I was recently in a store where I saw a beautiful print of a teaching from Ben Zoma, one of the sages of the Mishnah. It read, “Who is a rich man? He who is satisfied with his lot.” The calligraphy was fabulous, and I told my wife that I wanted to buy it; hanging it on the wall would remind me of what was really important in life. After pausing momentarily, she asked if purchasing a poster to remind me of the folly of consumption was, perhaps, missing the essence of the teaching. Of course. Point well taken.

Wanting, longing, and desire are all natural parts of human nature. We desire all the things we think are lacking in our life: freedom, beauty, health, friendship. Sometimes, that desire, that longing, can so fully overtake us that it is impossible to think of anything else. And yet without desire, the world would be a very different place. The ancient rabbis famously say that were it not for desire, no man would build a house, marry a wife, or beget children.1 Natural human desire is what leads us to do the incredibly hard work of human existence. If we didn’t desire the results, we would never do the work. At its best, desire spurs us on to inhabit the world and improve human life.

When it comes to “things,” however, there is a much easier way to get what we want: We simply buy them. Most of the time, when we want to live in a house, we don’t learn carpentry; we buy a house. When we want to hear music, we don’t learn to play guitar; we buy a CD. Most of what we want can be purchased, saving us tremendous time and effort. But fewer of us, then, develop the skills to facilitate our own everyday life. Similar to drugs, which allow us to experience a high without the hard work of spiritual practice, so, too, shopping allows us to satisfy our desires without the hard work of learning a skill.

Shannon Hayes, the author of Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture, once speculated that although cooking a chicken at home is cheaper, healthier, and tastier than eating a chicken sandwich at Burger King, people eat fast food more often than they roast a chicken; many people simply don’t know how to roast a chicken. “Mainstream Americans,” she wrote, “have lost the simple domestic skills that would enable them to live an ecologically sensible life with a modest or low income.”2

Simple ownership is certainly validated within the tradition but rarely, if ever, lauded. Humans are only praised as co-creators with God, but not as co-owners.3 We partner with God in creation when we bring something new into the world — art, an insight into spiritual practice, a new scientific process, an infant, or even a Shabbat meal. While the tradition praises human creation in powerful terms, ownership, though legitimate, is more often understood as a temporary, conditional situation. Traditional bookplates are inscribed, “The world in its fullness belongs to God and this book is from so-and-so’s collection,” as if to say one’s ownership of a book is really just a limited stewardship. More explicitly, a 16th-century rabbi, the Kli Yakar, teaches that the purpose of sabbatical legislation is to “teach us not to regard humans as absolute masters of… the land.”4 To a traditional Jew, the question is not how much stuff one owns, but whether we bring forth holiness from the stuff with which we’ve been entrusted.

Ben Zoma taught that a rich person is someone happy with his or her portion. The true impact of this teaching comes in Ben Zoma’s proof text from Psalms: “Thou shalt eat the labor of thine hands: Happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.”5

Happiness comes neither from having every desire satisfied nor from denying that desire exists. It comes from working directly with one’s hands to satisfy longing. Perhaps we’d be more contented if we found ways to cook our own food, make our own music, weave our own clothes, and know that working as a creator is a form of spiritual practice.

¹ Genesis Rabba 9:7

² Shannon Hayes, Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture. (Richmondville, NY: Left to Write Press, 2010), page 12.

³ Shabbat 10a: “Every judge who judges with complete fairness, even for a single hour, is given credit by Torah as though he had become a partner to the Holy One of Blessing in creation.” See also Shabbat 119b: R. Hamnuna said: “He who prays on the eve of the Sabbath and recites ‘and [the heaven and the earth] were finished,’ is given credit by Torah as though he had become a partner to the Holy One of Blessing in creation.”

