Lapid Volume #111, May 2014 | Page 15

advancement. Many younger Jews find this too confining. They wish to express their Jewishness through social justice work globally, and have created innovative Jewish social justice startups to do so. What, if any, are the implications of this for traditional Jewish solidarity? Another, overlapping set of challenges concerns the institutional loci of Jewish identity. Many young Jews do not join mainline Jewish organizations––federations and synagogues (especially Conservative synagogues). At the same time, they are finding new venues to express their Jewishness. Very often, these venues include the significant participation of non-Jews. They are not membership organizations, but rather, "alternative" sites of artistic, musical, and literary expression: concerts, clubs, bars, etc. Transitioning to a network society We wish to explore whether these generational changes are manifestations of a larger phenomenon: the transition to a network society, which has identifiable and predictable features. Has this pattern of joining organizations and finding new Jewish venues been influenced by the "network" paradigm organizing production, firms, and general human interaction? Networks are opposed to top-down, command structured, centralized bureaucratic organizations and i