Dan Gudema
2 min readApr 26, 2022

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I think you are absolutely correct. This interation of organizations, in fact american jewish and Israeli society and organizations were established 1890s, 1948. And they are not flexible and their goals are unchanged. Why should they change? There is little incentive for new ideas, nor anything but exactly the same. The 1950s-1960s and this generation defines the american jewish community and orgs that run everything as my parents modernized. I have had interactions with Yad Vashem, ADL and other other groups over the years. I can't think of a new source of inspiration or change that is not designed to accomplish the financial goals of the jewish community in america, which is to raise money to pay for older jews and other jews who need support, support Israel financially, and politically, make sure the US supports Israel and other big issues like getting jews out of Ukraine. But there is little for the average american jewish community member that is new and innovative.

Once I married a non-jewish wife, I was basically on the outside looking in. Little room for me in jewish society, no flexibility. 50% of american jews are similar to me, all we can do is live in jewish neighborhoods, which I do. But what organization can I join which is flexible enough to allow me in and not look to charge me an arm and a leg or make me sit and listen to either far right extremism or far left extremism. I once felt that jews were not extremists, but all of that has changed. And trust me we want to join organizations. I miss the synagogue, B'nai Brith, Sundays brunches, community, but all that seems to be in the past, as american jewish organizations can not organize themselves in a way to be more open. All they want from us is a check. And if you join one, they harass you until you unsubscribe and change your phone number.

And as far as politics, the orgs and the media have split us into left: hippy loving liberals and right: white supremacist sympathizers. And antisemites have classified the wealthiest jews as either socialist/Black Lives Matter leaders or fascist/capitalist leaders. Sound familiar? They have even recruited jews to repeat these bizarre "globalist" lies... Everytime I hear Laura Ingraham say the word "globalist", I think she is secretly thinking "F the Jews". Young jews either join up and get hardened right wing or become religious or they are turned off and fade into the crowd. There is no middle ground now. The reason younger generations of jews are not engaged is they don't understand why they should care, they don't know the history of Israel or the jewish people, the current message is not created for the younger generation.

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Dan Gudema
Dan Gudema

Written by Dan Gudema

CoFounder PAIGN AI, https://cam.paign.ai. Writer, Speaker, Consultant. Email me at dgudema@gmail.com to contact me.

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