⁴ Kli Yakar’s commentary to Exodus 23:11

⁵ Psalms 128:2

A few months before my oldest son, Meyer, (now 7 years old) turned 3, my father, who loves teaching him new concepts while they play on Shabbat mornings, was explaining “duplicates.” He had gathered all of the redundant matchbox cars and suggested that Meyer give away his duplicates to a boy who didn’t have any cars. Meyer said, “Maybe tomorrow.” Three weeks later, while getting dressed, Meyer opened his dresser drawer and pulled out two identical pairs of underwear. He declared proudly, “Look, Daddy! Duplicates! I can give one to a boy who doesn’t have any underpants!” And so my husband and I learned that, at only 34 months old, our son was grappling with competing impulses to give and to possess; we learned, as well, that he was internalizing important life lessons.

Like many parents, I have come to understand the process of raising children to also be

the process of raising our adult selves. For instance, because I scrutinize my consumption behaviors and rationales through the eyes of my children much more closely than I did before I became a mother, I grapple with values-clarifying questions and answers and the notion of consequences every time I shop.

The predominant perspective on money and what it afforded my birth family is summed up in Exodus Rabbah 31:3, which describes the world as an ever-rotating wheel: One who has means today may not tomorrow and vice versa. My father taught us (his children) to enjoy what money could buy as long as we could imagine being just as happy without it if it were to disappear. It was his way of living with the blessings of the fruits of his labor (and good mazal, he says) without allowing money to become a master. In other words, he challenged us not to let money become too precious; to appreciate it but not to idolize it. I was raised seeing money as a tool: for self-advancement, for helping others, and (by my mother, in particular) for expressing care for others through thoughtful gift giving, as well as for enjoyment and satisfying desires, as long as the spirit of moderation was present.

While this philosophy seems to be working with my own children, slowly moderation led to excess where Legos were concerned. Meyer and my second son, Heshel, 5 years old, have been “Lego fanatics” for years already. Originally, I would buy them a new Lego set after (and only after) they’d completed the set they were working on. I reasoned that Legos enabled them to develop fine motor skills and the ability to follow directions and pay attention to detail, as well as stick-to-it-iveness, patience, and a focus on goal attainment. But after a while, I had earned far too many VIP points on Lego.com and our home had Lego creations on most horizontal surfaces. My children didn’t have any sense that getting a new Lego set was not something to take for granted.

So I turned to a “Moonjar” moneybox: one part wallet (“spend”), one part piggy bank (“save”), and one part tzedakah box (“share”). Rather than judging what and when to buy non-essentials for our children or judging their purchases, we give them a relatively modest weekly allowance that they divide into the three compartments. They get to choose how to use the money within its allocated purpose. But the Moonjar can only teach so much.

Last year, recognizing my growing exasperation over our accumulation of stuff — an accumulation at odds with my intensifying commitment to sustainability — my husband gave me Bless Your Mess by a Zen-like spiritual guide named Ashi. The book, which enabled us to jumpstart our “de-materialization” project, helped me to shift not only my own orientation to goods but also my approach to teaching our children to think about desire and measuring what is “enough.” My involvement on the board of American Jewish World Service also has led me to confront resource inequity on a very human scale. I am more conscious of the tremendous global imbalance and recognize that I have yet to manifest consistent buying habits that truly match my values.

In the meantime, I keep returning to a few questions with my children that may help — especially as they grow older and become more complex thinkers. I do not look for particular answers; I just hope some wisdom comes from the asking.

1. Why do you want this item? How might your life be different if you were or were not to get it?

2. Do you have the money to buy it? Is it a good use of money (which is limited for all of us, to a greater or lesser extent)? Is there a better use?

3. Do you have room and time in your life and your home/room for it? If not, what will it replace? Is that a good trade-off?

4. Is it well made (for what it is) and likely to have some longevity? Or is it junky and likely to end up in the scrap heap soon?

5. Is it a long-experienced desire or a passing fancy?

6. Does it enhance who you are or are becoming? Does it build skills or capacities?

7. Where did it come from? Is there anything problematic about how it was made?

8. Can it wait? Let’s sleep on it and talk about it tomorrow when there is less consumerist urgency.

I encourage readers to enhance and expand upon my list through shma.com. Perhaps, through our online “village,” each of us will become better stewards of the young people in our lives and better decision-makers ourselves.

