Staff Writer

Xania Woodman came to Washington, D.C., this week to find new ways to attract people to her Jewish young leaders group in Las Vegas. And the 29-year-old said she was excited by some of what she heard at the United Jewish Communities Washington 15 Conference for young leaders.

"I was impressed with how outside the box they were willing to think," she said of a Monday panel discussion on outreach to the unaffiliated. "I never considered a bike-a-thon across Israel" as a way to get people involved, referring to an event sponsored by the Jewish environmental group Hazon.

Woodman was one of a number of delegates who came to the three-day conference at the Washington Hilton in the District looking for ways to bring more young Jews into Jewish communal activities.

Erica Brown, scholar-in-residence at the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, laid out the challenge at Sunday's opening plenary session by asking the more than 1,000 conference attendees "who succeeds you" as leaders of the Jewish community. While Generation Y, those Jews born in 1981 and after, are "doing Jewish differently" than their elders ‹ proclaiming their identity in creative ways like Jewish tattoos or T-shirts ‹ Brown said that the younger generation "does not care about institutions or affiliation."

"The American Jewish community spent the past 100 years building institutions," said Brown, who is also director of adult education and academics for the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning. But how, she wondered, does the community keep that "alphabet soup" of institutions going if people don't understand what being Jewish means in a larger context.

At the discussion Woodman attended on Monday, panelists discussed ways their organizations have been appealing to unaffiliated Jews throughout the country.

Hazon founder and director Nigel Savage said his organization "is not interested in outreach."

"There's something implicitly arrogant in outreach" because one is being told: "I know how you should live your life."

Instead, Hazon ‹ with activities such as environmental bike rides and community-supported agriculture collective ‹ is "creating Jewish experiences and letting people engage on their own terms."

"None of us needs to be everything in Jewish life," he added, but each organization can be seen as part of a "tapestry."

By funding promising young Jewish artists, the Six Points Fellowship is attracting Jews through cultural offerings, said fellowship director Rebecca Guber.

As an example, she cited a concert the fellowship sponsored this past Rosh Hashanah eve at a New York City cultural center featuring Ashkenazi cantorial music blended with blues and world beat sounds, which drew 500 people.

Guber said afterward that attending such an event is "an authentic Jewish experience" and "meaningful," but shouldn't be viewed as only a gateway to bringing people into other communal activities. In response to a question during the discussion about how one measures whether such programs are having a meaningful impact on participants, Guber said the organization is working with a social psychologist who pulls people aside at shows and follows up weeks and months later to ask "how does this fit into the rest of your life."

Rabbi Elie Kaunfer spoke about founding Kehilat Hadar, an egalitarian, lay-led prayer and study community in New York City. The Hadar model has spread to 50 minyanim throughout the country in the past seven years, including D.C. Minyan in Washington, and Kaunfer now heads Mechon Hadar to help link those various communities.

"There was no davening community that [spoke] to us," Kaunfer said, speaking for himself and his fellow Hadar co-founders. "We ended up focusing on how to attract ourselves."

Judith Hellerstein of the District said such minyanim are increasingly popular among younger Jews in D.C. An organizer of the Ruach Minyan, which started in a Van Ness apartment building and now meets two Fridays a month at Adas Israel Congregation for a spirited Friday night service and catered Shabbat dinner, Hellerstein, who is in her early 40s, said younger Jews "want something that's real" as well as "homegrown."

Such groups provide that by offering a Jewish service filled with singing and then providing a venue to socialize with friends.

Hellerstein, though, said that while she was hopeful that such minyanim and other new ideas are attracting people to events with Jewish content, the conference hadn't answered an important question: How do you get those Jews connected to the rest of the community?

Many, she said, "don't want to be affiliated" with big community institutions like federations because they feel they will have more freedom on their own.

Other delegates stressed the importance of providing opportunities for Jews to meet and socialize, such as attending happy hours or hearing speakers who appeal to a wide swath of the community.

"You need to diversity events," said Rockville's Ivan Snyder, 32, campaign co-chair for the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington's Next Gen group.

"Whatever gets you there," said Woodman, stressing that new ideas still must coexist with more traditional events for those who are more accustomed to such activities.

"It depends on the person," but individuals must "feel their voice is being heard and that they can really make a difference," said Chicago's Tristin Goldberg, 33, citing programs aimed at helping world Jewry and Israel as attractive.

But another delegate, 36-year-old Debi Albert of Atlanta, said there is only so much others can do to spark a love for Judaism in their friends and colleagues.

"They have to find it themselves," she said. It has to be "second nature" to them, she added.

The conference, as usual, mixed political advocacy, social action, pop culture and partying. Monday evening was highlighted by a screening of the Academy Award-winning film, The West Bank Story, followed by a discussion with filmmaker Ari Sandel.

Programming kicked off Sunday afternoon with a brief videotaped message from magician David Blaine. He said he couldn't attend because he was preparing for his "next challenge," but paid for the conference expenses of two attendees at random by selecting two playing cards from a deck and matching them with cards left on the seats of conference delegates.

Following that, NBC chief White House correspondent David Gregory talked about how he discovered the importance of Judaism in his life. In a conversation with Brown, with whom he has been studying Jewish texts since September, Gregory recounted how he was brought up Jewish ‹ son of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother ‹ with a sense of "peoplehood and tradition," but not much "theology or spirituality." But, with the encouragement of his non-Jewish wife, it was "enough to carry me to a sense of identity" and give him a desire to "probe further" the question of "Why be Jewish?"

"What I decided was [that] what mattered was not just a sense of actual knowledge" or attending High Holiday services, "it was to understand how to live Jewishly ... [and] find daily meaning in Judaism."

So now "Shabbat has become a lot more important to me" as a way to "stop and think about what matters most to me ... what kind of father and husband I want to be." And he says a bedtime Sh'ma with his children as a way to model Judaism for them and "create a Jewish narrative in their lives that's not just obligatory."

"I was born into a tradition," he said. "Who am I to let it slip through my fingers?"