Culture, Identity, Politics, Religion

The Long Tzitzis

So I’m here with the gang at NHC ‘tute, and not surprisingly there’s been a fair bit of discussion on “our generation” and why our Judaism looks so different from the previous generations. Day before yesterday, 40 or 50 of us looked at The Continuity of Discontinuity, a report about just that. We discussed the values of our generation demonstrated by the spectrum of organizations we represent, but I want to look at it from another angle.
Shortly before leaving home, I watched McLuhan’s Wake, a documentary on Marshall McLuhan, the father of media theory, and coiner of “the medium is the message.” One of the points hammered home in the film was that the tools we create, be they cars, hammers or laptops, end up, in a sense, creating us. That is to say, the technology with which many of us have grown up is inextricably linked to our expectations and desires for a Jewish community. Let me explain.
From Wikipedia:

The phrase The Long Tail (as a proper noun with capitalized letters) was first coined by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article to describe certain business and economic models such as Amazon.com or Netflix. Businesses with distribution power can sell a greater volume of otherwise hard to find items at small volumes than of popular items at large volumes.

Full Article.
First, I think it’s important to note that we’re talking about web business here. This isn’t a model for a bricks and mortar business, but the net allows, even encourages, this model. That is to say, serving the many tiny niche markets is really where it’s at. The top few sellers may account for a significant percentage, but the one or two copies of rare books or movies that only a few people want to watch actually make up a larger percentage of sales as a whole (because selling 2 copies of 1000 books beats selling 1000 copies of 1).
We’ve grown up with the internet, and our experience of commerce and of consumption are both linked to that. My wife was explaining to me yesterday how when she’s shopping for clothes, she often experiences the desire to be able to sort items by price, ascending and descending, and by popularity, etc. Our experience of the web has altered our expectations of reality and the Jewish niche communities we create seem to follow a similar model.
So the way I see it, JCCs, Federations and Synagogues are the blockbusters, and the long tail is playing out in the myriad Jewish social justice orgs/minyanim/blog communities/whatever. Our tiny mission-driven organizations are not intended to be for everyone, but for a small segment of the population. But, given the ever growing number of small organizations, I think we can foresee a time when the tail will be populated enough to contain more of us involved in small organizations of a few folks than huge movements of thousands.

10 thoughts on “The Long Tzitzis

  1. First, I think it’s important to note that we’re talking about web business here. This isn’t a model for a bricks and mortar business, but the net allows, even encourages, this model.
    Except with the exception of websites Judaism is much closer to a brick and mortar store. Sure you can have your niches on the web, but for a local group you still need a critical mass, and outside of major population centers you don’t have a large enough population base to create all the niche movements.

  2. Avi, you write
    “outside of major population centers you don’t have a large enough population base to create all the niche movements.”
    I am very curious about this statement, and while it is definitely the conventional wisdom, I’m not so certain it’s true. yes, yes, I have been living in Israel or New York for the past, God, 10 years. but, my basic Jewish identity was mostly forged away from the major centers. (I went to high school in Calgary)
    Witht he itnernet, and increase in communication that accompanies it, the ability for small tihngs to get out there is tremendous, and for small communities to develop them even more so. Perhaps, outside of the well institutionalized major centers, little minyanim will have hte ability to pursue truly revolutionary paths. YOu don’t need much critical mass to start a minyan, particularly not if you’re in a small town where people won’t be going away every Shabbat.
    Also, the high school kid sitting by himself in Kalamazoo might not be able to be serviced by the traditional structure, but boom he pops on to his commuter, and finds his way to Jewschool and the like. The internet and this tail, mgiht be precisely the way of servicing and creating a community that reaches well beyond those central clusters.
    Yes, perhaps we needed the institutions and that critical mass to spawn this new approach to community, but once it’s unleashed, it might very well take everything else over.