Much like oil and water, religiosity and materialism simply don’t mix, or so we’re inclined to believe. It’s almost as if they inhabit two entirely different universes, one given over to the cultivation of our better, more spiritual, selves and the other given over to the satisfaction of more earthy and baser needs. Incongruous on its face, the relationship between religiosity and materialism would seem to be an adversarial one, especially when it comes to Judaism.

But look again. Virtually everywhere you turn in modern-day America, materialism — or, more precisely still, the spirit of consumerism — has managed to insinuate itself into the nooks and crannies of Jewish life, transcending denomination. Our synagogues, to take one example, are handsomely appointed, even grand, structures. Kosher homes routinely feature multiple sinks, dishwashers, and granite-clad “islands” to accommodate the separate lives of meat and milk products, prompting many keen-eyed observers to wonder whether this phenomenon has to do with heightened religious observance or the very latest in kitchen appliances. Orthodox women, meanwhile, fulfill the religious obligation of covering their heads by wearing natural-looking wigs whose hefty price tag takes one’s breath away. And that’s just the half of it. At Passover, resort hotels in Florida and Mexico draw capacity crowds, while just about everywhere, the lavish bar/bat mitzvah has become the norm rather the exception.

Today’s rabbis might thunder from the pulpit about the perils of excess and the pitfalls of a consumerist mentality, while their congregants might cluck their tongues (or hold them) in seeming agreement, but the ties that bind the religious enterprise to the material world and vice versa actually go back quite a way. In late 19th-century America, women who attended synagogue were frequently chided for paying more attention to their hats than to their prayers; their children, in turn, were just as often taken to task for transforming the sacred rite of confirmation into an exercise in “loot-gathering.”

How to explain? A number of possibilities come to mind. For one thing, in its sustained attentiveness to daily life and its embrace of this-worldly concerns such as appearance, comportment, and cuisine, Judaism lends itself to these kinds of accommodations. Austerity and renunciation, though by no means alien to Judaism, do not constitute its dominant registers. On the contrary, Judaism makes a point of sanctifying the here-and-now. When that sensibility is coupled with America’s equally deep-seated valuation of possessions, the results, inevitably, bear an all too close resemblance to conspicuous consumption.

The entangled relationship between Judaism and consumerism is also a consequence of affluence, the fruit of the upward mobility and economic success that a large proportion of American Jews has attained over the past century. When seen from this perspective, the celebration of things might also be understood as an affirmation of America’s promise.

Without knowing it, many American Jews take their cue from Max Weber’s classic account of the relationship between capitalism and Protestantism. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the German sociologist likened material wellbeing to a state of grace. Within Protestant circles, he argued, prosperity was a sign of approval from on high. The same might be said of American Jews. Maybe, consumerism is one of the ways we count our blessings.

Simply read, this verse bans the abhorrent from the Jewish home. In doing so, it asks us to define the abhorrent: that which is so despised that it has no place in Jewish life and must be put under ban. The rabbis of the Talmud have traditionally identified the abhorrent with idol worship. In their reading, anything contaminated through the worship of a foreign God cannot be consumed by Jews.

In the 13th century, this view is radicalized by the anonymous author of the Sefer ha-Chinuch. Building on the traditional view, we learn that any object “that was gained through theft, violence, or exploitation, or from any disgusting element” is considered abhorrent. Moreover, an individual’s “heart is inclined toward evil, which desires [an item] and brings it into the home; this inclination toward evil is called idol worship.” Idol worship is not what we initially thought: It can be anything. For example, a consumer good produced through exploitation would be identified as “abhorrent” and banned.

In this era of globalization, in which 30 million people live as slaves and millions more work in sweatshops around the world, our sage’s teaching forces us, as consumers, to ask uneasy questions about our consumption habits. Knowing what we know, can we continue to purchase goods, globally produced, without the fear that we are bringing the abhorrent into our homes?

—Ari Weiss

The notion that we are all connected becomes clearer each day as we receive news, food, and products from around the planet. While globalization has made the world a smaller place, it has also overwhelmed many of us; we struggle to see how we can live ethical lives and repair the world in the face of mega-corporations, governments, wars, and disasters.

