When Facts Don’t Matter

Generations upon generations have passed since the destruction of the Second Temple, and what drives our connection to this physical place is not that any of us can say that we saw it with our eyes, but that we heard that story, felt the story’s impact, and passed it onto others.   This week, The Times of Israel published an essay I wrote exploring what it means to focus on the story, rather than the facts.  You can read the article by clicking on this link.

But What If I’m Wrong?

Despite living in an organizational world where we preach the gospel of “metrics” and “data-driven decision making,” those trends cannot buttress the fact that, in general, foundations want to prove that their grantmaking decisions were right, professionals want to demonstrate that their organizations are relevant, and Jews of all stripes want to affirm that any sliver of evidence about the future confirms their Jewish worldviews.  This does not make any of us stupid, but it does make all of us all too human.

Today, eJewishPhilanthropy published an article I wrote about the power of imagining alternative worlds than our preexisting beliefs about the Jewish future. You can read the article by clicking on this link.