Yos Tarshish Consulting

As educators, community leaders, and organisers, we spend a lot of time talking about inclusion.

We spend less time asking what inclusion actually feels like for people navigating multiple identities at once.

Earlier this year I wrote The Cost of Conditional Belonging, exploring why many LGBTQ Jewish students increasingly feel forced to choose between communities that should never require such a choice.

As Pride Month continues, I'm resurfacing the essay because the questions it raises remain relevant for anyone interested in leadership, community-building, and belonging.

The Cost of Conditional Belonging On identity, exclusion, and the growing cost of being openly Jewish in LGBTQ campus spaces

New essay: The Formation Crisis

Jewish communal life often measures success through engagement: attendance, participation, registrations, reach, and satisfaction.

But engagement is not the same as responsibility.

This essay asks what Jewish institutions are actually forming people into.

Are we cultivating participants, or stewards?

Consumers, or builders?

Audiences, or communities?

For professionals and lay leaders working in Jewish education, philanthropy, leadership development, synagogues, federations, schools, camps, and campus life, this is a question worth taking seriously.

The future of Jewish life will not be secured by participation alone. It will depend on whether Jews understand that Jewish life is something they inherit, sustain, and pass forward.

https://open.substack.com/pub/ytarshish/p/the-formation-crisis

Jewish institutions often describe themselves as communities.

But many are structured more like audiences: people gather around content, experiences, services, or programs, rather than shared responsibility.

This essay asks what Jewish organisations might be missing when engagement becomes the dominant measure of success.

It is Part One of a two-part series on ownership, stewardship, and the future of Jewish communal life.

Part Two, The Formation Crisis, will follow later this week.

We Built Audiences Why engagement became the dominant metric of Jewish success - and what it has cost us

What is the purpose of Jewish institutions?

To provide services?

To create experiences?

To engage participants?

Or to cultivate responsibility?

Rabbi Amitai Fraiman’s essay “Islands of Sovereignty” argues that many contemporary Jewish institutions have unintentionally trained Jews to become consumers of Jewish life rather than builders of it.

Whether you agree with the diagnosis or not, it’s an important contribution to ongoing conversations about Jewish leadership, education, community development, and peoplehood.

Strongly recommended reading.

https://open.substack.com/pub/jewishpriorities/p/islands-of-sovereignty

Z3 Project

Islands of Sovereignty Jewish sovereignty has transformed history—but Jewish consciousness has not caught up. Amitai Fraiman offers a new paradigm for Jewish life.

Many organisations respond to challenges by investing in communications.

Far fewer invest in organising.

This article raises an important strategic question:

What if antisemitism is not primarily a messaging problem?

What if the more important work involves building stronger relationships, broader coalitions, deeper leadership pipelines, and more resilient communal infrastructure?

Communications can shape attention.

Relationships shape behaviour.

Infrastructure shapes outcomes.

An interesting and thought-provoking read:

Jewish Interfaith Center calls to rethink efforts to fight antisemitism, build an ‘alliance machine’ For Rabbi Aharon Ariel Lavi, who lives on the Gaza border with his wife and five children, the events of Oct. 7, 2023, are deeply personal.  But, professionally, Lavi is particularly concerned by how the Jewish community responded after the Oct. 7 attacks — spending hundreds of millions of dolla...

Odelia Epstein’s essay Transforming Jewish Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence is one of the clearest pieces we’ve read on the future of Jewish peoplehood education.

The argument is not simply that Jewish education should use more technology.

It is that emerging technologies can help us intentionally cultivate relationships between Jewish students across countries, communities, and contexts.

That matters enormously.

In an age where information is increasingly abundant, Jewish education has to focus more deeply on relationship-building, cross-cultural competence, and helping students understand contemporary Jewish life beyond their own community.

This line captures the challenge beautifully:

“The question is not whether it can be scaled, but if we have the vision and will to do so.”

Highly recommended reading for anyone working in Jewish education, campus life, youth movements, Israel education, or communal strategy.

https://educator.jewishedproject.org/media/12569