I wouldn't be where I am today without Jumpstart. Yes, it is totally cliche but totally honest. Last February I heard Joshua Avedon talk about the changing Jewish world and the need to help and incubate new innovative organizations that are fostering a new kind of Jewish engagement. In his words I heard my calling. Less than a year later, I'm a Jewish professional working to bring the traditional Jewish world and the emerging new Jewish world together. Without Jumpstart - that, in addition to providing guidance to Jewish upstarts, are fostering a necessary dialogue in the broader Jewish community - I believe the global Jewish society would be so split along generational and organizational divides to the point where the idea of Jewish peoplehood would have difficulty finding ground.
After hosting a salon for Jumpstart in Washington, D.C. I saw how their mission of working with Jewish innovators to change the Jewish community is something that so many young Jews believe in and relate to - recognizing that their Judaism is not the Judaism of their parents or their grandparents but is something new and evolving.
The Jewish world is changing and Jumpstart is at the forefront of that change. I'm proud to be part of it.