By creating a context for acting ethically in a centuries- old tradition, Rabbi Ari Weiss gives us the opportunity to engage something bigger than ourselves as we accept the obligation to ban the abhorrent from our homes. The text’s instructions on living a moral life can energize rather than paralyze us as we open to the liberation that comes from becoming more awake. We can choose fair trade and organic products, and support local businesses and farms that enrich rather than deplete our communities. Affirming our interconnectedness, we create pathways — individually and collectively — to not only abhor unfairness but embrace justice as a guiding light.

—Jonathan Rosenthal

Rabbi Ari Weiss asks the question that faces each of us every time we open our wallets: What are the consequences, both for me and the larger world, of what I buy today? Each purchase says something about us and our relationship with God. For example, can we truly fulfill the mitzvah of lighting the Hanukkah candles if the menorah we use is produced by child labor? Does the “abhorrence” of the product also contaminate the holy action itself? When we become cut off from our own values and intentions, we lose our connection with the divine.

There are positive answers to the “uneasy questions about our consumption habits.” We are blessed to live in a time when there are organizations dedicated to help us make informed choices, including Fair Trade, Not for Sale, SweatFree Communities, Green America, No Sweat, and Union Label. Let us ban unholy purchases and work toward consumption habits that bring more justice, holiness, and connection into the world.

—Ilana Schatz

New forms of energy are in the works, with promises to revive floundering economies and reduce our dependence on foreign oil: tar sands in Canada; shale gas in the United States, and shale oil in Israel. Independence and unity are certainly to be valued, but at what cost? Poisoned air and water, mass extinction of vulnerable species, and climate chaos are dreadful effects of these new forms of energy. According to the analysis of Rabbi Ari Weiss, their single minded pursuit is akin to idol worship.

In Rebbe Nachman’s tale, “The King’s Son and the Son of the Maid,” a young prince is gifted a musical instrument that magically plays the song of unity. Emerging from the forest to find a city, the prince’s task is to restore the kingdom to wisdom by solving a series of riddles in an enchanted garden. But it turns out that the song of unity on its own is not enough to save the kingdom: The prince is only able to succeed by practicing the wisdom of the ancestors, the ability to comprehend one thing from another.

It seems that we have lost the ability to distinguish between the abhorrent and the holy. We must cherish unity, but also practice discernment, challenging the idols of greed and ignorance that threaten our livelihood and God’s creation.

—Jonah Meadows Adels

Toward the end of Deuteronomy (23:19), the Torah explicitly forbids gifts to the Temple, Mikdash, that come from objectionable sources, calling such gifts “abhorrent to the Lord your God.” Applying this law to the mikdash me’at (miniature sanctuary) of our houses of worship and study, the Jewish community is confronted with difficult questions about how we fund our institutions and what criteria we place on the gifts we accept.

Sacred space cannot be built on a foundation of funds attained by methods that are not consonant with what we know to be right and holy. We cannot sustain our synagogues and schools — our prayer lives and Torah study — with money made by exploiting workers, objectifying women, polluting the environment, or by any other morally questionable means, and continue to call those spaces holy. What steps can we take to ensure that the abhorrent does not enter our spiritual homes? Is our community ready to take such steps?

—Yosef Goldman

E.F. Schumacher’s 1973 classic Small is Beautiful introduced many of us to the concept of “enoughness” — the antidote to scarcity and the moderation of excess. It’s a concept that I hope calibrates my consumption habits wherever I am — at a kiddush lunch in California, a coffee farm in Kenya, or a supermarket on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The fact is, I do not always meet my own standards of reduced consumption.

Several months ago, I felt the physical intensity of “enoughness” when I joined 6,000 leaders, mostly from faith-based organizations, in a week-long fast to show solidarity with the millions of people in developing countries who go to bed hungry every night and who are at risk of losing critical U.S. food aid. For two days, I drank only water and then for the next five, I also took in clear liquids. Light­headedness and a low-grade headache followed me as I kept up with my regular routine of meetings, conference calls, and donor solicitations. Although I knew my fast would end and I would soon return to eating and drinking whatever I wanted, I spent much of the week reflecting on what hunger must feel like for someone whose life is defined by never having enough. More recently, I took the “food stamp challenge” — in which participants use the average food supplement benefit of $31.50 as their budget for food for one week.

