Consultation Executive Summary
Outline
With support from the Covenant Foundation and Hillel International, Fiedler Hillel at Northwestern University and the Newberger Hillel Center at the University of Chicago were joint sponsors of the first Consultation on Emerging Jewish Adulthood.
The goal of the consultation was to create a learning community of outstanding Jewish professionals and who work with emerging adults. Through learning and reflection with one another and nationally-recognized experts, this cohort of practitioners engaged in deeper study in the areas of emerging adult development, current societal contexts in which this development occurs, educational vision and the creation of new educational models. This and future meetings will provide the learning community with an opportunity to articulate strategies to link the life stages of emerging adults more effectively and collaborate towards the creation of a new field of Jewish emerging adulthood education.
THE FIVE QUESTIONS OF CONSULTATION ONE
1. What do we mean by Jewish higher education?
2. What is our best understanding of the developmental tasks of emerging adulthood today?
3. How do universities currently support or hinder character and identity formation and what innovative thinking is currently happening in the field of higher education in this area?
4. How can the field of educational vision support professional development for both formal and informal educators?
5. How does Hillel currently reflect an educational vision for Jewish college students and what might Hillel become?
The consultation combined formal presentations with reflection, conversation and text study.
Educational Vision & Purpose of the Consultation (from the Consultation proposal)
Developmental psychologists and others have in recent years identified the period between ages 18 and the late twenties/early thirties as “emerging adulthood” (some define this period as “early adulthood”). This period has become a significant developmental stage because the age of making long-term commitments to family and vocation—which marks the onset of “young adulthood”—is moving later and later.
The Jewish community needs to develop a vision of Jewish education and identity formation for Jewish emerging adults, as well as a cohort of practitioners committed to excellence, innovation, and partnership in creating a pathway that guides young Jews through this stage of life. While there are excellent practitioners and projects—some small, some very large—interfacing with Jewish emerging adults, a theory of practice and a cohort of practitioners has not yet emerged.
We propose to launch the process of building a vision and theory, as well as a cohort of practitioners committed to learning together, with a conference that will bring together leading practitioners and academics with expertise in relevant fields of knowledge.
Background
Whereas in the past the period between leaving the parental home and establishing one’s own home was too short to constitute a meaningful developmental stage, it is no longer; indeed, it now represents one of the longest developmental stages. The developmental position and tasks of “emerging adults” are different from those of late adolescents (they have much more independence, for example, and therefore have the motivation and ability to begin to define their futures without parental oversight), but they are also very different from those of young adults who must establish stable careers, care for others, and plan for a family’s future.
Emerging adulthood constitutes an extended transition from adolescence to adulthood and includes characteristics of both. Although society as a whole has recognized certain phenomena related to the current generation of college students and recent graduates (known as the “millennials”), only recently have universities and other institutions dealing with people in the 18-30 age range come to fully understand that they are dealing with uncharted territory—an entirely new developmental stage.
Universities—in particular, the community of professionals working in the field of student life—have begun to understand that they must develop new skills to effectively guide students through this life stage. The Jewish community has not yet come to recognize the need to develop a new vision of Jewish identity formation and education that addresses the developmental position of emerging adults.
From the perspective of Jewish identity formation, the stage of emerging adulthood presents both challenges and opportunities.
The first challenge is that increasing numbers of Jews reach the end of adolescence and the beginning of emerging adulthood with little Jewish connection. They often come from families—whether of one or two Jewish parents—that have not emphasized Jewish identity; in most cases, their Jewish educations—if such education occurred, and which, if it did, was usually uninspiring in any event—ended at age thirteen, and their view of Judaism is that of a child.
The second challenge arises because college graduates now start their own homes and families much later in life than they used to, which gives them more time to drift even further away from Jewish life and community and to develop other commitments. When their own children are ready for school—the moment when institutional affiliation is next set to occur after graduation from university—they are less likely to reconnect with the Jewish community.
But emerging adulthood also presents the Jewish community with an incredible opportunity. The developmental characteristics of emerging adults—such as openness to new ideas, a search for independent identity, seeking community—make them open to connecting with Jewish identity and Jewish community in a way that they were not before and may never be again.
The Jewish Community’s Next Steps
The challenge for the Jewish community and its institutions is to engage young people at the onset of emerging adulthood in a process of Jewish identity formation at an adult level and then to maintain that identity (and grow it) over an extended period of up to twenty years until these young people form families of their own.
What is needed is a theory of Jewish education that would guide these institutions and a cohort of practitioners committed to building that theory. These practitioners would form a learning community and would also establish institutional partnerships.
There are four key periods of Jewish emerging adulthood. While they are not necessarily discreet or uniformly experienced, they are common to a large number of individuals. They are:
1. college;
2. post-college (including graduate/professional school and post-college/pre-graduate-school years)
3. post-graduate life as a single person;
4. pre-childbearing, early marriage/partnership.
While there are common developmental needs throughout this period, ultimately each period must develop its own theory, vision, practices, institutions, and cohort of practitioners.
