programming. We will People may join a JCC for need to improve how we the excellent programming, recruit new members and participants. We but they will stay for will need to train our the deep and caring frontline staff and lay leadership in the art relationships they create of welcoming. We will with other human beings. need to focus more on hearing their stories than on telling ours. We will need to ensure that every member has built a relationship with a key staff member…and with other members. In my new book, Relational Judaism: Using the Power of Relationships to Transform the Jewish Community (Jewish Lights Publishing), I present six case studies of organizations on the cutting-edge of this relational tipping point and 12 principles of relational engagement that can guide our work moving forward. Among the 150 interviews conducted during my research, my good friend Allan Finkelstein, president & CEO of JCC Association, weighs in on how the JCC Movement is already encouraging this approach and Andy Paller, director of Benchmarking: JCC Excellence, reports on the Benchmarking results of progress in engaging members in a deeper way. A number of JCC professionals and lay leadership boards are using the book as a resource and I look forward to sharing these principles and strategies at the upcoming JCCs of North America Biennial Convention in San Diego. Our task: to build more “Round Tables” in every JCC, for young and old, for families and singles, for anyone seeking a face-to-face community of relationships that gives life meaning and purpose, belonging and blessing.
DR. RON WOLFSON will be a keynote speaker at the 2014 JCCs of North America Biennial Convention speaking on how to transform the model of twentieth-century Jewish institutions into twenty-first-century relational communities offering meaning and purpose, belonging and blessing.
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