ECAJ President Anton Block was honoured last night with offi­cially launching the results of the Gen17 Aus­trali­an Jewish Community Survey.
Anton thanked Professor Andrew Markus and Dr David Graham for their out­stand­ing and thorough work on the survey, which garnered over 8,000 responses – the highest of any study of any Jewish community ever carried out anywhere in the world.
In his speech, published by J‑Wire below, Anton high­lighted the import­ance of these results for the Aus­trali­an Jewish community, which will be crucial for future planning, funding, and organ­isa­tion­al con­tinu­ity.

Gen17 launched

March 28, 2018
J‑Wire Newsdesk
The Gen17 Aus­trali­an Jewish Community Survey has been launched in Melbourne following last week’s Sydney event.
8,621 members of the Aus­trali­an Jewish community filled out the survey between February and May in 2017.
The president of The Executive Council of Aus­trali­an Jewry Anton Block said: “This is not just a survey of math­em­at­ic­al stat­ist­ics – as portrayed in my little story – but an insight into our community. It tells a story of who we are as a community in 2017.
Few would disagree that we are a fortunate community. We live in one of the greatest countries in the world and have the oppor­tun­ity to live life freely as Jews. Our forebears built our community and our community struc­tures on solid found­a­tions. The number, range and vibrancy, of Jewish communal organ­isa­tions attests to this.
But of course, who we are as a community continues to change and evolve. Our evolution is influ­enced by many factors including migration, prosper­ity, aging, distance in time from the Holocaust, distance in time from the estab­lish­ment of the State of Israel, levels of education and general societal influ­en­cers.
The Gen17 Report has produced a rich data set from which we can derive a fas­cin­at­ing snapshot of Jewish communal attitudes in 2017.
The survey is impress­ive both because of the number of respond­ents – the highest of any study of any Jewish community ever carried out anywhere in the world – and because of its meth­od­o­lo­gic­al rigour. A thorough con­sulta­tion of the Jewish community ensured that the survey questions were for­mu­lated so as to reflect our major concerns as a Jewish community on matters as diverse- as Jewish identity, inter­mar­riage, Jewish education, communal life, socioeco­nom­ic wellbeing, char­it­able giving, migration, Israel and Antisemitism. Census data and other objective records were studied and used as a baseline to ensure that the Gen 17 survey results were appro­pri­ately weighted to exclude any skewing of the data towards any demo­graph­ic or other group in the community, and to ensure the rep­res­ent­at­ive­ness of the responses.
The survey results are relevant to every organ­isa­tion in our community because the topics are embedded in the raison d’tre for those various Jewish organ­isa­tions.
Given that the Gen17 survey follows on from the Gen08 report, we are now able, with certain qual­i­fic­a­tions, to look at trends in attitudes and perhaps more import­antly, community needs as they have evolved from 2008 and into the future. This provides us with an invalu­able tool to assist community planning and the ded­ic­a­tion of community resources.
As stated in the Foreword of the Report written by JCA President, Stephen Chipkin, “To realise our aspir­a­tions and plan more effect­ively even to dream more fully – we must under­stand who we are in the here and now. What drives our community today? Who are we as Jews? What are communal needs? How do we give back? What matters to us? How do we relate to one another? It is these question, and so many more, that the Gen17 survey has endeav­oured to answer.”
It is the desire to continue to have not just the best, but what is actually needed, that drove the Gen17 report and the Gen08 report before it. And this requires planning.
I am reminded of the famous words of Benjamin Franklyn, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”
My question is, who will be looking at this inform­a­tion and doing the planning?
In NSW the answer is clear, it is the JCA, working together with the Jewish communal roof body in that State, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies.
Not only does the JCA raise funds on a community basis, it allocates those funds to the organ­isa­tions and projects in the community which best meet the needs and strategic plan of the community. No doubt this is why the JCA is a major sponsor of the study.
But who will be per­form­ing this task in Victoria?
Clearly, Jewish Care will be making sig­ni­fic­ant use of some of the Gen17 data. It is utterly appalling that in a community as wealthy as ours, more than one Jew in 20 (6%) suffers from severe financial hardship to the point where they have had to cut back on food or go without pre­scrip­tion medicine because of a lack of financial means. Material depriva­tion of such depth cries out for a communal program. The Torah is explicit. If any of our fellow Jews become poor and are unable to support them­selves, we are obligated to help them: Vayikra 25:35.
Welfare, however, is only one part of the communal picture. Who will do the planning for youth engage­ment, Jewish education, communal security, com­batting antisemitism and sup­port­ing Israel? And who will have the oversight as to the alloc­a­tion of limited communal resources between each of these critical sectors? The last real attempt at communal planning in Melbourne was in 1994. It took the form of the Com­mis­sion for the Future Report which was com­mis­sioned by the JCCV.
The brief was to enquire into and report to the JCCV as to whether the current range of services, facil­it­ies and fun­drais­ing practices offered or conducted by the Victorian Jewish communal organ­isa­tion for Victorian communal purposes were the most effective to meet the needs of the community as it approaches and prepares for the next century, having regard not only to objective criteria but also to the community’s needs and sens­it­iv­it­ies.
The con­clu­sions were:

1. The community needs planning: In all areas the Com­mis­sion found a lack of sys­tem­at­ic planning which was affecting the nature of services provided and the cost of providing services. In no sector was there adequate analysis of needs nor suf­fi­cient rigorous analysis of service provision. The failure to plan meant some services were absent or inad­equately researched as a result of his­tor­ic­al factors rather community decision – This was re-affirmed in 2010 as one of the con­clu­sions on a further study done on the merits of creating a Victorian community appeal- namely that without a VJCA there is likely to be a lack of insight­ful communal strategic planning resources.
2. The community needs inform­a­tion. There is a lack of community data which prevents prompt or adequate responses to demo­graph­ic, economic or social change;
3. The community can ration­al­ise alloc­a­tion of resources. The Com­mis­sion found a dis­turb­ing lack of co-operation between community organ­isa­tions. If this is overcome, it will offer great potential to improve the community’s financial position by ration­al­ising the use of both material and human resources;
4. The community needs lead­er­ship. Leaders of community organ­isa­tions are con­sist­ently presented as advocates for par­tic­u­lar causes rather than leaders of the community.

Regret­tably, the only real outcomes were the merger of the Mon­te­fiore Homes and Jewish Community Services (as it then was) and the dis­band­ing of the Com­mis­sion. Why? Because the community failed to “buy in” to do what needed to be done.
The Gen17 survey results indicate that the Melbourne Jewish community is mar­gin­ally more reli­giously observant and Zionistic than the Sydney Jewish community. Some attribute this dif­fer­ence to the organ­isa­tion­al structure in Victoria, as compared to NSW. I don’t agree. I would attribute this dif­fer­ence, small as it is, to the much higher pro­por­tion of Jews in Melbourne whose families ori­gin­ated in the tight-knit Jewish com­munit­ies of Eastern Europe.
Inter­est­ingly, the report also indicates that 58% of the Melbourne Jewish community are open to having one central fun­drais­ing organ­isa­tion (30% of that number would even prefer a central structure) even though Melbourne Jewry has not exper­i­enced such a model. This compares to 80% in Sydney which actually has such a fun­drais­ing model.
Cent­ral­ised fun­drais­ing would provide the Victorian community with the ability to direct funds to those projects which respond to the inform­a­tion provided by the Gen17 report. Past exper­i­ence confirms that the causes which the objective evidence tells us the community most needs to support are not always the causes that meet the sub­ject­ive passions and pri­or­it­ies of indi­vidu­al donors.
But perhaps more import­antly, a con­sist­ent system of fun­drais­ing and planning in both NSW and Victoria would greatly facil­it­ate the devel­op­ment of coherent planning for our community on a nation­wide basis on such critical matters as communal security, youth engage­ment and Jewish education. Australia ceased to be a col­lec­tion of distinct colonies in 1901, but the Jewish com­munit­ies in Melbourne and Sydney still operate to a large extent as though Fed­er­a­tion never happened.
We cannot continue to ignore the central message of Benjamin Franklin’s words. The time has come at both a Victorian and National level to engage in mean­ing­ful community planning to assist in the shaping of communal agendas, cata­lys­ing the creation of new ini­ti­at­ives and realign­ing pri­or­it­ies.
The Gen17 report gives us the empirical basis for engaging in this necessary work.
On behalf of the Aus­trali­an Jewish Community, I commend and thank Professor Andrew Markus and Dr David Graham for their out­stand­ing work and I look forward to working with our community lead­er­ship and donors in imple­ment­ing strategic planning now and into the future.”