The Jewish Teenage Online Universe
November 4, 2009
Community | Torah | Youth and Family Life
(6 comments)
 Rabbi Laura Novak WIner is a Youth Specialist with the Union for Reform Judaism.
What do the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Yellow Pages have in common? They are both resources that young people today have probably rarely seen or rarely if ever utilize. Print resources like this, as those of us of older generations know, are obsolete almost immediately after going to print. Wikipedia, Google and Craigslist have taken their place.
Thankfully, Torah is not like the Yellow Pages! Torah is eternal. Its messages and lessons are as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago. As Reform Jews, we keep those lessons relevant through our ongoing process of study, interpretation, and midrash-making.
During the Symposium on Jewish Identity's program on technology today, Dr. David Bryfman enlightened us to this dynamic in the Jewish teenage online universe. If one digs deep into the web, one can find teens actively engaged in creating their own texts, their own interpretations of the weekly parshiot (Torah portions). Their creativity, their desire to find complexity and nuance in Judaism, their ongoing questioning, as well as their deep care and concern about being Jewish are all translated into online Jewish engagement in study and interpretation of Torah.
Great news, right!? Of course it is. Teens studying Torah - what can be bad about that? Bryfman poses challenging questions for us. What are the implications of this for the way in which we engage youth in our synagogues, our institutions, our movement? How might we need to think differently about Jewish teens? How must we think differently about how we engage those teens? How can we do all that and still be authentic?
I continued to ponder these questions as we concluded a full day of learning. I look forward to tomorrow's continuation of the conversation.
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I think that congregations need to embrace new technology, not feel like it's the competition. I was raised in a Reform congregation in Southern California, but moved to Saskatchewan, Canada several years ago (for love). I have a choice of going to a Conservative congregation and a more Conservative congregation. I would love the option of connecting virtually to a Reform congregation.
If Reform Judaism does not embrace the use of new technologies like podcasts, blogs, Twitter, etc. we risk losing those young people you mention in the above post (I'm a member of Generation X). If you look at the podcasts under Jewish in iTunes it is disturbing how many of them are from messianic congregations. Reform Judaism must reach out using these tools or facing the risk of losing many of our youth to the real "competition".
Keep in mind, musicians that have made their music freely available online have seen a spike in the sales of their music. Using Internet tools to reach young people won't keep them from coming to our synagogues. It might actually bring them in (think of it as an advertisement).