Good night CAJE - - - NEXT?
There is a certain sadness about the passing of the Conference for Alternative in Jewish Education. It was fun, it was a way to “charge one’s batteries” just before each school year would begin. However there was a cetain inevitablity to its passing.
However, the truth is that after 20 or 25 years the conference had ceased to be alternative to anything. It was as establishment as could be. It was in the thick of the politics of the day and with the vast majority of the attendees being closer to quiet, meaningful career sunset than to envigorating sunrise, it was a lodge (the Jewish BPOE). It was a week-long lodge meeting, with a grand poobah and everything. There were some great sessions, a few great teachers but most of it was same old, same old. The vendors tried to make the best of it. I was particulalry impressed by the non-peanut butter peanut butter guy. But even for them it was just another conference, just another stop on a caravan. I recognize that nothing I am saying here is new or different, I may be the only one expressing it out loud but many of us knew that the time had come and CAJE will be missed but it will hardly be mourned.
Rather, I look here to contemplate what is next. Will we be tele-conferencing? Will we be going to mini-confernces and spreading whatever is new and exciting like viral marketing or, and I believe this to be the most likely answer…I am just too old to know what is next. Some 21 year-old is right now hatching the next thing. She is sitting in a coffee shop excitedly telling her classmates about what she is going to do to change the world of Jewish education. She is going to bring people into her new grassroots movement. She is drawing diagrams on her tablet computer, while texting, emailing and listen to her iPod. She is doing all of this and as she does it it is not cliche or silly. Rather, it is as natural as it is for me to talk about Roger Staubach. She can talk about what the meetings will look like, the lack of a need for a plenary session, a board, a Executive Director or a committee for blah-blah-blah.
She is thrilled to draw a mental picture for her comrades of the community she foresees. She knows that going to get a M.A.Ed. might be something she might do down the road but for now she is teaching because she loves it (a MBA might be a good idea too but there will be time for that later). She will call her peeps and get them involved; she won’t feel the need for everyone to be Jewish or to limit the sessions in anyway. She envisions a conference that is something entirely different. It’s probably not a conference. It is a coming together. They’ll grab a bunch of rooms at a cheap hotel somewhere and those who want to come to share will; those who don’t won’t and will be teleconferenced in while they bike across the Rockies. They will address the identity issues that are the most real to them and they will not be bogged down by worrying about pension funds. She and her people think about Heeb and Spirit and Tikkun and know what is real and what is not.
She attended the CAJE teen program a few years ago, thought it was a little lame but she liked the campus and made some friends. She’s been to Israel on Birthright and then again on Junior Year Abroad. She has thought about going to the Ukraine to see what they need but she knows that Mom and Dad can’t pay for it right now. She’s going to raise money and pay for her own education, it is as it should be, she thinks.
Or maybe she had thought about law school and still does but for now she wants to be the cool teacher, work in the inner-city and Hebrew School at the same time. She wants to find out what other people are doing and do it, too, but do it her own way.
I am counting on these guys to show me what the future is for organized Jewish Education. We the Baby Boomers have had our chance and we actually have done a good job. We just overstayed our welcome a little bit. We took some good ideas, ran with them and now we need to hand over that baton to the X-ers or the Genext-ers or whoever is will to take it out of our hands.
We have had a good run. I think we have done some great things; CAJE just might have been the best thing. However, I for one am ready to see it go and I await impatiently the next thing. I hope they have room for an elder statesman.