluation report on Birthright conducted by the Szold Institute in Israel:

  • Overall Satisfaction. The participants’ overall satisfaction with the Birthright trip was good (5.3 out of 6), similar to the previous season. 84% of the participants were very satisfied with the trip in general.
  • Taking Away. Participants felt that they were taking away from the trip (top 3): a sense of community & friendship, a deeper connection to Judaism and a deeper connection to Israel, similar to the previous season.
  • Factors Influencing Perceived Trip Outcomes. Presenting Diverse Perspectives, the Mifgash, Reflection Times, the Shabbat and the participants’ well being were found to have the most impact, statistically, on the participants’ perceived trip outcomes (enhanced connection to Israel, Jewish community, and Jewish identity). The influence of the participants’ well being on the perceived outcomes was not significant in the previous season.

updated February 21, 2023
The Shalom Hartman Institute of North America (SHI NA) shared an evaluation it commissioned from Rosov Consulting “to learn how a selection of its signature Fellowships and community-based programs have impacted their participants, who include Jewish leaders and educators within day schools, Hillels, universities, Jewish communal organizations, and the broader Jewish community.”

Rosov Consulting writes in the evaluation: “This evaluation journey has had at its core the goal of identifying the ‘secret sauce’ of SHI NA’s work that has allowed it to create transformational change for so many Jewish learners and leaders. While certainly any participant’s experience is shaped in part by the individual background and goals that they bring to their learning, the research has revealed a ‘recipe’ that seems most likely to produce meaningful impacts:

  1. Talented scholars and faculty who model the value of pluralism and diversity by presenting a range of ideological perspectives;
  2. Designing programs around compelling ideas that speak to the challenges that Jewish leaders are wrestling with and help make sense of complex and often contradictory realities;
  3. Recruiting program participants who are comfortable in the realm of “high-level” ideas (as opposed to seeking specific and practical resources), but who can also envision how these ideas will translate to the settings they work and lead in;
  4. Providing intensive and immersive learning experiences (primarily at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, though other locations may also be viable) that include encounters with people and communities who make the concepts being studied come alive; and
  5. Developing cohorts of colleagues who forge deep connections and can provide ongoing resources, support, and a safe space for challenging conversations both during and after the program.

“This is not to say that other approaches and program models should not be part of SHI NA’s overall portfolio, such as using online and shorter programs as gateways to more intensive learning or exploring partnerships to reach and engage new learner populations. Overall, however, this evaluation has shown that numerous Jewish leaders across multiple contexts and settings are eager for the kind of learning experience—that expands and deepens understanding, elevates discourse, bridges divides, and empowers thought leadership—that SHI NA is uniquely able to provide.”

updated February 13, 2023
Hannah Lebovits, an assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Texas-Arlington, references the Foundation’s recently commissioned report on Jewish college students to make the case that students on her campus want Jewish connections premised on meaningful experiences, not around Israel. Some excerpts from here piece in The Forward, titled “I teach on a campus without Hillel or Chabad. My Jewish students yearn for connection, not politics“:

  • As a Jewish college professor at a large university without any institutional Jewish campus life, I have a unique opportunity to engage with the few Jewish students I encounter. Now in my third year as a professor, I am strongly considering engaging in more Jewish activities to provide some on-campus resources. But the options for a professor in a situation like mine, at a university without a campus Hillel or Chabad, mostly revolve around political, Israel-based engagement— a topic most of my students certainly do not want to wade into. 
  • And they are not alone. A recent report authored by Tufts professor Eitan Hersh for the Jim Joseph Foundation reveals that Jewish students on college campuses are more eager to engage directly in Jewish material life, culture and tradition than to discuss politics. They want to connect with their Jewish identity through food and the experience of Shabbat and holidays, socializing with other Jews, Jewish textual learning and volunteer opportunities in the spirit of tikkun olam.
  • According to the Jewish students Hersh surveyed, the types of events that they were least interested in were “politically oriented events;” in other words: events that explicitly tie Jewish identity to political behaviors. Yet, while Jewish students on campus mostly just want a place to be fed and hang out with other Jewish kids, Jewish organizations that target college students on campuses like mine are overwhelmingly focused on Israel.
  • Certainly, some Jewish students on campus are interested in being vocal supporters of Israel. But the data doesn’t lie: the overwhelming majority of Jewish college students do not find these events to be the most meaningful. And aside from wondering why so many these well-resourced organizations are focused on mobilizing students to engage in political work when the students themselves are more interested in opportunities to learn Jewish texts and eat some schnitzel than recite a five-point defense of the Jewish state, people like me and my students are also left high and dry. And we are not alone. Countless universities across the country do not have an on-campus Hillel or Chabad, both of which provide extensive programming beyond Israel-focused and political activities. And without more options to engage in cultural, food-based, and spiritual activities, Jewish students cannot connect with their Jewish identity on their preferred terms.  
  • For many college students, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, college is the first and last time that they will have the opportunity to live in a walkable, dense community filled with aesthetically beautiful spots to relax and learn. College campuses are built to generate social interactions, intellectual growth, and identity formation in ways that often do not happen naturally in other environments where learning is not a primary focus and self-segregation is common. Many students will begin to ask questions such as, “why am I here, where did I come from, and who do I want to be,” while sitting with friends on the quad in the moments between classes or while in a laundry room waiting on their clothes to dry.