Focus on the College Years
The proposed consultation will present ideas relevant to the establishment of a vision for Jewish emerging adult identity formation and education with special emphasis on the college years. The college years have special importance for numerous reasons, including: (1) the college years come at the very beginning of emerging adulthood, immediately upon the establishment of semi-independence from parents; (2) because college students are on their own for the first time in their lives, they actively seek out community and friends and establish habits that last for the rest of their lives; (3) because so many Jews go to a relatively small number of colleges, the college years provide the Jewish community an opportunity to have a large impact; (4) learning is a part of college students’ daily life, thus the idea of Jewish learning is more resonant with what they are already doing than it ever will be again; (5) the college years are the only part of emerging adulthood in which the Jewish community already has a large national organization—Hillel—which also happens to be committed to innovation and strategic change; (6) the Jewish community can take advantage of Jewish faculty and Jewish studies programs to maximize its impact on college students.
The Consultation
The proposed consultation will explore the building block areas needed to build a vision and theory of emerging adult Jewish identity formation and education. By inviting practitioners from the Hillel world and other periods of emerging adulthood, we will build the cohort of practitioners.
Other ideas related to building the cohort and continuing to develop the vision include:
1. Publishing the transcript of the consultation and/or papers written by the presenters
2. Podcasting the consultation.
3. Establishing a web-based community of practitioners and a web-site with links to all the resources that practitioners could use.
Presenters at the First Consultation
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett is a Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. He coined the term “emerging adulthood,” and he is the author of Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens through the Twenties (Oxford University Press), along with numerous scholarly articles in this area. He is also the author of the textbook Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood: A Cultural Approach (Prentice Hall). In 2005, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Since 2002 he has served as Editor of the Journal of Adolescent Research. In addition, he is the author of two recent encyclopedias, the International Encyclopedia of Adolescence (two volumes, Routledge, 2007) and the Encyclopedia of Children, Adolescents, and the Media (two volumes, Sage Publications, 2007).
Josh Feigelson is the Campus Rabbi at Fiedler Hillel at Northwestern University, and the Founder and Director of AskBigQuestions.com, an initiative that promotes civil society by creating conversations about questions that matter. Ordained by YCT Rabbinical School in 2005, Josh has become a leading thinker about emerging adulthood within the Jewish community, particularly with regard to identity formation and institutional affiliation. He was instrumental in Fiedler Hillel’s successful application for a major grant from the Covenant Foundation to explore methods for engaging emerging Jewish adults online, and is currently pursuing doctoral studies at Northwestern focusing on religion, higher education, and American Jewish life.
Bethamie Horowitz is a social psychologist who has used social science skills to address important issues facing the Jewish world. In 2000 she completed the landmark “Connections and Journeys” study, sponsored by UJA-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, about the place and meaning of being Jewish in people’s lives and how we understand Jewish identity over the life-course. She directed the 1991 New York Jewish Population Study, and served as UJA-Federation of NY’s Director of Planning and Research from 1992-1996. She currently operates her own research and consulting practice, and teaches a doctoral seminar in Education and Jewish Studies at the NYU Steinhardt School of Education. Dr. Horowitz writes the monthly “Trend Spotting” column in The Forward.
Naomi Less is Director of Education and a founding company member at Storahtelling. Before joining Storahtelling’s professional team, Naomi developed over 10 years of training experience in Jewish camps through the Foundation for Jewish Camping and the National Ramah Commission. Her passions for helping educators to better nurture spiritual and social and emotional intelligence development, especially in adolescent girls, are a basis for her educational consulting work (Jewish Theological Seminary’s “Addressing the Evaded Curriculum” project and the Melton Communities program).
Before becoming the Executive Director of the University of Chicago Hillel, Daniel Libenson was Assistant Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he taught employment law and contracts and advised numerous student organizations. Dan graduated cum laude from Harvard College and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He was an articles editor of the Harvard Law Review and assisted Professor Alan Dershowitz in criminal defense work and on book projects, including The Vanishing American Jew. Dan served as undergraduate president of Harvard Hillel and as a member of its Board of Directors and strategic planning committee. After clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals, Dan was hired to coordinate the implementation of Harvard Hillel’s strategic plan, which included new program initiatives, curriculum design, institutional restructuring, and fundraising. The son of a Conservative rabbi, Dan lived in Israel for four years, attending high school on the campus of Bar Ilan University. Dan is married to Beth Niestat, whom he met at Hillel and with whom he has two children, Sam and Miriam.
Jane Shapiro is a teacher, mentor, coach, and consultant for Jewish organizations and young Jewish professionals. Before founding Jane Shapiro Associates in 2003, she served as Associate Director of the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School, a global consortium of schools for adult Jewish education, established by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She has authored a variety of curricula of Jewish study, ranging from classical Jewish sources, to Jewish history and literature, many with a connection to Jewish leadership development. A graduate of Princeton University and Columbia University, she has also studied Teacher Education and Educational Vision at the Mandel Center for Leadership at Brandeis University and in Jerusalem. In addition, Jane is the wife of David Shapiro and the mother of four emerging adult sons.
Diana Chapman Walsh served as President of Wellesley College from 1993-2007. During her tenure, the college revised its curriculum and expanded programs in global education, experiential and service learning, and technology-assisted teaching and learning, as well as establishment of the Religious and Spiritual Life Program, construction of a new campus center, and other initiatives designed to strengthen the quality of campus intellectual life. Before assuming the Wellesley presidency, Dr. Walsh was Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, where she chaired the Department of Health and Social Behavior. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty, she was at Boston University, as a University Professor, and Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Public Health.
