Olami Leader Joel Hermann on Australian Jewish radio

my next guest is Joel Herman and Joel particularly he's here because he went recently to the Awami Jewish leaders foundation convention in Jerusalem good morning morning Gary hey guys I'm doing well so tell us about all of me and what you learned okay well I think yeah I think we've we've been chatting about it and a lot of people aren't really aware of all of me neither on what they do there isn't too much true them per se they're essentially a really quite a big organization that funds lots of small organizations around the world and it's both a neutral base in Israel and an end our New York to a large extent as well and the one thing all those organizations that they fund have in common is they're all about engaging young Jewish students the youth of the community for the purpose of Jewish continuity really so to low intermarriage rates and to make sure that a lot of people that are maybe straying off the Jewish path you know stay on and back on day on yeah and be involved in Jewish life exactly I would say potentially to an extent that they definitely place a strong emphasis on on the value of learning Jewish values essentially through the Torah and and what that can teach us not necessarily in a religious way applying Torah values and things like that to to modern situations to topical situations and and yeah I think there's a really strong emphasis on that and I think it's a good thing I think there's a lot we can learn from a lot of these values you know I don't come from an incredibly religious background just a traditional background that I've learnt heaps in the last few years that has really helped to change my perception of whether I used to kind of think you know Judaism ism is relevant these days but it definitely is and I think a lot of its people my yeah so tell us your age and what you're doing at the moment okay so I'm 20 yeah at the moment I'm studying at University I'm doing commerce and engineering at Monash and I'm also working a couple days a week in an advisory firm which is which is good fun to put some of that into practice and and yeah I've kind of I've been on the through all on me so I'll explain that you know see Australian Melbourne and Sydney we have this organization called awesome student-run that's spelt funny we were joking about that with me the other day so HR som and it's it's it's essentially aligned with awesome our in Israel okay and they they've really only come into the scene in Australia a couple years ago and they've built really fast grown really fast and they've essentially they're they're providing us with just great learning sessions a great experience that the model the way it works is you go on a trip go overseas to Israel right and you know you meet everyone there and then you come back and you have these learning sessions back in town whether that's Melbourne on Sydney and also they run here they run here so and there is you know there's a learning component to the trip of course it's a great mix of learning and fun and it's it really does well with with the particular so they're taking University students and these you know a lot of these students that they're trying to take are the ones that you know maybe have had a Jewish education or somewhat of a Jewish education you come through school and you can imagine it like a graph on a plot you know your Judaism is going up its up its up it Peaks and either vce at the end of school or or if you're going to order which is good if you want to do that yeah exactly or if you take a gap year you know it's peaky and then once you get back it just drops straight off because there's so many other distractions that come into play University everything that comes with that jobs all these all these options you have once your whole life's opened up and I think for a lot of kids Judaism kind of gets pushed down that list for a secular world opened up once you go - yeah yeah yeah so the the learning sessions are really focused on some really meaningful deep concepts it probably wouldn't be spoken about otherwise especially by people my age I think people responding really well to that because at the end of the day you know your brains are muscle and if you're not exercising your brain which a lot of us can really get by doing I think at university you don't have to be a hundred percent switched on to pass you know yeah you can you can kind of just roll through and and not really think critically which is you know people get a lot of yeah there's a lot of great feelings associated with that and and when you say yeah I think critically you're actually talking about not you're not your academic subject but the broader community yeah well that you live in yeah and yourself as well one of the things that awesome encourages the most is your own you know self development and there's so many things that we can always do to be better people so I'll give you some examples some some things that are that have been great you know I've learned about over the last couple years so things like the only disability in life is about attitude writing about the concept of darts connecting your intellect and and your emotions and that's like the true it's like the best way of being essentially the fact that your ego is trying to kill you or no trying to take that away the fact that there's there's there's really no point in ever being angry very you know a lot of the time these are these are things that you know 20 year olds 21 year olds anyone around that age isn't normally thinking about and they've created