updated January 30, 2023
The Foundation commissioned Third Plateau to conduct research on best practices in capacity building grantmaking and evaluation. This is part of our efforts to further iterate on our Build Grants structure and strategies. Throughout the research, Third Plateau found deep connections between best practices in the field and Jim Joseph Foundation’s strategies and practices for Build Grants. Key findings from the research, the overlap with JJF’s existing practices, and considerations for future work are shared below:

  • Capacity building is loosely-defined, and language is evolving. There is no standard definition or set of strategies that funders consistently use for capacity building. However, both nonprofits and foundations generally agree that any investment that supports the long-term sustainability of an organization can be considered capacity building. The term itself is being discussed and debated as organizations focused on creating more equity in philanthropy have adopted and championed “building resilience” as an asset-based alternative.
  • There are five major best practices associated with successful capacity building grantmaking. Across existing research and interviews with field experts, five elements routinely were identified as effective strategies for capacity building: supplementing grants with non-monetary support, developing trusting relationships with grantees, offering multi-year, flexible funding grants, taking an ecosystem-wide approach, and utilizing a DEI framework.
  • JJF is implementing many strategies that are considered best practices through its Capacity Build Grants. JJF staff are a significant resource to Capacity Build Grant recipients, developing trusting relationships, carrying an open dialogue, and helping them identify areas for learning, growth and potential interventions. JJF’s Scaling Build Grants provide multi-year flexible funding to support grantee growth capital, and they have specific giving areas and strategies where investments in the capacity of multiple organizations might support overall growth in the field.
  • There are strategies, tactics, and adaptations of current practices that JJF can explore, as well as other ways to consider investing additional resources. JJF could further support the organizations through wrap-around services, such as building peer networks for organizations receiving Build Grants or providing external coaching support for leaders navigating growth and change processes at their organizations. They could utilize a DEI framework to improve grantee experiences and enhance the overall impact of the grant. JJF could offer an anonymized evaluation process to gather more information on grantee perceptions of Build Grant support, which could enhance JJF’s understanding of additional needs.
  • JJF’s efforts to shore up organizational capacities in advance of providing Scaling Build Grants is aligned with the field’s recommendations. Assessing readiness for scaling is complicated, and there is no one assessment tool or set of metrics that support an understanding of an organization’s readiness to scale its programming. Several sources indicated that scaling is most effective in organizations with solid infrastructure, particularly those with talented staff and strong financial resources.
  • Organizations should define scaling success metrics. Many question if increasing organizational reach (participant numbers) should be the primary way to evaluate successful scaling efforts. JJF has an opportunity to define success in partnership with grantees, ensuring the goals of the Foundation and its organizational partners are met.
  • A nimble approach to a mixed methods evaluation is key to evaluating capacity building grantmaking strategies. The use of causal design, equitable and culturally-responsive, or rapid cycle-change methodologies can help foundations understand the complexities of capacity building work and its effectiveness. JJF can learn from the field by examining lessons learned from developmental, formative, and summative evaluations of capacity building initiatives.

updated January 13, 2023
As a reminder, Rosov Consulting is leading two of our cross-portfolio evaluation projects related to our Deliberate Strategy. Both projects are part of our efforts to encourage grantees to collect information about the participants they are reaching. The Foundation is supporting them to identify and measure shared outcomes when appropriate. Update on these projects:

1. Exploration of shared outcomes and measures among our five PJLE signature grantees (BBYO, FJC, Hillel, Moishe House and Birthright).

