The Jewish Innovation
Since the January 2014 genesis of First Fridays, The Temple and AJMF have engaged hundreds of Jewish in-town Millennials and Gen X’s with a monthly Shabbat experience carefully crafted to inspire and invigorate their Jewish identity. Despite our small budget of roughly $400 per month and with basically no marketing, we have quickly become one of the premier sacred experiences for young Jewish Atlanta. In addition to our monthly Shabbat services, in the past year The Temple and AJMF partnered on the Sukkah Cafe, an evening of Jewish singer-songwriters during Sukkot, as well as hosted an Eighth Night Kabbalistic Passover Seder.
The Impact
The overall lack of successful engagement of the young professional demographic has been widely written about and discussed within numerous circles of communal Judaism. The Atlanta Jewish community, like most Jewish communities around the United States, fails to provide adequate quality programming that addresses the spiritual, cultural and intellectual demands of 20- and 30-something unaffiliated and under-affiliated Jews. We seek to address this gap by expanding our bottom-up, authentic, Jewish Shabbat experiences for our growing and engaged First Fridays community.
What Will You Do with the Money?
Our modest budget barely covers the basic operational costs of food and drink (both before and after service), audio equipment and musicians fees, including those of visiting artists. Support from this campaign will enable four important expansions of our capacity:
– We’ll create new music by and for community members.
– We’ll upgrade our audio equipment.
– We’ll expand our food and drink budget.
– We’ll plan and execute an annual, signature program that serves to grow our base and celebrate our successes.
– We’ll create new music by and for community members.
– We’ll upgrade our audio equipment.
– We’ll expand our food and drink budget.
– We’ll plan and execute an annual, signature program that serves to grow our base and celebrate our successes.
