The Jewish Innovation
JOI TNT empowers young adults to discover their Judaism through engaging social, service, and educational interactions.
We want to create a vibrant Jewish community for Young Adults in the Denver/Boulder area, showing them how relevant and enriching Judaism can be! Thanks to the generosity of anonymous donors, every (tax-deductible) dollar raised in this campaign will be matched, so your mitzvah doubles automatically!
The Impact
Our two years of experience with JOI TNT has reaffirmed our prior assertion that Jewish young professionals are a severely underserved and undervalued population: as stable, educated and thoughtful young adults, this population joins us without family obligations or commitments, and with a post-college maturity and willingness to question and learn, that provides an optimal substrate for Jewish learning and growth.
What Will You Do with the Money?
Friday Night Live – Our flagship once a month program for young adults features an interactive service with shabbat dinner (or holiday meal on certain months), we cook everything ourselves in our home to enable our young adult ‘host’ to become engaged in creating community and keep our costs as low as possible by eliminating caterers, clean up staff and venue costs.
Grill the Rabbi – Once a month Q&A session where young adults come to ‘Grill and Chill’ with Rabbi Lehrfield and enjoy a candid exploration of a variety of questions about Judaism. This will also take place in my home the costs are directly for the cost of kosher meat to BBQ. In our surveys this type of program was most appealing to everyone.
Torah on Tap – Another once a month program where participants can have a drink on us and enjoy a light dinner while discovering the relevance and depth of Judaism as it applies to their every day lives. The format of this event is based on chavruta style learning where the participant take an active part in the learning process. They are broken into small groups where each group analyses and discusses sources and then needs to support their opinions in a larger group. Each group introduces an new piece to the puzzle which creates an elaborate intellectual tapestry. We will be getting use of the bar for free with a drink special to cut the costs of the events significantly.
Prep ‘n Schlep Shabbat – This is a program specifically for our young married couples, a new demographic that is really starting to take off. The idea of the program is to create a wildfire of shabbat where our participants become empowered to host their own shabbat guests in their home and then those guests host others ,etc. essentially creating a web of shabbat dinners. In order to do this, our main goal is to show that hosting Shabbat is not as difficult as they may think! With Prep ‘n Schlep Shabbat each couple (5 total to keep costs manageable) invite 2 other couples to their home for Shabbat dinner and then they come to the event where we guide them in preparing and leading Shabbat dinner, step by step together and then split the food amongst everyone for them to bring home for their Shabbat dinner. Each couple will pay $36 to help bring down the cost of the ingredients.
Ascent Climbing Club – A jewish rock climbing club for young adults with a short Torah lesson.