  • The exploration phase is concluding soon. Stacie Cherner will be attending an in-person meeting with Rosov Consulting and the grantees on February 1st for a presentation of findings, reflection on the process and findings, and options for next steps.
  • Rosov Consulting and the grantees spent 2022 identifying shared outcomes as well as a shared set of participant demographic questions (which was enthusiastically embraced). The grantees agreed to pilot survey questions this year about the shared outcomes and demographics. The shared outcomes measured in a pilot survey are:
Connectedness1. Developing strong relationships with Jewish peers.
2. Finding life-long connections to each other, the Jewish people, and Israel.
Community1. Finding a place among the Jewish people and the world.
2. Connecting to Jewish life/community.
Jewish Pluralism1. Growing and trying on Jewish ideas.
2. Finding passion, meaning, and purpose in Jewish rituals and practices.
Wellness/Safety1. Feeling accepted as whole self.
2. Feeling safe as a whole person (and as a Jew).
3. Finding a safe and supportive space for all Jews.
Israel1. Understanding the complexities and nuances of Israel.
2. Bolstering personal connection to Israel.
  • Each grantee has their own unique outcomes too. Each grantee either added survey questions to an existing survey in 2022 or fielded a new survey to a sub-population of participants in 2022. Rosov Consulting has analyzed these data for each organization and also aggregated the findings. We will see the aggregated report soon.
  • In February, the grantees will hear from each other how valuable (or not) the process and resulting data are, and how a new phase of data collection can be incorporated into their work going forward. Rella Kaplowitz, Director of U.S. Jewish Grantmaking at Schusterman Family Philanthropies, will join for part of the conversation since many of these grantees are shared with them, and Schusterman Family Philanthropies is having the same conversations we are about how to encourage and support grantees to collect information about who they are reaching.

2. Supporting data collection of EJLE grantees that provide professional development. Rosov Consulting has spoken with 14 grantees about their data collection practices and has asked for copies of instruments used for demographic data collection as well as post program surveys. Participating grantees are: The iCenter, The Jewish Education Project, Foundation for Jewish Camp, Hillel, Birthright, Prizmah, Jewish New Teacher Project, Wexner Foundation, Leading Edge, M2, Hartman Institute, Upstart, SVARA, and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality.

  • There is a fairly substantial lack of robust or standardized demographic data collection about PD program participants among EJLE grantees. Through this project, the Foundation will begin to communicate the importance of organizations to collect more detailed information about their participants. Rosov Consulting will draft a set of recommended demographic questions that organizations can opt to begin using. Rosov Consulting will also host an online meeting in mid-February to share the questions and explain the benefits are of having the information. Stacie Cherner will attend to explain why the Foundation thinks this information is important.
  • A second part of this particular project is a longitudinal study of participants that opt-in to be surveyed on an ongoing basis so that we can begin to understand the longer-term outcomes of the PD we are supporting.

updated December 16
Leaders of JOFEE (Jewish Outdoor, Food, Farming, and Environmental Education) shared lessons learned during the recently completed three-year period of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s general operating grant to Hazon, as well as lessons learned over the last ten years of the Foundation’s support to the field:

  • There is growth and diversification of the community of people engaging in JOFEE. As the pandemic unfolded, Jewish outdoor education quickly became a go-to for communities. Programs have grown both in the number and type of participants they’re engaging — including wider age ranges, geographies and affiliation levels. Both the accelerated adoption of virtual programming, and the desire of people to re-engage in in-person programming as the world reopens, means that we have, so far, maintained new program growth, and expect to continue to do so into the future.
  • Nature is a profound driver of reconnection to Jewish life. In this age of digital overload and hesitancy surrounding indoor gatherings, a nature-connected, outdoor Judaism speaks directly to what we need in mind and body, heart and soul. Despite myriad online opportunities, people continue to seek the authentic sense of purpose and connection that can be found through engaging with the more-than-human world. “I experienced a profound healing in the part of my soul that has been searching for a tribe and embodied Jewish community,” one Wilderness Torah participant said. “My Jewish heart and connection to my ancestors has opened. I have found my home as a Jew.” JOFEE connects youth to wider Jewish communal life and keeps them engaged by providing meaningful experiences. We need to ask ourselves how to authentically connect with who we are at our rooted core, to the obligations and responsibilities of what it means to be a human on planet earth.
  • Jewish youth and young adults are seeking environmental leadership opportunities inside and outside the Jewish community. Perhaps one of the biggest lessons learned over the past years is the growing demand from, and for, Jewish youth to be empowered as their own leaders and educators in environmental work and action. Launched in 2020, Hazon’s Jewish Youth Climate Movement (JYCM) has blossomed into more than 44 kvutzot (chapters) nationwide, each with 10-30 members. Efforts run by the teens themselves reach about 10,000 more people each year. These chapters are not just powerful Jewish engagement opportunities; they are also a safe space for young people who may not feel accepted with their full Jewish identities amid some elements of anti-Zionism and antisemitism in the secular climate justice movement.
  • Growing Jewish communal interest and action on Sustainability presents new opportunities for wider Jewish collaboration. Hazon’s growing national portfolio of virtual and in-person programs provide options for pop-up collaborations. At the same time, Jewish youth are increasingly seeking leadership opportunities within JOFEE — a useful avenue for them to create meaningful experiences while also building a network of peers. We approach the end of 2022 with a new and diverse set of programs and participants, including a network of hundreds of Jewish teen activists across the country via JYCM; a newly launched Jewish Climate Leadership Coalition with over 120 Jewish organizations, three major national community hubs engaging tens of thousands of people a year in Baltimore, New York/Connecticut and Detroit; and a programmatic framework that enables seamless online and in-person fusions. With Wilderness Torah and Urban Adamah also scaling programs nationally increasing their regional impact, it is increasingly possible for young Jewish individuals to find their place in a Jewish community that also shares their environmental values.

updated November 16
SRE Network shared the 2022 Standards Self-Assessment Membership Report, with findings on how SRE Network member organizations have grown this past year, their common strengths, and the areas for improvement in the year ahead. SRE Network notes that “member organizations are successfully making gradual and steady progress along their journeys to building safer, more respectful, and equitable workplaces and communal spaces. And there is still more room to improve.” Other key takeaways noted by SRE Network include the following:

Where We Are Now: Common Strengths

  • Overall, organizations are doing well with a cumulative average score of 84% or a B in grading terms.
  • Leadership & Accountability and Reporting & Response are the most common strengths.

How Member Organizations Have Grown

  • 50% of organizations improved in the past year & 21% maintained their progress in the 4 standards areas of Leadership & Accountability, Policies & Guidelines, Reporting & Response, and Education & Training.
  • Organizations noted the most improvement in the two areas in which SRE Network provided the most support in the past year: Policies & Guidelines and Reporting & Response.

Our Work Ahead: Common Growth Areas

  • Education & Training and Policies & Guidelines are the areas with the most room for growth.
  • Specifically, communicating policies and procedures to staff on a regular basis needs improvement, as well as investing more in Education & Training.

The Road Ahead

The results of this report will guide the SRE Network team in developing upcoming learning, resource, and grantee opportunities to work to best support organizations’ future growth and sustain their progress for lasting change. While there is still much work ahead in this long-term journey, member organizations are poised to continue learning from, supporting, and growing with each other. Together, our SRE community can create safe, respectful, and equitable Jewish workplaces and communal spaces for all.

updated November 1, 2022
Leading Edge released its sixth annual Employee Experience Survey under the headline, “Are Jewish organizations great places to work? Not yet—but we’re striving.” The report shares how employees in the Jewish nonprofit sector experience their work, what keeps them engaged, and why they choose to leave or stay in their organizations. Leading Edge uses the survey results to support organizations in creating “even better places to work.” Key takeaways:

  • People want to stay in this sector. A strong majority of employees surveyed (70%) want to stay in the Jewish nonprofit sector for two years or more.
  • People (still) want well-being, trusted leaders, and inclusion. The top drivers of employee engagement remain what Leading Edge has seen in past years: feeling that the organization cares for employees’ well-being, confidence in leadership, feelings of belonging, and feeling that there is open and honest communication in the organization.
  • Some employees are less likely to feel like they belong. LGBTQ+ employees and People of Color (particularly Black employees, both including Black Jews and Black employees who are not Jewish) are markedly less likely to feel like they belong in their organizations.
  • There’s been a lot of turnover. One third (33%) of employees surveyed have been with their organizations for less than two years.
  • Working with board members is common. More than one out of every four employees surveyed (27%) reports that they work with the board.
  • Most employees go to work in person for at least part of their work week. Three quarters of employees surveyed (76%) reported that they work outside their homes for at least part of each week.
  • People working in person (i.e., not remotely) trust their leaders more if they feel well prepared for physical security threats. For the first time, we asked employees working outside their homes about preparedness for physical security threats. Five out of six employees surveyed (72%) feel prepared to act in the event of a security threat, but those who don’t feel prepared are markedly less likely to have confidence in their organizational leadership.