What does Jewish tradition teach us about the role of “enoughness” in achieving kedusha — holiness — in the world? Rambam teaches that it is easy to be fooled into thinking that if we are consuming what is permissible, the quantity of our consumption does not matter. But according to Ramban, one who abuses the resources of the world by rationalizing that these resources are not explicitly forbidden is deemed “naval bereshut haTorah” — a “vile person within the delineations of the Torah.”¹ To prevent such overconsumption, Ramban notes that the Torah adds the general commandment of kedusha, “That we should be separated from excess…”²

It is all too easy to ignore the fact that we frequently consume too much. Food plays a dominant, sensory role in the lives of most Americans and certainly in the lives of American Jews. It is, in many ways, a map of our history. Meals, recipes, and the acts of eating and drinking express who we are, where we come from, and where we live. Food is accessible, enjoyable, and meaningful.

But when nearly 1 billion people around the world are malnourished, we need to adopt a food ethic that enables everyone to experience the sweetness of having enough; to experience food as a human right, not a luxury.

Ethical consumption is not only about being mindful of where we shop and what we ingest. It’s also about reforming government policies that perpetuate a cycle of poverty and widen the gap between “too much” and “not enough,” making ethical consumption nearly impossible for even the most conscientious among us.

For example, in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, the U.S. government sent food aid to Haiti, mostly rice. In the short term, this rice helped feed thousands of earthquake survivors who had lost everything. But U.S. food aid had an unintended — and sometimes devastating — consequence on local farmers. The influx of free rice from abroad brought the price of Haitian rice so low that Haitian rice farmers could not compete in the global market. They couldn’t earn an income from their crops and, tragically, could not purchase seeds for the next year’s crop.

The U.S. Farm Bill, a piece of legislation that is re-authorized every five years and that dictates the direction of our global food policies, is up for revision in 2012. Since the United States is the largest donor of global food aid, we must ensure that our policies support local farmers, not undermine them.₃

It’s easy to forget that this imperative has deep roots in our religious tradition. In his legal code “Laws of Giving to the Poor,” Maimonides, a 12th-century philosopher and Jewish legal scholar, argues that helping people achieve self-sufficiency — far more than ensuring that they have food on their table for just one night — is the highest form of tzedakah and an essential part of developing a responsible Jewish food ethic.₄

Furthermore, two rabbis from the talmudic era offer a way to think about our own ethical consumption amid today’s global food crisis. Rabbi Natan bar Abba wrote, “The world is dark for anyone who depends on the tables of others.”⁵ By contrast, Rabbi Achai ben Josiah wrote, “When one eats of his own, his mind is at ease.”⁶ These words tell a true and powerful story. For the most part, we have sated bellies, and it is therefore up to us to help ensure that people around the world can feast from their own harvests and put food on their own tables.

Ruth Messinger is president of the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), an international development organization that works to alleviate poverty and advance human rights for marginalized people in the developing world. Prior to joining AJWS in 1998, she spent twelve years on the New York City Council and served eight years as Manhattan’s borough president.

¹ Ramban is an acronym for Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman Gerondi, (1194 – c. 1270), a master of Jewish scholarship, including biblical, halakhic, and kabbalistic topics, who was born and raised in Spain and eventually moved to Israel. This is his commentary to Levitcus 19:1.

² Ibid.

³ See “Reverse Hunger: Ending the Global Food Crisis,” an AJWS campaign to put Jewish values into action on behalf of better food policies (http://bit.ly/oy0iNE).

⁴ “Laws of Giving to the Poor,” Chapter 10:7-14

⁵ Beitzah 32b

⁶ Avot d’Rabbi Natan 30

Let’s start with this perspective: People who come as consumers to “The Kitchen” (or any Jewish religious community) have more potential for Jewish religious growth than those who don’t show up at all. This is significant because, in San Francisco in 2012, this group — those who don’t attempt any regular Jewish religious experience of any kind — is by far the largest.

