Toward the end of this year, I found myself thinking less about how much we do and more about what we choose to make time for.
Time, it turns out, is the real measure of values.
This realization came to me through Stories from the Tribe — our signature event that many of you have experienced in the past 2 years. While it is Jewfolk’s primary fundraising event and the goal is to raise money to support our operations, it actually asks for something rarer and harder to protect:
Attention. Care. Slowness.
Stories from the Tribe resists efficiency. It requires thoughtful curation, rehearsal, and presence. It asks us to gather people in a room and trust that listening — real listening — still matters. In a world that rewards speed and scale, it insists on something else entirely: sitting together long enough to be changed.
Every time we do it, the same magic happens. People laugh together. They grow quiet together, and often they cry together. They hear a story that could only be told here — by this person, in this moment, in this community — and they leave knowing something new about their neighbors, and often about themselves.
What clicked for me this year is that the moment doesn’t end when the last story does. People linger. They want to talk. They want to connect with the storytellers, and with each other. The stories open something in each of us, and no one is in a hurry to close it.
That understanding has stayed with me as I’ve reflected on 2025 — a year that asked Jewfolk to grow not just outward, but inward.
This was a year of strength-building. Of learning what it means to be a multi-city organization without becoming a diluted one. Of continuing to deepen our work in the Twin Cities while planting real roots in Cincinnati — not as an experiment, but as a community that belongs to itself.
It was also a year of infrastructure — the kind that doesn’t show up in a headline, but quietly determines whether something can last. Being selected for Project Accelerate affirmed what we were already sensing: that Jewfolk’s mission is resonant, our model is working, and the next chapter asks us to be as intentional about sustainability as we are about storytelling.
That same instinct to slow down, to listen closely, and to make space on purpose has been shaping the next evolution of our engagement work. In the final months of 2025, we quietly began laying the groundwork for FolkLab, a new platform for Jewish learning, experimentation, and connection that grows directly out of years of paying attention to what our community is asking for.
FolkLab isn’t about prescribing answers, and it’s definitely not about rolling out “programs.” It’s about creating room: for curiosity, for learning together, for trying something and seeing what happens. Like everything we do at Jewfolk, it starts with people and stories and builds connective tissue from there. It’s one more way we’re extending Jewfolk beyond content and into relationship. We’re excited to share more with you in the coming weeks!
Holding the planning, the possibility, and the care it takes to build something thoughtfully made what happened next feel especially meaningful.
At our staff retreat in November, I had an unexpected moment of clarity. As we talked and intentionally made space for attention, reflection, and slowness, I realized that the people around the table aren’t just building Jewfolk. They belong to it (and not in the way one usually belongs to a Jewish organization).
They spoke in that room about the work the way people talk about a community they care about deeply — with ownership, thoughtfulness, and a sense of shared responsibility. Jewfolk isn’t just where they work. It is part of their Jewish story, too. In sharing this realization with board members at our meeting a few weeks ago, they all echoed this sentiment, sharing anecdotes about how the mission touches them personally.
That realization mattered to me more than any metric. Organizations don’t become that by accident. They become that when values are lived, not just articulated. This shared purpose and caring shows up in how decisions are made, how stories are told, and how people are treated.
As we look ahead to 2026, that clarity is guiding us.
We are continuing to grow — into new communities (please G-d!), new partnerships, new forms of engagement — but not at the expense of what makes Jewfolk feel human. We are investing in systems so that our creativity can be sustained. We are making space for leadership, collaboration, and new voices. And we are leaning into the places where connection wants to happen naturally — giving people not just content, but opportunities to see and know one another.
Jewfolk has never been about broadcasting at people. It has always been about standing with them — listening, reflecting, connecting.
As this year closes, I’m deeply grateful: for the storytellers who trust us with their words, for the audiences who show up with open hearts, for the donors and partners who believe that this work is worth sustaining, and for a staff, board, and each of you who sees Jewfolk not just as an organization, but as a community.
Here’s to 2026 — to lingering a little longer, listening a little more closely, and continuing to build something meaningful together.