updated August 29, 2022
In January 2022, the Jim Joseph Foundation and the Schusterman Family Philanthropies commissioned a study of Jewish college students led by Dr. Eitan Hersh designed to capture the attitudes and behaviors of today’s four-year college students. The study included a national survey of 2,000 Jewish undergraduates, a comparison survey of 1,000 non-Jewish undergraduates, and focus groups of students at SUNY Binghamton, Ohio State, UC Santa Cruz, University of Chicago, and Tulane University. The goal of the study, which has not been released publicly, is to examine who Jewish students are, what drives them and motivates them, where they find connection and meaning, and how being Jewish does or does not play in their college lives. Key findings include:

  • Jewish students come from diverse backgrounds. About half of the students surveyed grew up in a household with one Jewish parent. About half celebrate both Jewish and non-Jewish customs and holidays.
  • Most Jewish students consider their Jewish identity to be important to them (75% said it is or very important). Nearly as many (70%) think positively about the Jewish experiences
    they had growing up, and most (60%) said they want to explore Jewish aspects of their identity
    while in college. However, most do not regularly participate in campus Jewish activities (only 34%
    attend programs more than a few times a year).
  • The Jewish students, particularly those from more traditional Jewish backgrounds, tend to come from upper class or upper-middle class families. They spend significantly less time in college working to earn money than non-Jewish students. As a result, they have more free time. Their extra time is spent mainly on informal socializing.
  • The Jewish students in the sample are over three times more likely than the non-Jewish students to say that their “religious/racial/ethnic group’s community on campus” was an important factor
    when they decided where to apply to college.
  • Of Jewish students who have had interactions with the Jewish community on their campus, their experiences have been overwhelmingly positive: 85% say that attending Jewish activities makes them feel like they belong somewhere. For the few who feel uncomfortable, the reasons range from feeling excluded from social cliques to having a limited background in religious education to feeling unwelcome due to the dominant political worldview of the active participants.
  • A student’s family background characteristics as well as their personal attitudes toward being
    Jewish are strong predictors of their participation in Jewish activities on campus.     However, their
    affect (e.g., how much they care about their Jewish identity) is a much stronger predictor than their background traits (e.g., whether their family engaged in many Jewish practices when they were growing up).
  • One third of the students say that a Jewish professional on campus (e.g., Hillel rabbi, Chabad rabbi, Hillel staff) knows them by name. About a third of students wish they had a stronger relationship with a Jewish mentor on campus.
  • When asked what kind of Jewish programming they want, the most popular genres are social, cultural, and Shabbat/holiday programming.
  • Most Jewish students (56%) worry that people make unfair judgements about them because they are Jewish. Nearly one in four say people will judge them negatively for attending Jewish programs on campus. One in five feel the need to hide they are Jewish in order to fit in. In general, however, the students do not fear antisemitism. To the extent that they fear antisemitism, it motivates more of them to participate in Jewish life than it keeps them away.
  • Most Jewish students (54%) feel that they pay a social cost for supporting the existence of Israel as
    a Jewish state (i.e., not any specific policy but just the right for the country to exist).     The non-Jewish sample corroborates these fears.
  • While campuses are home to Jewish students who do and do not support the existence of a Jewish state (the Jewish sample is 3-to-1 supportive of Israel’s right to exist, and the ratio is higher among
    students engaged in Jewish life), students are, on balance, satisfied with their campus Jewish
    community’s relationship to Israel.

updated August 17
Sara Allen, Executive Director of the Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative, and Rachel Shamash Schneider of the Foundation shared learnings on the relationship between scaling and innovation, noting:

  • The word ‘innovation’ often conjures images of a lightbulb above a head — an instant spark of an idea that has the power to change the world. Yet real progress — forward motion, sustainable change — also requires the effective implementation of bright ideas.
  • In our experience, scaling means bringing an idea or program model that has worked in one place somewhere new, sometimes adapting the idea to meet local needs. Why doesn’t this happen more often? Understandably, there’s an excitement that comes with something new, and a tendency to focus on igniting our own lightbulb. We know through our experience as funder representatives and leaders that new ideas and innovations are an important part of the social impact equation. But the part of the equation that we want to elevate here is the power of amplifying something borrowed.
  • In partnership with Spring Impact, a global organization which specializes in scaling social impact, the Funder Collaborative developed a methodology for scaling in the Jewish community. This methodology involves five concrete steps the originator of any engagement program can follow:
    1) Prove: assessing whether a solution is ready to replicate elsewhere
    2) Design and 3) Systemize: laying the groundwork in a new community and tweaking the existing model if needed
    4) Piloting and 5) Scaling: bringing the model to life in a new setting through operations manuals, trainings, or modules.
  • We know the benefits of looking for new light bulbs, and we understand scaling isn’t a simple task. Yet with more organizations across the country understanding the benefits of scaling as an alternative pathway — and with the Funder Collaborative poised to help — we can dramatically increase our collective impact.

updated August 1
The current issue of the quarterly Sapir Journal from Maimonides Fund includes an edited roundtable conversation between Barry Finestone, Abi Dauber Sterne of For the Sake of Argument, and Rabbi Leon Morris, president of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. The three of them “reflect on the direction of Jewish education, who it is for, and why we must continue to care deeply about it. They discuss “where new investments of time, energy and funding might best be deployed. Barry commented in the conversation:

And we need to think about what truly moves people. I’ve been reflecting on two words that I believe are core to what the best of Jewish education and Jewish life can be: beautiful and delightful. How do we show people that so many elements of Jewish education, Judaism, Jewish life are both beautiful and delightful? For example: In my family, we bless our children every Shabbat. And it’s just beautiful and delightful — and would be for anyone, even if they did it at 5:30 on a Tuesday. And it’s a doorway, opening up a whole world of thinking, learning, feeling: How do we think about family? About taking care of people?

…I’d love to see more really high-quality day schools being created, that take both the Judaics and the secular education to the next level and make day schools the envy of any private or public school. Why not create a school model that we then replicate in different places? And let’s create some standards for Jewish literacy — things we know that we have to teach, that people need to master, to be Jewishly literate. These are both levers that are just not being pulled at scale.

updated July 12
Stacie Cherner of the Foundation authored a piece that will be published in the July issue of the journal, The Foundation Review – Volume 14 Issue 2 Philanthropy’s Response to the Crises of 2020. Stacie’s piece, “Out of Crisis, Learnings Shape Future Grantmaking,“ is only available through a paywall, but the publication allowed us to have a PDF of the article to share with our Board. As noted in a summary in the article itself, Stacie discusses the following key points:

  • Like other philanthropic organizations during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Jim Joseph Foundation took steps to loosen grant requirements, support CEOs and leadership teams, and provide funding for emergencies and innovations.
  • The foundation, which strives to bring consistent expertise with evaluation and research in untroubled times and whose mission is to foster effective Jewish learning experiences for young Jews, has a unique perspective when reflecting on learning. So another area that required flexibility was in the re-examination of learning plans to take advantage of the “forced experimentation” imposed by the pandemic lockdown.
  • In March 2020, the foundation paused ongoing research and evaluation projects to determine the extent to which the pandemic and economic crisis would impact the quality of the data, and then crafted new learning questions and plans to take advantage of the opportunities in the moment. It pivoted to redeploy resources within ongoing projects and funded new studies that allowed for fast turnaround of findings. Studies looked at how the internal foundation team responded to the crisis, how grantee-partners pivoted to online programming, and how the crisis and online programming were experienced by target populations. 
  • This article reflects on what the foundation learned from being open to redirecting evaluation and research, and how that learning has impacted future planning. Sometimes a crisis brings value — and the sooner that understanding and mindset is embraced, the better.

The iCenter has a new initiative dedicated to reshaping how the field thinks about teaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (the conflict). “This work builds on years of accumulated knowledge and experience about what works and does not work vis-à-vis educating on the conflict, what general education teaches us about conflict and peace education practices, and what research tells us about how and why the conflict interests, challenges and engages educators and learners.”

