Noah Rickun returned in March from a life-changing trip to Israel inspired to engage the young Jewish people of Milwaukee. He just wasn’t sure how he was going to do it.
Rickun, 30, of Mequon, was one of 17 young people (ages 27-40) who spent nine days in Israel as part of the Weinstein Fellowship for young leadership of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
One week after his return, Rickun home-housed a young Israeli lawyer, Lior Ohana, who visited Milwaukee through a Partnership 2000 program. One night, Rickun and Ohana went out with a few of the guys who had also taken the trip to Israel and shared Rickun’s desire to become more connected with the Jewish community.
When Ohana heard them talk about their interest in organizing the young Jewish community, he offered a suggestion.
“‘Look, guys,’” Rickun recalled Ohana saying. “‘Every month I get all my friends together, there’s about 50 of us, we hire a DJ, we have some drinks, and it’s just Jewish people having a good time together.’”
The concept was so obvious; the group wondered why they hadn’t thought of it before.
“It’s the easiest, simplest idea, and yet nobody [was] doing it,” said Rickun.
The fruit of that conversation is Tribe Fest 5768, to be held on Saturday Aug. 30, 8 p.m. to midnight, at Yaffa Restaurant & Lounge in downtown Milwaukee. It is a party designed to convene young Jewish people (ages roughly 21-50) in a relaxed, noncommittal environment. “Come hungry, come thirsty, get shickered,” reads the poster for the event.
“[Tribe Fest] is going to be unique in the sense that there isn’t an underlying cause,” said Joe Devorkin, another organizer of the event (along with David Arnstein, David Florsheim and Yoni Zvi).
“Instead of saying we’d like to raise money, we wanted to say ‘Hey, here we are, let’s come together and have some fun.’”
The idea for this shindig might sound simple enough, but the organizers have already had to clear up some misconceptions about it, said Rickun. He regularly fields questions such as “Who’s the chair?” “Where does the money go?” and “So is it just a party for nothing?”
“The bottom line is this,” said Rickun. “It’s not a party for nothing. It’s really a function or a party to celebrate being Jewish; to be proud of your connection not to the religion of Judaism, but to the culture of Judaism, and an attempt at connecting with your local Jewish community.”
Rickun also stressed his desire to be inclusive. Holding fundraisers and events that honor members of the community is important, he said, but they inevitably leave some people feeling excluded.
“We want to include as many people as possible by keeping the cost down … and really just focus on having a good time,” he said. “We’re hoping to really get a lot of people out there that haven’t been involved in other things” in the Jewish community.
Both Rickun and Devorkin have families with two young children each. Growing up, they were involved in the Jewish community through traditional means: Jewish camps, the Jewish Community Center and B’nai B’rith Youth Organization. Devorkin attended Milwaukee Jewish Day School.
“Judaism and the Jewish community was the backbone of my whole childhood,” said Devorkin. “Then you spend your 20s starting a family and doing other things, and now I’m going back to my roots, and I want my peers to do so as well.”
Rickun said that most programs he has seen in the last 10 years are “niche events.” There is no shortage of community events for families and children, he said, “But for anybody who’s either single, or a newlywed, there’s just nothing going on.”
Len Saxe, Ph.D., professor of Jewish community research and social policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, has studied the way young Jews participate in their local Jewish communities.
He has found that the things Rickun and Devorkin spoke of, such as the lack of programming for young people and the increasing emphasis on cultural, as opposed to religious Judaism, are true.
“The traditional institutions: the federations, which grew up as fundraising tools, and synagogues … don’t resonate with the younger generation in the same kind of way [that they used to],” said Saxe.
Furthermore, he said, whereas Judaism used to be the focus of Jewish programming, “the community is the central thing now, and the medium is the Jewish connection and content.”
A host of new organizations have opened up around the country that address young Jews’ need for community and provide “natural, authentic” ways of connecting, especially using social action, which Saxe said “there is a real thirst for.”
This new organizational trend may not be as prevalent in Milwaukee as it is in other communities just yet, but Tribe Fest could be the start of something larger.
“We hope that this is the first of many social events that enable us to build relationships and open new doors, whether that’s social networking or business networking or whatever it might be; but we want to give a way for people to feel included in the local Jewish community,” said Rickun.
Both he and Devorkin said that Tribe Fest could be a springboard to future events that may fit in the more traditional awareness/fund raising mold, and they look forward to that opportunity. For now, however, they are focused on the present.
“We’ve talked about ways to branch off from this,” said Devorkin, “but right now we’re just trying to make this event a success.”
The group is not afraid to think big, however. “The reason why we named it Tribe Fest 5768 is because we intend to do this annually,” said Rickun. “And how cool would it be if it’s big enough to hold it on the Summerfest grounds one day?”
The primary way that Tribe Fest organizers are spreading the word about the event is over the Internet, specifically with the social networking site Socializr.
To view the invitation and sign up, log on to www.socializr.com and enter “Tribe Fest” into the search bar. You may also e-mail tribefest@mac.com for more information.
Cost is $36, either in advance or at the door. Once in, everything is free, including an open bar, lots of food, and use of the hookahs. The entire restaurant has been rented out for the occasion.
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