As further proof that the Bay Area is one of the hippest places to be Jewish in America, nine organizations with local ties made it into this year’s edition of Slingshot, an annual directory of the country’s 50 most innovative Jewish groups.
Among the cutting-edge groups highlighted for the first time in the guide, which was released Sept. 15, is Be’Chol Lashon (“In Every Tongue”), a San Francisco-based organization that works to grow and strengthen Judaism through ethnic, cultural and racial inclusiveness.
For the past eight years, the nonprofit organization has been developing programs in the Bay Area and will be expanding its operations to Los Angeles, Chicago and New York.
“We’ve become so successful in reaching affiliated and disaffiliated Jews and making them feel part of Jewish life,” said Be’chol Lashon Director Diane Tobin. “Our goal is to educate about diversity and I hope we can provide more opportunities for Jews around the world.”
DAWN, an all-night cultural arts festival that this year celebrated both the grand opening of San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum and Shavuot, also made the top 50.
“We’re very excited,” said DAWN co-creator David Katznelson. “The event was packed full of Jewish meaning, ideas and art, and it attracted an obscene amount of people.”
Bands, authors, artists, magicians and celebrities converged June 7 at the CJM, in addition to roughly 3,500 participants in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Katznelson said thousands were turned away, something he hopes won’t happen next year when DAWN returns for the fifth time.
“It’s very obvious that the young adult community gravitates toward festivals of this nature,” he said. “Everywhere you walked, you saw visually stimulating things.”
Other Bay Area groups listed include the El Cerrito-based Institute for Jewish Spirituality, which guides Jewish professionals and institutions toward an understanding of spirituality through liturgy and rituals; Berkeley-based Jewish Milestones, a community resource for Jews preparing for lifecycle events; and San Francisco’s Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation, whose “Resist” curriculum teaches sixth- through 12th-grade students about the thousands of Jewish partisans who fought against the Nazis during the Holocaust.
This is the third year that JPEF has made an appearance in Slingshot.
“We’re trying to change the perspective of the Jewish experience of the Holocaust,” said JPEF Executive Director Mitch Braff. “We teach young people that there were thousands of Jews, many of them teens, who stood up to anti-Semitism, tyranny and oppression.
“You won’t find any other program that deals with the Holocaust [where] afterward, Jewish kids feel prouder and stronger to be Jewish.”
The idea for Slingshot emerged out of Grand Street, a project of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies that assembles Jews ages 18-28 who are or will soon be involved in their families’ charitable foundations.
Grand Street members proposed creating a Zagat-style resource guide, which is now in its fourth year of production.
After gathering recommendations from Jewish philanthropists, 25 professionals in the funding community — which this year included Debbie Findling of the S.F.-based Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation — reviewed the nominations and determined the final 50 organizations based on innovation, impact, leadership and efficiency.
The diversity of this year’s list, organizers say, underscores the emergence of new innovative groups, but also the increasing willingness of traditional organizations to adapt — and of foundations to recognize such efforts.
“One of the things we noticed this year is that while many skeptics worry that innovation signifies hip or young Jewish life, we found that many of the organizations out there are making the old new,” said Sharna Goldseker, the Bronfman Foundation’s vice president. “Many are focused on Jewish history and language and heritage, and we see a number of organizations that really build on tradition in an innovative way.”
Other groups with Bay Area ties that made Slingshot’s top 50 include the Santa Barbara-based Moishe House, which sponsors homes for Jewish young adults in 26 locations, including San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento; American Jewish World Service, which maintains an office here; the Progressive Jewish Alliance, which started in Los Angeles and opened a Bay Area office in 2005; and New York-based Reboot, a network of young Jews who strive to help new generations redefine their Jewish identity, community and meaning.
JTA staff writer Jacob Berkman contributed to this report.