The Jewish community in Silicon Valley is diverse, young, and disconnected.
According to a 2018 study of Jewish life in the Bay Area, of the 350,000 Jewish individuals living here (35% of those living in the Peninsula/South Bay), only 26% of survey respondents stated it was very important to be Jewish. This survey also found that engagement in Jewish life on the institutional level in the Bay Area is lower than in other parts of the country. Against a backdrop of increased antisemitic speech and behavior, this lack of engagement was a cause for alarm among leaders in Silicon Valley's Jewish community.
Citing the "brokenness" between the organizations anchoring institutional Jewish life in the area, ALF Senior Fellow and former Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, Diane Fisher (Class XXXVII), reached out to ALF Insights seeking support. "It was kind of a desperate situation; we really needed to do something transformative. It was a set of relationships that had deteriorated over the years, with a lack of leadership to do something different," she remarked.
Diane and twenty-one other Jewish leaders, clergy and lay people, conservatives and liberals, orthodox and reform Jews, all embarked on a 12-month journey with ALF Insights. Their goals were ambitious, but there was a definite sense of urgency for the entire group. ALF Insights was contracted by Jewish Silicon Valley to convene key partners in the Jewish community over the course of 12 months to develop a shared vision, brainstorm cross-sector organizational initiatives, and create a mutual understanding of inclusivity and engagement across the Jewish community.
Rabbi Hugh Seid-Valencia of Jewish Silicon Valley was hopeful that working with ALF Insights would make this group, dubbed the ProLeaders, more collaborative across organizations. "How do we find ways of breaking out of our individual silos? Find new ways of working together, less in support of our individual organizations and more in service of the broader community," he expressed.
“Rabbi Dana Magat (Class XXIV) of Temple Emanu-El is an ALF Senior Fellow who is a firm believer in the effectiveness of the ALF approach to creating dialogue.”
These hopes notwithstanding, there were also some reservations about the prospect of cross-organizational collaboration, which surfaced during the discovery phase of the project. ALF Insights facilitators met with each group member individually to review the scope of work and uncover their hopes and fears about the process. The feedback, which was collected and presented to the ProLeaders without attribution, covered a range of concerns, including historical disconnect across the community, institutional silos, fears that the group could not effectively disagree and that Jewish Silicon Valley as an institution would not follow through on the recommendations of the group at a financial level, making the process not a good use of people's time.
This idea that the entire process would be a waste of time was a pain point that resonated with many. Rabbi Hugh summed up these reservations of many going into the process. "The trepidation was we [were]dealing with folks who have been convened inexpertly for years. We don't want to waste people's time or have a meeting for meeting's sake. When they are hyper-sensitive to that"
Trust The Process
With the discovery process complete, it was time for the ProLeaders to roll up their collective sleeves and get to work. But what would the work look like exactly? For a group of busy community leaders, the want to dig in and "get things done" was palpable. ALF Insights facilitator Jenny Niklaus was initially tasked with reassuring the group that investing in a common vision and building trusting relationships would pay off in the long run. As the group ventured into what Rabbi Hugh termed "uncharted territory," having a basis of trust and understanding was crucial.
Rabbi Dana Magat (Class XXIV) of Temple Emanu-El is an ALF Senior Fellow who is a firm believer in the effectiveness of the ALF approach to creating dialogue. He noted the positive outcomes from ProLeaders process. "I think we needed to have some really hard discussions and now we can do that more comfortably with each other because we have created that category in our heads that we can do that."
The Way Forward
Having established a foundation of trust and presence, the ProLeaders focused on the challenge at hand: how to improve engagement and belonging across the spectrum of the Jewish community in Silicon Valley. If a large percentage of the Jewish population is not engaged, what are the factors preventing that engagement? What needs to change in how the system is currently set up to allow for more effective engagement? These generative questions pushed the group to think collaboratively and surface new ideas from a broader perspective.
The ProLeaders were split into discussion groups and prompted to use the design thinking framework of "how might we" to create potential solutions to problems that at one time felt intractable. They were encouraged to dream big and large-scale ideas began to flow. Proposed projects seeking to create a sense of shared belonging with the community and centralize information and resources in a "concierge" model were some of the initial outcomes of these discussion sessions.
What's Next
Now that Jewish Silicon Valley's 12-month engagement with ALFI is complete, many challenges and opportunities lie ahead; chief among them is how the work will continue. The ProLeaders have agreed to continue meeting quarterly to push forward the proposals created during their ALF Insights-led design thinking sessions. The overall success of this project is a credit to Jewish Silicon Valley's vision and leadership and the group participants' commitment. Now, there is a focused group of leaders from a broad cross-section of organizations ready to take the work of engagement to the next level.
Ultimately, this work was in service to creating an expansive vision of Judaism that leverages the great diversity of Silicon Valley. In our current social context, it's an urgent and necessary project. Rabbi Dana channeled the energy of the moment and the work ahead.
"The challenge will be maintaining the respect of each organization and what it brings to the table without pushing forward too quickly and leaving people behind. So I think it's now more about looking at who is supposed to be involved with this, the players, and let's make sure we are talking with them and investing in them."