What this means is that a person who visits our community as a consumer, as someone who comes only wanting a specific item on the religious menu, is already more engaged than the person who doesn’t show up. At least we can say that a potential consumer is open to consuming something. What happens after that is up to us, the teachers.

The problem, then, is not only that some people enter a community as consumers, with a sense that a “religious” or “community” experience will be provided for them. Rather, the challenge is how to defy the expectations of those who want a tidy transaction with Jewish religious life. How do we meet the challenges of shaking up their loyalties and priorities and even of changing their view of the world and self? This is a problem of magnitude, a great Jewish problem, a problem about how to transmit a life that matters. This problem is one worth approaching with our every available resource.

For if we only fulfill the expectations of our “consumers,” then we’ve likely failed. Because the sad truth is, in general, expectations of religious experiences are embarrassingly low. Therefore, our success is not about fulfilling expectations but about shattering them. Simply put, it is about re-introducing the possibility of religious experience as life changing.

In addition, a consumer orienation — the idea that I can predict and control my religious experience — isn’t necessarily limited to those engaging in financial transactions. What my teacher Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman calls a “fee-for-service” mentality may exist even if there is no charge for the experience, as in the cases of Hillel, Taglit-Birthright Israel trips, or Chabad.

The transformation of would-be consumers into generators, instigators, and producers of Jewish life will likely include an acceptance of financial responsibility. Ultimately, though, it must surpass any financial relationship. Nurturing more stakeholders and paying participants alone will not create religiously powerful communities. Project funding and membership models must be tied to truly meaningful and life-altering Jewish experiences. Otherwise, how can we expect to grow an understanding of the larger worth and necessity of these experiences within a given community? Without establishing an active feedback loop, even if the funds are raised, they may only perpetuate the status quo. Insisting on transformation and impact is our only safeguard against this stagnation.

So here are our challenges, and they are significant. First, we need people to come in the door, even if only as consumers. I suggest we do this in the most culturally resonant and engaging ways possible. Then, we must work to build a sustainable community with buy-in, where all of the “consumers” begin to take responsibility for the community’s direction. And we must do this not by supplying what the consumers think they paid for but by offering something much less constrained and measurable, something that will not leave them happy and satisfied but rather changed and burdened. For example, I am remembering a student who came in for his bar mitzvah but found himself wrestling with the implications and demands of Torah. Or the man who arrived to say kaddish on a yahrzeit, but ended up comforting a girl who was broken from the loss of her brother. Or the young woman who expected little from Kol Nidrei but found herself moved to feed people on the street because what she “got” from the experience was a call to give. I keep thinking of a Heschel-like reversal: Our goal is to have people come in as consumers only to find that they are, like us, consumed.

In his December 2011 Sh’ma essay, “Sharing a Divergent Path,” Bruce Weinstock, my husband, accurately and respectfully depicts my perspective regarding leaving lights on during Shabbat. In fact, my discomfort extends to other standard practices in observant homes, such as leaving on the oven, the air conditioner, or the heat. When Shabbat is preceded or followed by a chag (holy day), observant families may leave on their electricity for more than 72 hours.

As the essay illustrates, my husband and I compromise. Over the years, I have come to appreciate the beauty of creating the self-sufficient Shabbat bubble, which, once initiated, like camping in the woods, doesn’t require support or allow interference from the external world. However, that idyllic construction comes at a cost. The actual consumption is easily measured by the variance in our monthly electric bills; now multiply that by the number of observant households. This practice of consuming unnecessary energy burns fossil fuels and emits carbon into our already warming atmosphere. As my husband states, this seems “antithetical to the idea of conserving and respecting creation.”

Another common practice (less fraught with the question of what is or isn’t malakhah, forbidden Shabbat “creation”) is the weekly reliance at synagogues on paper and plastic ware for Shabbat kiddush-luncheons. In most cases, there are no facilities for recycling or dishwashing. We can reasonably assume that few of these synagogues use renewable energy. Thus, these practices waste resources and damage the planet, and they demonstrate to our children that such waste is acceptable and even encouraged in the name of faith.

