Q&A

JFNA, SRE Network confab to consider equity, diversity and belonging amid ‘the Surge’ and anti-DEI backlash

Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein, founder of JFNA's Initiative for Jewish Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and Rachel Gildiner, executive director of SRE Network, say creating place of belonging is critical to retain newly engaged Jews

In the 19 months since the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel, many American Jews have surged towards communal engagement opportunities. That demand has created once-in-a-generation opportunity for Jewish life, but also calls for a stronger embrace of those on the community’s margins and fringes to retain this “Surge” of engagement, Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein — the Jewish Federations of North America’s public affairs advisor, and founder of the organization’s Initiative for Jewish Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (now called the Center for Jewish Belonging) — told eJewishPhilanthropy. 

On Wednesday, as the JPro2025 conference came to a close in Baltimore, SRE (Safety, Respect, Equity) Network and JFNA’s Center for Belonging kicked off their own conference — the Jewish Belonging Summit— which both organizations are co-hosting for the first time. The conference, which is replacing SRE Network’s Annual Convening, aims to facilitate dialogue about diversity, equity and belonging (sorry, inclusion) in an increasingly volatile landscape for global Jewry and amid growing tensions over those terms and concepts in the United States more generally. Some 185 people are slated to attend the two-day gathering.

eJP’s Nira Dayanim spoke with Rothstein and Rachel Gildiner, executive director of SRE Network, about the conference, creating a culture of belonging and the challenges facing the field. 

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Nira Dayanim: Tell me about the conference. What are some of the core themes and pressing topics at play this year? 

Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein: We know that this moment is volatile and divisive in a lot of ways. As we’ve been planning this summit, we recognize that by coming together at this moment particularly, we are trying to make sure that we’re communicating to the broader Jewish community the importance of belonging as a core priority for Jewish life. This is the first national gathering focused on Jewish communal belonging, trying to really think about how we both explore the diverse identity needs for different underrepresented, underserved identity groups, but also how we think about supporting a network in a field of leaders and organizations that engage in this work. And then also, particularly because the field that we’re both involved in has been a lightning rod for a lot of the wedge issues within Jewish life, the importance of saying that we’re not going to limit ourselves to social media or statements, but we need to come together and we need to be in conversation. And the fact that we’ve invited people and leaders and practitioners from across the spectrum of Jewish life to say that we want to make sure this conversation is not something that’s seen as fragmented or politicized, but that we could be under the same roof to talk about things that we know are critical to 21st century Jewish life.

Rachel Gildiner: The work of Safety, Respect and Equity Network is to advance gender equity across our Jewish communal sector and workplaces. … In our partnership with JFNA and our work with Rabbi Isaiah, we have really come to understand how they are thinking about belonging, that safety, respect and equity are also core building blocks of belonging. So the idea of us partnering around this really exciting summit on Jewish belonging is a perfect melding of the way we believe this work needs to be centered in our communities.

ND: Can you tell me a little bit more about how the partnership came to be?

RG: I am nine months into my role as executive director. And one of the things I love about SRE’s work — we’ve been around for seven years — is how we convene both members of our network, but also communal stakeholders to talk about these issues. I knew that we wanted to experiment with how we were thinking about those things at this moment. We had this idea as Rabbi Isaiah was thinking about how he was building this movement of belonging for our Jewish communal sector, about what would happen if we both partnered and invited people together to have these conversations, and we added it on to JPro, which we also knew was having its largest gathering ever. So it was a beautiful, very organic moment to experiment with something new and to build a new partnership across our organizations.

IR: What’s unique about both of our organizations is how we both inhabit a world where we’re working with people who are seen as quote-unquote, center-left or on the left, as well as people who are center-right or within legacy spaces. We have a wide range of people whom we work with, and ultimately we don’t want to be discouraged from our work by the extremes, on the left or on the right. Saying that this should be work that we prioritize is something that made it intuitive for us to partner together. And again, this is the first national conference focused on belonging across all identity groups. But there have been gatherings, and a part of the work SRE does is national gatherings. And this was an idea that we intuitively had together was to have a post-JPro gathering. And when we both realized we had this idea, we realized that it would be, it would make total sense and be organic, to really partner together, because we have a similar goal of trying to make sure we’re staying connected as a Jewish community, while also dealing with some of these divisive, politicized issues.