  3. Going further than just the brick-and-mortar vs. internet analogy, our generation’s approach to Judaism (at least in America) seems to largely follow the arc of commerce in general.
    Before WWII, or certainly before the 20th century, both commerce and Judaism were relatively localized. Stores were run by families, not huge corporations, and served their immediate communities. Shuls were similarly local. Most people walked to shul, shuls had relatively distinct minhags, and rabbis got their s’micha from other rabbis, often studying one-on-one or in small groups.
    With the suburbanization of America came the chain stores and, in effect, chain shuls (with brands like USCJ, UAHC/URJ and OU). Everything was mass produced, from consumer goods produced in centralized factories to rabbis learning in centralized seminaries. Supermarkets and shuls both served larger geographic communities than their predecessors, and consumers and Jews alike looked for consistency in their purchases and their davening as they moved from place to place. The average American Jew was happy watching I Love Lucy and eating Empire brand chicken and attending a suburban megashul.
    Then came the advent of cable TV, videogames and, yes, the internet, i.e., diversified programming, interactive entertainment that put us in control (without having to deal with other people) and a platform for unlimited communication. Plus, as the WSJ recently pointed out, friendly Presbyterian minister named Fred Rogers reminded us every day after school how “special” we each were, thus adding to our sense of entitlement (I can’t believe I just jumped on the blame-Mr.-Rogers bandwagon…).
    It’s not just that we want super-personalized Judaism. We also want to actively control our Judaism. And so instead of towing the national-brand megashul line, we go off and form our own minyans to better suit our needs (or desires).
    The problem with this model for Judaism, however, as Avi correctly points out, is that Judaism is largely about real, present community. A virtual minyan just doesn’t cut it.
    In a few big cities like Jerusalem, New York, SF and DC, where there are large concentrations of committed Jews of all stripes, the niche concept works to some degree. But we can’t all live in just a handful of neighborhoods.
    I therefore predict that the niche minyans will continue to pop up in these big communities. Some will last a long time. Others won’t, and that’s fine, too. But as the niche minyan leaders grow up and have kids, some of those leaders will inevitably discover that they simply can’t afford (in dollar terms) to live on the Upper West Side or in the Mission District. These leaders will move back to the suburbs, or to smaller cities, where they can’t necessarily have their own minyan, but where many of the ideas that have blossomed in these minyans will infiltrate the suburban national-brand shuls. Those shuls that are big enough will have multiple minyans of their own. And those that aren’t so big will take some pages from the havurah playbook for their main minyan. Lay leadership will get more involved in davening. Different weeks will have different kinds of services. The ba’al tefilah will move off the bimah and closer to the congregation. And so on.
    Meanwhile, we’ll just keep rehashing these ideas again and again on the internet. 😉

  4. But as the niche minyan leaders grow up and have kids, some of those leaders will inevitably discover that they simply can’t afford (in dollar terms) to live on the Upper West Side or in the Mission District. These leaders will move back to the suburbs, or to smaller cities, where they can’t necessarily have their own minyan, but where many of the ideas that have blossomed in these minyans will infiltrate the suburban national-brand shuls.
    This will happen, most likely (if our civilization lasts beyond a few more years); however, in the meantime, those of us who live in the outlying areas and who want this sort of community are hard-pressed to find it. I live in Boston – hardly the back woods – and we don’t have anywhere near the kind of diversity and “niche marketing” enjoyed by those fortunate enough to live in NYC.

  5. AND – what little we have is, for the most part – geared toward young people. If you happen to be old enough to own original copies of the Jewish Catalogs – you’re pretty much out of luck.

  6. themicah is right. People will join congregations when they need to teach their children. The only problem is that the niche market analysis is flawed. The people who want localization and the same people who want private and personalize Judaism.
    There was an interesting set of op-eds in last Sunday’s New York Times about local economies. Each reported from a different community in the US. One speaks to this problem. In a small community outside of Seattle, there once was a major logging industry. Now, there is distrust for Seattle based hippy-evironmental types who stopped the logging to save the Spotted Owl. But these residents would like for Seattle folks to come and buy up store fronts and make their homes in these woods…but they won’t.
    The connection is that while it is great to call for action and localized labor and organic food, the reality is that it is near impossible for people to break their habits. The niche market is based on fads and trends. Those change over time and so will the needs of the non-tradition Jewish community. The indie groups have been around for decades telling us that they will take over the mainstream…but here we at least see the truth. A few books will sell, but it will never be Harry Potter.

  7. Its sort of a long tail, but there’s a flaw in the theory. Because in many communities, funding and resources are highly centralized, the opportunitiies for affinity groups is often limited to what can be done on scale.
    One result is that you see the ‘synaplex’ phenom, where the Blockbuster “institutional jewish world” try, with varied success, to create smaller affinity groups within their own ranks. This sort of follows the chavurah movement model, where after independent chavurot made their mark on the scene, many reform and reconstructionist shuls created smaller units within themselves to become more cozy.
    Another is that the ‘long’ tail we discuss really isn’t all that long. Or long enough. Really, what are we talking about? A handfull of initiatives centered mostly in NY and primarily online.
    Where I see GesherCity functioning as intended, it provides some long tail groups with its myriad small activity and affinity groups. Hillels seem to have imitated this a bit. A few minyans, some study groups- but mostly 10%ers who are pretty much already engaged.
    I do think we’ll see the tail grow longer in the coming years… The cultural piece holds great potential, but some do tried and true things like sports and yes, social justice.
    The shaylah is whether the IJW will see the wisdom in casting varied nets or continue to view us all as competition/not knowing what we really need…

  8. The power of the Internet which enables The Long Tail is about putting power and tools back in the hands of the consumer (member of the Jewish community). The Long Tzitzit (love the term, BTW) is full of those people creating their own jounreys. However in the business model, Amazon still needs to create the tools and have the physical space (web site) as a destination for the consumers to post their reviews and recommended lists, etc. I think the challenge here is for the larger organizations (JCCs, synagogues, etc that you cite) to first get comfortable with sharing the control and empowering their “consumers” to be “co-creators”, and then to implement the structures and tools to make that possible. Big isn’t necessarily bad (critical mass, infrastructure, space, etc.), but rigid is.

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