As Jews, we should focus on building a world where we don’t cavalierly cut off mountain tops to mine coal, hydro-frack beneath Jewish camps in New York and Pennsylvania, or waste resources just because it’s more convenient. However deep our faith may be, the planet’s capacity to withstand our abuse is finite. As Jewish individuals and leaders, we should develop new practices and compromises that are more sustainable for us and the natural world.

—Lisa Kempler, Citizens Climate Lobby, Boston

www.citizensclimatelobby.org

The social media revolution is bringing an end to unified brand presentation. Today it is our relationships, rather than direct communication with brand sources, that mediate our perception of brands. Technologies like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest all empower individuals to become brand curators for their like-minded peers and social networks. Ultra-niche targeting is both cheap and effective. Rather than a unified concept, brand becomes an assemblage of experiences and ideas that get uniquely configured in an individual’s mind. Brand messages aren’t simply transmitted by users of social media; they get contextualized and refracted for specific audiences. The messenger has become the medium.

Jewishness itself has also become a matter of individual creation. Between the proliferation of Jewish lifestyles and the demand for personal agency in making identity decisions, Jewish brands are increasingly being defined by consumers, not producers. Instead of simply accepting the authoritative version of what it means to be part of a group, movement, or ideology, individuals feel empowered to create unique ways of describing their connection to the collective. In Jumpstart’s 2010 survey of Jewish startup leaders, for example, 61 percent said they were raised Conservative or Reform but only 31 percent describe that affiliation today; 8 percent reported being raised as “post-/multi-denominational” or “Just Jewish,” but now 37 percent embrace those labels. There is both a shift in self-identification and in behavior. What was once a useful way to communicate one’s Jewish identity can become an obstacle to clarity and nuance. It is now less effective to describe oneself as a particular kind of Jew, rather than describing how one behaves Jewishly.

As we move into a post-label world, not only do audiences fragment, but the ability to create broad messages that can appeal to a large and diverse group becomes more difficult. If the past few decades are any indication, this century will be an even more complex marketplace for consumers and producers than the last one. The idea that there is a single value proposition behind Jewish life is no longer operative.

For many people, brand loyalty is largely a thing of the past — whether to a specific denominational movement, an individual organization or company, or a product. This is having a profound effect on Jewish communal life because, especially in the 20th century, Jews were frequently defined by their institutional and group affiliations. Movements, ethnic backgrounds, theology, geography, politics, all once served as shorthand to identify ourselves to other Jews and non-Jews. But no more.

The shift to consumer brand construction is evident in such disparate concepts as the “Occupy” and independent minyan movements. Both are organic phenomena consisting of people banding together because of shared values or needs, but without prioritizing brand definition. Both have created powerful ideas that have spread virally to mobilize and inspire new audiences. These ideas, often called “memes,” are the cultural equivalent of genes; they spread through natural selection — adapting and evolving as they are passed along.

Occupy groups haven’t been coordinated by a central authority, given a singular visual brand, or even settled on a widely shared philosophy. Yet the meme of “We are the 99%” is so pervasive that it is now (rather ironically) being co-opted by advertisers in order to sell things to consumers. The indie minyan movement has spread rapidly over the past decade, and although it has an organization that helps fuel and empower it (Mechon Hadar), there is no attempt to control, unify, or standardize it. Each indie minyan is a unique expression of its participants. Yet, if one goes to a number of different minyanim, it becomes clear how memes such as music and food practices are shared and disseminated by individual culture bearers. In Occupy and indie minyanim, we see collective sensibilities derived not from a central messaging apparatus, but rather from the recombination of memes by a multitude of participants.

Unable to count on a controlled distribution system to communicate a unified brand message, producers (Jewish communal organizations) must generate environments that allow for (and even encourage) the highly individual brand mashup happening inside the minds of their target audience. We are at the dawn of an era where meme creation and dispersal is the most powerful force for engaging consumers. While brand makers will lose control, they also gain a vital new distribution system for their content. Peer recommendations are much more persuasive than traditional marketing and advertising. The new paradigm demands cross-pollination, viral marketing, and giving up on the ownership of eyeballs.