“As an initial step in our process, we cataloged and evaluated over 150 resources, including 20 lesson plans, 23 textbooks and resource guides, 18 white papers, 66 books and articles, and 19 curriculum frameworks. Additionally, The iCenter conducted dozens of focus groups with over 200 educators employing a standardized protocol of questions related to teaching conflict generally, and the conflict in particular. The result is a detailed summary of the challenges, needs, concerns, opportunities and practices of those directly involved in teaching and learning about the conflict. Through these efforts, we have identified several key learnings”:

  • There’s a LOT out there
    Our scan of the field contains thousands of individual resources on Israelis, Palestinians and the conflict. The 150 resources we cataloged and evaluated are only representative samples of a larger corpus of material that already exists. Each cataloged resource typically contains several activities, video links, articles, sources, and other media.
  • Everybody’s talking about it…
    Clearly, the conflict is a core topic and key concern within Israel and Jewish education circles. We found that over 60 different Jewish organizations had individual lesson plans, media, resources, lectures, events or other educational materials on the conflict. The 19 comprehensive curriculum frameworks we surveyed covered a wide spectrum, from organizations that define themselves as educational, advocacy-oriented, both, or neither, and through cultural, religious and political lenses.
  • …But few know how to talk about it
    While there is a treasure trove of “what” to teach, there is insufficient focus on “how” to teach it. In our focus groups, we found that many educators are hesitant to engage with the topic altogether. Some lack the necessary background and/or pedagogical skills to teach about the conflict confidently and competently. Others struggle to balance the directives of multiple stakeholders concerned with the conflict: parents, students/participants, organizations, as well as their own feelings.
  • We can learn a lot from general “conflict education”
    There is abundant literature on teaching controversial issues, educating through difference, exploring multiple narratives, providing proper historical context and much more. The iCenter is drawing upon fields of peace education, conflict education, moral education, and history education. Studies indicate that students who frequently engage in discussion of controversial issues are more likely to report increased appreciation for multiple perspectives and recognition that controversy is an inherent part of the human condition. While intractable conflicts cannot be resolved in the classroom, intensive and sensitive learning can go a long way toward making conflict more cognitively and emotionally manageable for learners.
  • Ask the experts: educators and learners
    This is only the beginning of The iCenter’s initiative on the conflict. Ultimately, our aim is to increase the knowledge, confidence and competence of educators and learners in engaging with the conflict by designing new frameworks for the preparation of educators and developing new resources to complement those already in the field.

The Foundation released the final report from Rosov Consulting on the Foundation’s Professional Development Initiative, Taking Stock and Offering Thanks: Year 4 Learnings. Interviews and surveys with alumni of the ten professional development programs show that alumni continue to utilize new information and skills in their work, and experience a strong professional network, even a few years after the program’s conclusion. Rosov Consulting explored educators’ motivations for participating in the programs, what they experienced during the time they took part, what they gained from these experiences, and, finally, what program alumni perceive to have been the impact of these experiences on the trajectory of their professional careers.

  • Shared Outcomes Survey data indicate that, overall, the programs helped participants become much more knowledge about and more accomplished in performing the professional tasks for which they are responsible, what we called “ways of thinking and doing.”
  • Clinical interview data indicate that these professional outcomes have been quite durable, although with the passage of time interviewees found it increasingly difficult to draw causal links between what they know and can do today and what they gained from their programs.
  • Survey data also show that, taken together, the programs have socialized participants into professional communities that the participants very much value. Again, interview data depict how important these communities have been, especially since the start of the pandemic, and how, in the words of one interviewee, “relationships have become partnerships.”
  • Finally, survey data reveal the degree to which those program participants who started out with less intensive Jewish backgrounds have had an opportunity to grow and feel more confident as Jewish educators.

 CASJE shared a new working paper, No Going Back to the Future: The Marketplace for Jewish Educators 18 Months into the COVID-19 Pandemic, which is a supplemental report to last year’s project on the Career Trajectories of Jewish Educators. CASJE noted that the unanticipated arrival of COVID in 2020 provided an opportunity to learn how the various sectors of Jewish education were affected by the pandemic. Data gathered in July and August 2020 revealed four phenomena:

  • How the pandemic’s uneven impact across the United States exacerbated the extent to which supply of and demand for Jewish educators were colored by local circumstances.
  • How health regulations and the shift to remote learning had created a dynamic whereby employers were more likely to look for full-time than parttime staff.
  • Due to a widely shared sense that children, young adults, and parents had been traumatized by their experiences of the first six months of the pandemic, employers were placing a special premium on finding staff who were responsive to the social and emotional (mental health) needs of participants.

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