An article in the Forward by Naomi Zeveloff bears this headline: “New Push To Link Jewish Boomers To Community.” In the print edition, the headline reads, “A New Initiative To Help Boomers Connect To Communal Life After They Retire.”
The article blew my mind because so much of the language used and the motivations ascribed to my parents’ generation in it were eerily familiar. That’s because it’s nearly identical to the language used to describe Jewish communal experiences targeted at my generation.
The story is this: Our parents and their peers are reaching retirement age. As Zeveloff puts it, “…the premise [is] that baby boomers have more in common with their kids than with their parents.” So two guys, Stuart Himmelfarb and David Elcott have created something called B3/The Jewish Boomer Platform. What they’re trying to do is create compelling Jews programs and volunteer opportunities to hold Baby Boomers’ attention as they retire:
“The ‘retirement into your golden years’ kind of idea is somewhat passe,” Himmelfarb said. “Here I am, 59, and I figure I’ll live into my 80s. I don’t want to sit around for the next 20 or 25 years, I want to do something interesting.”
Which matches up with my fear that when my dad someday retires he’s going to go nuts out of sheer boredom. The part where the article started blow my mind was this:
The study showed that these boomers would prefer to look to Jewish institutions to find post-retirement activities. But it also found that they would not hesitate to ditch the Jewish communal world if more meaningful opportunities arise in the secular one.
This cohort has a strong Jewish identity, Elcott noted. But he warned, “If the Jewish community doesn’t provide meaning for them, they will go somewhere else.”
Which reminded me of the recent American Jewish World Service Repair The World study of my generation. Similar, though not identical to the B3 study, the AJWS study found that younger Jews want to volunteer and engage with social justice programs, but they have no preference one way or the other about whether they do it through a Jewish organization or not.
And here it starts to sound even more identical to the narrative surrounding my generation’s involvement in the Jewish community, as the article turns its attention toward outreach to the unaffiliated:
The greater challenge might be in reaching out to unaffiliated boomers. Abby Ginzberg, a 61-year-old filmmaker in Berkeley, Calif., said that Judaism has played a diminishing role her family’s life over the years. […]
Asked whether she would be interested in going to a Jewish program for boomers, Ginzberg was ambivalent. “I would say I am on the fence,” she said.
The article concludes:
The men behind B3 [say] …the Jewish community will fray beyond repair if it fails to engage baby boomers alongside 20- and 30-year-olds.
When it comes to the perceived lack of involvement and the perceived decreasing Jewish identity of my peers, the narrative from the official Jews has long been something like, “Why are they so selfish/clueless/too-cool-for-shul? Whatever, let’s give them free programs that are fun.”
Let’s assume that these official Jews are all boomers themselves. According to the B3 guys, it seems that, as with my generation, there are a few in theirs that are deeply involved in Jewish communal life, and many more who are not. The difference is that official Jews only interact with each other, which means that they’ve missed out on this point.
It looks like the reason that my generation is so so selfish/clueless/too-cool-for-shul is that our parents are too.
(Not you, mom and dad–I’m just speaking generally here.)
Read the full article over here.