Jewish civilization has always been extremely effective at this kind of contagious idea creation. Think monotheism, the Ten Commandments, or the Sabbath. The fact that our civilization constantly generates new ideas is what allows so many different kinds of Jews, Jewish communities, and ways of doing Jewish to exist under the banner of Judaism. Instead of obsessing with building and maintaining organizational brands, perhaps we’d all be better off if our communal institutions stopped trying to sell products and labels that consumers don’t want, and focused more on creating compelling ideas and experiences that they do want.

A dozen New Jersey parents, reviewing a recent field trip, discuss their children’s progress in an experiment in family-driven Jewish education. A California mother organizes a group of families to study traditional Jewish texts through storytelling. Local experts are hired to facilitate discussion. A group of Atlanta families participates in a home school Jewish learning collective emphasizing parent-child interaction. In Washington, D.C., a mother works with a group to establish a Hebrew charter school while a father coordinates efforts to develop a five-day-a week after school Jewish enrichment program. A group of parents in New York City also explores the after school model. In Phoenix, parents are creating a community-wide collaboration where families will choose from an array of educational programs offered by numerous local organizations. Philadelphia parents hire a rabbinical student to run a weekly Hebrew language immersion gathering for their children.

These efforts are a sampling of programs created by a small but growing vanguard of families addressing the Jewish educational needs of their children. Who are the parents behind these initiatives? What do they have in common? How might their actions inform the transformation of Jewish education?

These parents are all highly committed Jews, visionaries, entrepreneurs, and adept community builders. They are exploring models of organized Jewish education that are alternatives to conventional Jewish day schools and Hebrew schools. Committed to leading Jewish lives, some are products of day schools; many grew up in engaged Jewish families; most, if not all, are very active in their synagogues or independent minyanim, and they support the Jewish community at large. They all strive for a meaningful, vital, Jewish existence for themselves and their children.

All of these parents espouse an educational vision and confer with others about their hopes and dreams. They believe Jewish learning should be participatory and meaningful. While some try to influence existing programs, more recently they’ve begun creating their own educational initiatives.

Some of these parents are entrepreneurs in their professional lives, comfortable with the risk taking that creating something new entails. Their professional backgrounds are diverse: finance, foreign policy, bioengineering, organizational development, journalism, law, marketing, academia, and the rabbinate. Most of them understand start-up processes, including financial viability. As producers of new ideas, they embrace start-up models that are trim, focused, and flexible. They rely on experimentation and ongoing consumer input rather than on traditional methods that demand multiyear development phases. They are frustrated by Jewish education programs that remain wedded to earlier methods and are slow to innovate in response to the changing lives and needs of today’s families.

These parents are resourceful and experienced at finding human capital and information to fit the curriculum and content requirements of their initiatives. Some have advanced knowledge of Jewish studies and others are skilled at enlisting those with greater knowledge when the need arises. They want their children to have Jewish friends and learning peers, and to be educated within a supportive communal environment. Their visions resonate with other like-minded families.

It might be tempting to dismiss the leaders of these initiatives as marginal outsiders or anti-establishment types. Rather, they are part of a wider trend of empowered “prosumers” — parents who are blurring the intersection between the production and consumption of Jewish education. These prosumers may work in collaboration with local synagogues, or team up with other local entrepreneurial initiatives, or experiment outside the system. All are invested in learning from other innovative efforts and they are excited to connect with fellow change makers. They hope established Jewish educational institutions will follow by accelerating their pace of experimentation with new models and ways of thinking about Jewish learning.

Perhaps Jewish organizations and prosumers can look to the corporate world, where product design is shifting from inside-out to outside-in. Most large companies now accept that they operate in an ecosystem. The ecosystem serves them not just in improving their supply and distribution chains, but also, more importantly, in helping to turn the outside-in perspective into practical innovation. By building collaborative relationships with creative customers, companies like Apple, Kraft Foods, and Scholastic gain actionable insights. This means that particularly knowledgeable, innovative, and dedicated customers become more involved and invested in helping to shape future outcomes. Co-creation encourages organizations and customers to work together on creative solutions to challenging problems. While this entails letting go of old paradigms, this change toward co-creation lends itself to the development of more nimble and responsive organizations. Might Jewish education benefit from a similar model?