this place yeah that's true well yeah I think when we were over there on the trip in Israel there's this one speaker we have who his messages have your midlife crisis now it's quite interesting it's a bit extreme but essentially all the midlife crisis is it's a lot of unanswered questions you realize they're still unanswered quite away into your life so if you can tackle some of these questions and you can seek truth and try and really uncover the answer some of these things that may as well do it sooner rather than later yes yeah yes so so how did you become involved in awesome art and go to and what were you selected to go to allow me uh-oh the jLF conference yes that was that was a bit of a selection sort of right it was you know it wasn't a big deal but it was good to be over there and and chat with there were 40 40 of us from around the world well some obscure countries as well you know lots of lots of the South America's were represented that's quite a strong cohort so people from you know from Brazil and Chile and Uruguay all through their cellars that's it was all over North America Russia England Germany so yeah we was great to just talk about at different Jewish communities yeah and and see what works in different communities what doesn't the nuances of each community and I and I and I guess you had champagne what were the what were the things that were common fool you know cuz you're talking about people from all over the place I think one common thing yeah and and and keeping them um we are talking about a distinct sect of each community we're talking about the people that maybe you know have have this kind of spark of Jewishness within them that's not really being projected currently so one thing that we found for them is most people are attracted by really just the classic things so if you can have an event and it this might seem a bit shallow but if you an event with nice food and nice drinks will always bring people in a lot more and food breaking bread with people is one of the most important things and then I think I think the one other thing that was quite common was taking a topical issue or more of a modern news story and trying to tie that in to you know something from the Torah something Jewish and I think yeah I think that that seems to work really well all over the world so your yudish Kate was was really the common glue wasn't it yeah people from all over the world we just heard from from my Joanne from Mitzvah day and she was saying that's a worldwide organization it's in something like 40 countries as well including for instance she said including them maybe out which I've never heard of a Jewish community but there we are yeah so and you went with there were three other and you came back with a concept for an idea which i think is really really important because talking about connecting with with yiddish kate in our community is really important and attracting young people back to jewish organizations is really important so tell us about the consult well just going back to a previous question as well I think there was some similarities we found that there was definitely way more differences than similarities between the communities and what we came out with what the Australians were always talking about us for we were talking about that there's no one-size-fits-all approach and you know as much as you want it to work one concept or one model across a lot of different communities it doesn't really work like that and we we we started to realize that we think that Australian Melbourne and Sydney Jewish communities respond really well to just genuine genuineness and intimacy we summed it up into two words and I think to explain that concept you know if Gary if you were like going out and you wanted to you were looking to attract people to an event yeah some some sort of Jewish community events and I think what a lot of people maybe do and and is and it's a very logical thing to do they think well young people I'm trying to attract young people where young people they're on social media yeah so I'm gonna I'm gonna go on social media and I'm gonna set up an event there or a Facebook page send out invites and do it that way and I was actually simple that's true bullets Jeff yeah and and and but most importantly you think it's the most effective because that's where it's got like rich great reach the first thing I do when I finish your show that I put it on my Facebook page and I sit there and I email it to people so I actually it's actually quite funny last for two nights ago coincidently I was speaking with two ladies who were starting up something quite similar to the myths of the day it's this charity program and for geared it give it people my age and it's really a great program but they were explaining to me that last year they tried launching it on social media and it just fell flat on its face gain no traction no one really took notice of it and and that's you know when you're going on social media you're scrolling it's very a lot of the time you're not really taking in what you're saying even a hit is and is not necessarily connecting correct yeah and and and I think the most important thing is just cause you receive a facebook invitation for example many ways but a facebook invitation doesn't necessarily mean you'll feel welcomed or invited into an event unless maybe you know you know the person organizing the events or you know someone going if you're just someone in the community you can invite you're not gonna feel welcome so I think we realized that there's really no substitute for for just building