november / december 2005:

and the walls came tumbling down
Judaism is being altered by nimble Internet communities and the open-source values they espouse. Jewish institutions, be afraid. Be very afraid.

Essay by Daniel Sieradski. Illustration by Paul Fricke.


Institutional Judaism is crying crisis. Every year it’s the same story: Intermarriage is up, affiliation is down, the Federation coffers are waning, support for Israel is slipping, and they just can’t get the kids in the door. However, rather than addressing the cause of this defection, the institutions have poured boatloads of money into re-branding Judaism as a commodity to compete with the pre-packaged pop culture their kids are obsessed with. The have hired pollsters like Frank Luntz to apply his market research wizardry to making empty prayers, spewing anti-Arab rhetoric, and sending checks to the UJC seem “cooler” than what’s on MTV.

The philanthropies have thus poured their money into “T-shirt Judaism” and the world has borne witness to the likes of Heeb Magazine and its ilk, which, no matter how clever, are incapable of resurrecting Jewish communal life from the dead — not that they consider that their charter anyway.

While the mainstream Jewish world is trying to discern its elbow from its rear, Jews increasingly frustrated by the empty and alienating experiences offered by their local synagogues, community organizations, and national leadership are starting to break away from the establishment and forge their own path.

Though entirely consistent with Judaism historically (our tradition begins with Abraham rejecting his father’s religion and continues in that manner throughout the Bible, the Talmudic era, Hasidism, the Haskalah, denominationalism, and so forth) this current movement has grown in parallel with an overall social trend that has been born out of the interplay between “individualistic marketing” and emerging technologies. It points to a fantastic and thrilling future where walls come tumbling down, and anything becomes possible. Unless you’re an institutional dinosaur, in which case you should invest in fossil fuels.

As Americans, we are bred on individualism. It’s both a part of the American national character as well as the approach taken by marketing agencies to sell us products. Whether catering to our egos or debasing us for not keeping up with the Joneses, we are directly marketed to on the basis of our individual or fabricated needs. “Marketers tell us we matter — that we’re worth it,” says media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. “We deserve everything. They won’t tell us about sacrifice, participation, or sharing. People who share things don’t need to buy as much stuff.”

This individualization of the consumer (conditioned by the barrage of advertising and brand imaging we’ve encountered in life) has had a tremendous effect on all elements of society. It has resulted in what author Robert D. Putnam refers to as a decrease in “social capital” — the connections between people and their inherent value.

Amongst the areas taking a hit in this market fallout are religious institutions. “Faith communities,” says Putnam, “are arguably the single most important repository of social capital in America.” However, as Putnam demonstrates in his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, religious affiliation has been on the decline for thirty years.

Religion, it seems, has become a consumer experience, where allegiance has taken second place to personal satisfaction. No longer satiated by the confining approach nor the sometimes racist, sexist, and homophobic positions taken by their churches, synagogues, mosques and communal institutions, folks have begun shopping around, checking out new congregations, and, in failing to discover “the right one,” starting their own.

This reflects a trend occurring throughout the marketplace. Speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors this past April, media magnate Rupert Murdoch explained that today’s teens, twenty- and thirty-somethings “don’t want to rely on a god-like figure from above to tell them what’s important, and they certainly don’t want news presented as gospel.” They want “control over the media, instead of being controlled by it.”

Murdoch was responding to the threat posed to “old media” by blogs, the software technology that turns anyone with Internet access into an instant online publisher. Blogs have radically altered the face of news media in the last few years, for the most part by getting stories onto the mainstream media’s radar and keeping them there. Blogs have put the power of media directly into users’ hands, allowing them to make the news instead of being fed it. These bloggers have developed vast networks of interrelationship and support which have begun to outshine the “old media” world. At the time of Murdoch’s speech, but a few months ago, the estimated total number of blogs exceeded 50 million worldwide. Where social capital has been lost in “meatspace” it has been recovered in cyberspace.

Along with new interactive technologies like blogs, collaborative writing tools, social networks, and a variety of other software, new values are emerging as well: Those of decentralization, “radical trust,” user contribution, and evolving platforms. This model, called Web 2.0, has been described as “an attitude, not a technology.” It is one that carries over from anarchist political movements and is carried back over to the rest of the world as it demonstrates its effectiveness in the technological realm. Of utmost relevance, it is also an approach that respects individuality and community by placing primary value on the individual’s contribution to the greater whole.

Richard Marker, a philanthropic advisor and former CEO of the Samuel Bronfman Philanthropies sees this trend converging with Judaism. “What is emerging,” says Marker, “is a functional anarchy which is slowly and incrementally changing the way in which Jewish behavior functions. For many, it is more exciting and gratifying to be a part of a special interest start-up than to wait one’s turn in a wealthier and older institution. For many, the idea that some external institution defines who and what you are or believe is simply problematic.”

The end result is the burgeoning of autonomous Jewish communities on- and offline. Young Jews are finding each other through their social networks — be they on the Internet or in person — and are using those connections to form their own communities with their own shared values, rather than those which they feel imposed upon them. It is the Jewish renaissance the institutions are hoping for and throwing all their money at. It’s just happening without them. And thank God for that.

May these dinosaurs fall by the wayside of impending progress.

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