Jewish Innovation and Responsibility

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 | posted by

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How should we evaluate Jewish innovation?

With the publication of “The Innovation Ecosystem: Emergence of a New Jewish Landscape” , produced by Jumpstart, The Natan Fund and The Samuel Bronfman Foundation, plus news of the bright young social entrepreneurs attending this summer’s ROI Summit and PresenTense Institute, Jewish innovation is a hot topic.

Jerusalem Post correspondent Haviv Rettig Gur takes on the Jewish social innovation boom in a hard-hitting opinion piece in eJewish Philanthropy. Haviv argues that Jewish social entrepreneurship should be more than clever packaging, but rather contain real, sustainable, quality Jewish content…

“In Jewish terms, excellence is not in clever networking. It is in new content, new education…It can be useful to understand the Jewish world in the way the Talmudic Sages liked to do, as a colossal, multi-pronged education system, a world of learning and debate that is so rich, so varied, so persistent that it constitutes a unique transnational culture all its own. It is an education system whose classrooms include everything from a family’s shared spiritual life to social volunteerism and actual schools. Innovation is built into this world because debate is fundamental to its behavior…”

Of particular relevance to supporters of social causes, Haviv concludes that we too have a responsibility to look beyond the branding, taglines and hype to examine if a project can truly change the world, “Viewed in this way, it becomes clear that sustainable innovation requires that foundations, federations and donors have a duty to ask innovators and aspiring grantees a fundamental question: What is the educational value of their work? What do they have to teach?”

Haviv’s message resonates with the values found in JGooders.com . We hope that our objective online platform will help NPOs, their donors and volunteers to understand and evaluate their work. For the good of our future.