The Big Question for Jewish Innovation

[cross-post from ROI Community] 

 When it comes to Jewish innovation, what's your big question?

 Last week, I presented on Jewish innovation at the Milken Community High School in Los Angeles, California. The school prides itself on its pluralism, as well as its "moral, spiritual, and intellectual way of life which, in the context of community, refines the human being (tikkun atzmi) and repairs the world (tikkun olam), and the students are diverse in terms of their denominational affiliations and interests. The class was doing projects on the subject of American Judaism today, and I was given free reign to either do a discussion or to discuss my work and do a Q&A with the students.

I did a little bit of both - we started by talking about Jewish innovation and what it might mean, and then moved on to my "introduction to Jewish innovation through YouTube." With limited time, I couldn't talk about all 400+ innovators in the ROI network, and focused on a few of the Jewish innovators who regularly visit the L.A. area: beginning with the second 2008 ROI video, we went on to focus on Marcus Freed's Bible-based plays and Bibliyoga; followed by Sarah Lefton's G-dcast; then Y-Love's "State of the Nation" song, which is based on the National Jewish Population Survey; the robust rap scene in Israel featuring the Israelity Tour which toured California in 2007 with a bunch of ROI alumni as organizers. Then we moved on to how ROIers William Levin and Michelle Citrin decided to work together, yielding the Rosh Hashanah Girl, 20 Things to Do with Matzah, Let My Parents Go, I Went to Israel - I Liked It, and Light the Candle videos. You can see the YouTube playlist here.

Then we opened it up to questions, of which there were only a few.

One pertained to G-dcast, specifically - one student asked if there was any concern that boiling a Torah portion down to four minutes of animation might be an oversimplification of what happens in the Torah portion. I explained that although Sarah (and education supervisor Matthue Roth) could answer that question more eloquently, that my impression was that G-dcast was an entry point - for some people, who just wanted a taste of Torah every week and weren't likely to pick up a book and study, four minutes of animation is perfect. But, I pointed out, G-dcast's site also features free educators'/teachers' guides available that go into greater depth on the themes of each Torah portion.

Another asked a really simple question that may actually be a really important guide for innovators, whether they're creating in YouTube or in other places: Why?

Within the "why" are several questions:

• Why is this product or innovation necessary?
• Why is this the right venue?
• Why should you spend your time in pursuit of this goal?
• Why should other people join your quest to achieve this goal?
• Why should a funder support your project over other projects?
• Why now?

 

All of these are larger questions, within a smaller question. But my question to you - as friends of and leaders in the field of Jewish innovation - is: what's your big question? And how do you go about answering it?

Comments

[Isophorone]

There is a book you may want to check out that features a lot of material on Jews and innovation. It's called "The Israel Test" by George Gilder. Enjoy!