Get involved with EA for Jews

Shalom and welcome to EA for Jews!

We are excited to have you join us. The following provides an overview of what we aim to achieve and several ways you can get involved as a volunteer. To express interest in volunteering or to learn more fill out this quick form, and email us with any questions!  

EA for Jews’ organizational objectives

EA for Jews has two key objectives:

• Share EA ideas with the broader Jewish community: we think there are lots of synergies between EA and Judaism and we observe that many Jews are already involved. We want to contribute to more Jews getting involved in EA by reaching out to synagogues, student groups and other communities.
• Create a community and network of Jewish EAs: there are already lots of people involved and we hope that people will have more of a sense of community and develop helpful connections.

Much of what we do to achieve this will look similar to local EA groups and other faith-based groups. For example, we will give introductory talks, run community events, arrange 1-1 career and donations advice, and facilitate connections between members. However, we are also excited about developing new programmes and approaches which we feel may be effective with the Jewish community, such as a Bar Mitzvah fellowship or giving drives around particular festivals. 

Towards the end of 2021, we launched our website internally within the EA community and over 100 people joined our Facebook group. In the next few months, we are focusing on building our organisational capacity and creating our first set of materials, ready to begin reaching out to the broader Jewish community.

Ways you can help

Like many EA groups, we rely on a team of volunteers to help guide our strategy and deliver on our objectives. We are grateful for everyone who wishes to contribute their time, but we are also mindful that people’s time commitments vary. With this in mind, there are three main ways you can volunteer.

1. Serve on our organizing committee

Firstly, you could take on one of our committee roles, which involves an ongoing commitment of as little as 2 hours per week. This is especially valuable to us as it allows us to build a reliable team structure, and it also lets you take more ownership over our direction.

Our current committee roles are as follows:

• Content and comms (high priority): helping run our social media channels, writing new content and soliciting blogs from members
• Community engagement (high priority): reaching out to new community members (“welcome wagon”), training new volunteers and ambassadors, checking in with people, facilitating mentorship or career connections 
• Outreach: contacting key Jewish communities and arranging talks and programmes to be given by our volunteers
• Events and programs: organising in-person and virtual events for introducing EA, discussing EA themes, community-building etc   

2. Assist with or take the lead on new programmes and individual projects

If a regular commitment doesn’t suit you, there are often individual tasks which you can contribute to, perhaps working ad hoc with a committee member or taking the lead yourself. Some of these are smaller tasks, but we also welcome volunteers leading or building individual programmes and campaigns under the wider EA for Jews banner.  

Some examples of programmes and projects you can assist with or take the lead on are as follows:

• An intro presentation (with sections edited for different audiences and topics discussed above)
• A blog post with your perspective on EA and Judaism or an idea you’d like to share
• A program to be used on a particular Jewish holiday or life event, for instance
  • A passover seder that discusses EA themes
  • A shabbat dinner program
  • Other Jewish holidays like a Tu’Bishvat seder or a purim skit or program
• An EA for Jews intro fellowship
• An EA retreat for a particular Jewish demographic (e.g. Orthodox students in the UK, Reform young adults on the East Coast)
• An intro programme for Bar/Bat Mitzvah aged Jews
• Another event or program either online, locally to you or within your community

2. Serve as an EA for Jews ambassador

Finally, you can serve as an EA for Jews Ambassador. Ambassadors are EA for Jews members who speak to their local community (for instance a synagogue, youth group, university group, or community group) about EA concepts using materials and training that we provide. For instance you could:

• Give an introductory presentation on EA and Judaism 
  • Give a more in depth presentation on EA, Judaism and career choice
  • Give a more in depth presentation on EA, Judaism and effective giving
• Lead a “giving circle” or “giving game” 
• Facilitate an intro or in depth fellowship (a reading group on topics in EA and Judaism)
• Lead a retreat for a particular demographic (e.g. Orthodox students in the UK, Reform young adults on the East Coast)
• Lead an intro programme for Bar/Bat Mitzvah aged Jews
• Lead other events either online or in your community 

We are in the process of producing these programme materials to be used by ambassadors, if you would like to assist with their creation that is another great way to get involved! 

Next steps and keeping in touch

If there are particular roles or tasks you’re interested in or if you would like to learn more about any of the options above, please email us to discuss!

And if you haven’t already, we recommend joining the Facebook group (and inviting any friends who may be interested). We also have monthly speed-friending socials which you can attend to meet other Jews interested in EA!

If you’d like to volunteer, we recommend joining the volunteers’ Slack channel here. We also hold bi-weekly check-in meetings at which we: (a) share updates on what the team has achieved, (b) go through upcoming priorities and tasks for volunteers to take on, (c) sometimes discuss a specific strategy or brainstorm question. You will see those advertised on the general channel within our Slack workspace.  

We’d love to hear from you if you’d like to get involved – please reach out to us and we’ll take things from there! 🙂  

EA for Jews quick links:

• Contact email: shalom@eaforjews.org 
• Website:  eaforjews.org
• Newsletter:   eaforjews.org/newsletter 
• Facebook group:  facebook.com/groups/eaforjews 
• Facebook page:  facebook.com/eaforjews 
• Volunteers’ Slack workspace: https://join.slack.com/t/eaforjews/shared_invite/zt-ty72rwnl-1BG5f7q69BflYJ3hQdeKEQ  
• Bi-weekly volunteers meeting link: https://zoom.us/j/97007091195