The next generation is already leading. Let’s make room.

A few weeks ago in Washington, D.C., we were asked what gives us confidence about the future of the Jewish community. The answer was sitting in front of us: we were speaking with hundreds of Jewish and pro-Israel student leaders at the Israel on Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit. Now, with a new academic year underway, those students are back on campuses across the country, carrying with them lessons learned under circumstances none of us would have chosen for them. They did not choose Oct. 7, 2023. They did not choose the explosion of antisemitism and Jew-hatred that followed, the encampments and disruptions, nor the hostility many encountered simply for standing publicly as Jews and supporters of Israel. In response, they organized, educated their classmates, advocated, supported frightened friends and built communities for students who suddenly discovered that institutions they trusted could not always be counted upon to defend them. Many stood publicly for Israel and against antisemitism when doing so carried real costs. That deserves admiration. But admiration is not enough. For years, the organized Jewish community has spoken about cultivating the “next generation.” After Oct. 7, that phrase feels inadequate. Many of these young people are not waiting for us to make them leaders. Circumstances already did. Our institutions need to catch up. If we believe these young men and women belong in Jewish leadership now, our community has to find more ways to trust them with real responsibility. That means moving beyond encouragement, conferences, fellowships and invitations to observe. We need to create more opportunities for them to participate in consequential conversations, learn how decisions actually get made, build relationships with senior leaders and assume responsibility before every credential has been accumulated and every rough edge polished. But responsibility runs in both directions. Those stepping into leadership also face a challenge that is easy to underestimate: Leadership is not measured by the moment you win. It is measured by what you build, whom you bring with you and what remains after you leave. At the Conference of Presidents, we bring together organizations with different constituencies, ideologies, priorities and approaches. If cooperation required unanimity on every issue, we would accomplish almost nothing. Consensus is not unanimity, but rather the ability to identify common responsibilities without requiring every participant to surrender independent judgment or institutional identity. The work of coalition leadership is not to eliminate disagreement; it is to build enough trust that disagreement does not make cooperation impossible. That means knowing the difference between a principle and a tactic, listening closely enough to understand what another person or institution actually needs, building relationships before an emergency makes them necessary and having the patience to maintain them. The relationships young leaders form now may follow them for decades. People remember who returned the call, kept a promise, shared credit and behaved decently when there was nothing immediate to gain. Ambition and conviction matter; so does the humility to recognize that disagreement, even serious disagreement, is not itself evidence of stupidity, immorality or bad faith. The strongest leaders have strong spines and open ears. None of this means young leaders should defer automatically to established institutions. Jewish communal life needs people prepared to challenge conventional wisdom. Institutions can become complacent. Practices can grow stale. Organizations can lose touch with the people they exist to serve. A new generation can also see blind spots that are less visible to those who have spent years working within existing structures. Challenging an institution, however, is only part of leadership. What matters is what the challenge leaves behind. Does it correct a failure, strengthen an institution, widen a coalition or create a better way forward? Or does it deepen divisions without producing meaningful change? There will be times when confrontation is necessary. Leadership is not conflict avoidance. But how leaders conduct necessary disagreements often determines whether a community emerges from them stronger or weaker. We have seen what is possible since Oct. 7. Organizations accustomed to operating in separate lanes worked together. Students who had never imagined themselves as activists became organizers. Donors responded to unfamiliar needs. Institutions adapted at remarkable speed. Across the Jewish world, many who had previously stood at its periphery stepped forward. Crisis accelerated cooperation. The challenge now is to make that cooperation durable. That will require more than preserving the programs and partnerships created in an emergency. The people who stepped forward after Oct. 7 need lasting opportunities to remain engaged, assume greater responsibility and help shape Jewish communal life. We also need to help them develop the skills that matter when leadership moves beyond the urgency of a crisis: judgment, coalition-building, patience, institutional memory, fundraising, governance and the ability to work across differences. This matters because relationships forged under the pressure of an emergency eventually have to survive disagreements over politics, personalities, tactics, funding, credit and priorities. The years ahead will demand stronger Jewish institutions, broader alliances and continued bipartisan support for Israel. They will require confronting antisemitism wherever it appears, including in universities, political movements, unions, professional associations and cultural institutions. None of that can be accomplished by outrage alone. It will require allies whose interests overlap with ours without perfectly matching them. Partnership does not require agreement on everything. It does require recognizing that genuine partners will sometimes expect us to care about what matters to them, too. Nor should the ambitions of this generation end at the doors of Jewish organizations. The students we met will become lawyers, physicians, entrepreneurs, teachers, journalists, public officials, philanthropists and civic leaders. Their Jewish commitments belong in those rooms, too. So do the relationships they build with people whose identities and priorities are not identical to their own. The strength of American Jewry has never depended solely on what happens inside Jewish institutions. It also depends on the place Jews occupy in the broader American civic fabric and on our ability to build enduring relationships beyond ourselves. What gives us confidence about this generation is that it has already demonstrated courage. Our responsibility now is to help that courage mature into judgment, patience, discipline and the ability to bring others along. The Torah’s account of Moses and Joshua offers a useful reminder. Moses did not simply recognize Joshua’s promise. He entrusted him with responsibility and prepared the people to follow him. Leadership, in that telling, included preparing for the day when someone else would carry the work forward. The ultimate measure of leadership is not simply what we accomplish while occupying our positions. It is whether we leave behind people prepared to assume them, relationships strong enough to survive disagreement and institutions capable of meeting challenges we cannot yet foresee. The students we met in Washington, now back on campuses across the country, are not merely our future. After Oct. 7 and everything that followed, they have earned the right to be regarded as part of our present. Our task is no longer merely to tell them how proud we are. It is to trust them with something worth inheriting. Their task will be to leave it stronger than they found it. Betsy Berns Korn is the chair and William Daroff is the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the positions of all 50 member organizations. The post The next generation is already leading. Let’s make room. appeared first on eJewishPhilanthropy.