ND: As the term DEI has become polarized in recent years, how have your organizations been navigating that, and how does it factor into the work that you are doing?

IR: I would say that the work of supporting people who have been historically marginalized, discriminated against, people that face racism, any forms of hate, the work of supporting those people should not be reduced to a few letters or acronyms. But it’s true that as we’ve been planning this gathering, we’ve been trying to think about how we keep everyone in the conversation without politicizing it or using wedge terms. We don’t want to be held captive by a culture war, especially when there are so many people who need us. There are so many people who have been disenfranchised and harmed because of their identities or have been marginalized, and we want to make sure that we’re staying committed to the work and not getting caught up in the storm of what’s taking place in broader society.

RG: I completely agree. And the beautiful thing about SRE Network is that the values that we stand for are in our name. Before this moment and after this moment, we will continue to work towards workplaces that are safe, respectful and equitable pathways to growth and thriving. To Isaiah’s point, neither of us want to let semantics drive or prevent the ability for us to center and advance these values. And it really is a values-based conversation, and we’re choosing to stay in the work. The language matters secondary to the values, and the impact is what’s most important to the lived experiences of the people we are trying to serve.

ND: How are people feeling generally about this kind of work and creating a culture of belonging in Jewish spaces?

RG: I’ll just give an anecdotal example: The SRE network serves over 190 member organizations, and we plan annual virtual programs that address topics and bring in experts on the values of safety, respect and equity. This year we had a series of three webinars, one of which was around gender equity, one was around trans equity and one was around the work of diversity, equity and inclusion. We saw around quadruple the amount of attendees to those virtual programs than we have ever had before. I actually am not one that believes that attendance or participation means success or impact. But what I do think that data point showed us is that our community and the members that we serve are hungry to be in these conversations and to have spaces where they can talk about this complicated work and these complex issues. So I think that how people are feeling is that they want… invitations to spaces that feel safe and brave and that allow us to be in conversation around how we want to show up as Jewish professionals.


RIR: The Center for Jewish Belonging was founded in 2020, right after the murder of George Floyd. When we started our work, we were swimming upstream. There were many people who thought that we were misdirected in the Jewish Federations [of North America], by taking on a priority area relating to justice, thinking about the needs of those who are underserved and marginalized. The work was hard then, let alone post-Oct. 7, when some of these conversations have become more heated and more divisive. There’s no question that when we say creating a culture of belonging for all Jews and our loved ones. We do mean all Jews and our loved ones. We’re not trying to think about some identity groups versus other identity groups. This is collective work. This is really about every single kind of person. And there’s no question that we’ve come across people who are… queasy, is the term I use — they sort of oscillate, and they are not sure how this is a Jewish issue. I’m not sure if these are the methodologies we should be using, but ultimately, similar to what Rachel was sharing, we know that a significant majority, 85%-90% of people, believe deeply that all Jews and our loved ones shouldn’t walk into a space and leave worse than they came in. So in that way, the work has never been more challenging, but I think we’re reaffirmed knowing that this work is not fringe work. This is work that’s critical to 21st century Jewish life. 

ND: Tell me about what you think contributes to that hunger, and also what things have looked like post-Oct. 7 in terms of the need for belonging.

