| I just returned from the National Havurah Committee's summer institute, a weeklong learning/davening/singing/chatting, etc. experience. The major themes of the week were gender and social justice. (that's "gender" and "social justice"--not "gender and social justice.") The folks at Jewschool have written pretty extensively about the gender conversations, so I won't reprise it all. As mentioned there, one of the major issues revolved around the different understandings of gender identities/possibilities for gender identities among folks of different backgrounds and generation. What I found even more surprising, though, were the similarities in the gender concerns of the thirtysomethings and the sixtysomethings. (the 40s & 50s were, by and large, the missing generation at the Institute, but more on that later.) |
These two groups spoke largely about gender imbalances at work, work-life balance, and hidden inequities in progressive communities. In contrast, the twenty-somethings generally looked outward for examples of gender imbalance (such as talking about what they've seen in Orthodox communities). Why the split between the 20s & 30s, and the similarities between the 30s & 60s? Have gender relations gotten way better in the past ten years? Do women generally not encounter gender as a major issue until they get to a certain point in their careers, or until they start having children? Are those in their 60s thinking about the issues that their 30-something children are facing (or vice versa)? Speaking about age--the NHC is the only Jewish organization that I've seen that's successfully and consciously turned over leadership to the next generation. While the original Havurahniks (now mostly in their 60s) still attend institute, serve on the board, and volunteer in many ways, the co-chairs of the institute for the past several years have been people in their 20s or early 30s. My understanding is that this shift is largely intentional. The original folks realized at some point that the NHC wouldn't last long if people in their 20s & 30s didn't come. The group thus created the Everett Fellowship, which makes it financially feasible for people in their 20s and 30s to attend the Institute. So far, this sounds like many other Jewish organizations creating programming for "young adults" or lowering prices for people under a certain age. But--brilliantly, the NHC folks then actually turned much of the leadership over to the younger folks, rather than going the traditional route of just inviting younger people or (horrors!) creating a junior board where people under 40 can play at being board members. The board of NHC now includes teenagers as well as people of a certain age, people in their 20s and even younger feel real ownership of the organization, and people in their 60s, 70s, 80s still come and feel at home. (as I mentioned before, there were few folks in their 40s & 50s--this is the group that seems to have gotten lost in the pre-Everett era). The entire community benefits from the range of experiences that this multigenerational group brings to the table. In the class I taught, for instance, I loved hearing a 16 year old and a 60 year old exchange ideas about power, and listen to and learn from one another. Quite a breath of fresh air in a world that tends to segregate by age. |