genuine meaningful connections and and speaking to people in person and and building an event that way it seems to you know not just result in a lot of people coming to an event but people sticking around for the next event and because of that I'm saluting and that's people you know people just always respond well to to being contacted directly it makes them feel a lot more special obviously and yeah I think I think it's just been a misconception that our generation doesn't really appreciate that but I think maybe if people even people realize that they definitely do it's funny you say that because we're sitting here I'm just looking we're surrounded by it we've got our mobile phones with us because we're reading stuff on them and I've got a computer screen here and I've got my iPad here with something else on it and and we're surrounded by screens all we do is walk around we don't even look at where we're going anymore look at our screens what you're saying is that that's that's great to get information but it doesn't necessarily penetrate yeah I often you know I had the option of interviewing people across the desk like this or over the phone over the phone's nice especially my next my next guest this is based in Sydney so over the phone is a great way of doing it to get up but I don't have to get up but having an eyeball to eyeball conversation like we're doing across the desk now I I think it's far more effective so I I really agree with what you say about those concepts of genuineness and intimacy it means that we're actually engaging much more closely than if we were over the phone line so this feed into how should organisations go about inviting people well I think yeah it's it is tough I think one one thing awesome definitely has on its side is is the power of of that the trip they offer and what what happens on that trip when we go overseas to Israel you know not just not just the students but also the the people in charge of awesome we all get to really bond and build that connection that I was talking about and once we're back it's really easy to bring people other people into that loop and you know there's no there's very little disconnection between the people in charge of awesome people running the she rim and the students and yeah I think any any kind of retreat any kind of activity even as simple as you know booking a booking a basketball court you know going and playing a game of soccer just anything anything that you can do to bond with someone outside of of the of the realm of the medium yeah but also outside of the realm of the goal of the organization okay so bonding and building a connection for the sake of it not for the sake of bringing someone to the event you know if you can build a connection before you're trying to yeah I guess you know attract people to eat to your organization then when you actually come to them they'll trust you that's right alright hopefully they like being with ya if he's inviting me to this well he understands my best interest he knows that I'm gonna be interested in this because we have this connection and yeah I think people respond a lot better to that so I that's what I'd say some sort of bonding activity yeah whatever it might be so doesn't have to be an elaborate as a trip overseas but the trip has obviously changed the way you think about things yeah it's opened your eyes and I think it's obviously brought you closer to Jewish involvement sure although I know you went to his other year before on something else as well but I I mean yeah I was I'm one of these people who went on a gap year probably my Judaism peeked then once I got back yeah it really you know I realized well I've gone from I was a graduate of Mount Scopus and I've gone from having Jewish Studies classes and Hebrew classes almost every day yeah knowing about every car goes it's approach gene what it means and and I've come to this place where I really have nothing on during my week yes the Jewish involved isn't our usual yeah one exception of that is Zeus which is a great organization for my age they're they're they're similar in the sense that they just have a a meeting every Wednesday night will be talk about something something topical something challenging could be a guest speaker could be one of us running a program just a way to keep everyone involved that now you know now I've got awesome she Ramon on a Monday night I've got we have another meet up on a Thursday that's completely optional but people obviously still come to on a Friday where we've got this monthly minion which is doing really well attracting about 60 well about 60 people in university aged students which is actually which is really some really great numbers and then on the weekend there's plenty of options if you want to go to a Shoppers lunch or something like that and there's just so many things on our in the wave now yeah and and most importantly so many opportunities during the week to be thinking critically and to be having deep discussion with people you know your friends that you wouldn't be talking about these topics otherwise yeah it's great to be considering all this stuff and working on certain traits within your personality to try to prove them yeah it's all it's all good yeah Joe thanks for being with us yo are you've really opened our eyes up I think to on the importance of personal contact building networks and using your personality and that's that's really what it's about and as you say you can't really do that very well on social media ya know for sure so it's good to be here thanks Gary terrific thank you [Music]