RG: What we’re feeling is that —and this has been the theme so much of the conference that we’re a part of right now— we have been in trauma response mode for over a year. And what happens when our jobs and our identities are responding to very personal trauma is that we want to come together and be in a collective community. It also sometimes can drive us to be singularly focused in a way that we don’t even realize is alienating others. And so I think we now are far enough out from this trauma that we live with it. We’re still healing. We want our hostages to be returned, and we also are seeing some of the secondary and tertiary pain that this is causing to members of our community, and people are feeling isolated and polarized and When an invitation is put out to talk, not only about fighting antisemitism, not only about protests or the need to support the post-Oct. 7 issues, people are excited and hungry to show up as their full selves, knowing that all of their identities and all of the other work that they are doing also matters at this time. We haven’t necessarily had permission to talk about or center these issues in the same way. And this is now the time to remind ourselves that this work also matters, and I think a majority of our professionals want to be in those spaces. 

I think we owe this to the members of our community and also our communities, our organizations need the voices, the talents, the ideas, the leadership of all of our community to solve some of these largest challenges that we’re facing, and so it’s mutually beneficial that we do this because it’s the right thing to do, and we do this because these voices and these individuals will make our Jewish communities better.

RIR: If you look at the data from the Pew study in 2021 the average percentage of Jews engaged in Jewish life on a weekly to monthly basis is about 15%. Since Oct. 7, [2023,] that number has doubled in many cases. In a sense, that’s a huge opportunity for Jewish life. But the question that we need to ask about belonging is if the culture that exists within those organizations and spaces is conducive to retaining those identity groups. When you add the layer of holding identity groups that are already historically marginalized or under-represented, there’s this huge opportunity to engage communities and leaders and individuals across American Jewry who have not been involved. But also, if our environments are not the right environment where belonging is a core priority or safety, respect and equity is a core priority, we’re not going to retain that percentage. We’re going to see people who are going to show up once or twice, but then they might not come back. When you think about the trajectory of the next five to 10 years, we really do need to make sure that we’re creating key priorities, processes, policies and procedures that focus on addressing the needs of people who have been historically marginalized, underserved, underrepresented. Because if we are going to leverage “the Surge,” if we are going to leverage this unprecedented amount of Jewish engagement, we need to make sure that we can retain those people, and we need to make sure that the environment, the leadership, the ways we approach governance, the way we approach senior decision-making within a professional setting is responsive to the different voices within Jewish life, not only some voices in Jewish life. 

ND: What are some of the challenges in creating that sense of belonging during polarized times, and also some of the progress that you’ve seen?

RG: For us as a community we need to really understand what is preventing us from talking to one another. Is it fear? Is it a concern of hurting? I think really getting curious about the root causes can help us address them and then figure out how we can move through them together in a relationship.

Some of the places that we’re seeing progress is when we can give permission to people to say real things and to share their personal experiences, and to not kind of model or duplicate the chilling effect that we’re seeing in our community. 

RIR: If you were to ask the average person in Jewish life, whether belonging is important, and whether they would agree that it’s a core issue, I would argue most people would say, ‘Of course.’ … [But] people can be a little lazy when they say, ‘Yeah, of course, we want everyone to feel like they belong,’ without recognizing what habits, behaviors, messaging, and communications prevent us from doing that. This is actually a field of work that requires skill, professionalism, leadership, capacity within organizations. 

Something that I think is promising is that we’re in 2025. In the early 2000s, everybody was talking about Jewish engagement. It was ‘How many people? How many people? How many people?’ And in 2025, I feel we finally evolved Jewish engagement to realize it’s not just about who you can recruit, but actually whether or not we can retain people.

ND: The last question I always like to ask is if there’s anything that you think I didn’t ask. As we’re chatting, are there any facets that we didn’t dive deep enough into, or something we didn’t touch upon that’s pressing or important?

RIR: As a Jewish communal ecosystem, we are so great at responding to short term crises. We know to respond to the immediate. It’s unfortunate because we’ve had to be responsive to the immediate, but I really do want our decision makers and our organizations to think about the medium term and the long term of our choices and our lack of choices. The work of Jewish communal belonging is generational, and the work that we’re investing in is in certain ways, responding to the new, but in other ways, is actually laying the foundation for generations.