In my synagogue, the place to be is Tot Shabbat. The attraction isn’t singing Bim-Bam, the animated stories told by the energetic leader, or the adorable parade of stuffed Torahs.

The draw is the social scene. As parents stand in a circle around the tots, invitations are extended for Shabbat lunch, plans are made for Saturday-night pizza, and notes are compared on movies and sports. Tot Shabbat is the social hub of the synagogue.

Jewish education is tied to life’s stages. Youth movements, summer camps and day schools cater to adolescents. Hillels and Birthright attract college students. For young families, nurseries, playgroups, and Tot Shabbat engage both children and their parents.

Tying programs to age cohorts works. We build community and affinity with those with similar experiences. Having a high school crush, choosing a university, cramming for finals, child rearing, and caring for aging parents are profound events that bind together those who experience them concurrently.  

Cohorts and life events, however, are changing faster than our community. As one example, federation young adult divisions target people ages 25 to 40. A generation or two ago, when there was a seamless movement from college to marriage to parenthood, this grouping worked, uniting individuals undergoing similar stages in life. Today, demographics have changed. More Jews are attending graduate school and engaging in other experiences between college and career. The average age of marriage has risen, as has the age of child bearing. The differences between a 25-year-old and a 40-year-old have been exaggerated by demographic and cultural shifts.

This is where I lie, in a cohort boxed out of Hillel and Birthright, but without children to take to Tot Shabbat. Jeffrey Arnett, a researcher in psychological development, calls us “emerging adults.” Our experiences differ from those in cohorts younger and older. We are post-college, young professionals or graduate students, single or married without children, establishing our first home outside a dormitory or our parents’ house. Attending events with college students is infantilizing, and we won’t allow bedtimes and babysitters to dictate our social calendar.

There are a variety of programs to reach out to this cohort. Birthright’s alumni community, Toronto’s JUMP – the Jewish Urban Meeting Place, and a number of synagogue efforts seek to reach emerging adults. While these are important efforts, the hodgepodge of programs needs to be buttressed by a systemic shift in understanding emerging adulthood. Just as we think systemically about the Jewish, educational, and social needs of teens, college students and young families, we also need to consider the unique need of emerging adults.

We are seeking community on our own terms, often outside the framework of existing institutions. We are more likely to go to a class in a friend’s living room than in the synagogue. We want our voice to be heard, but cannot pay the entry fee required by many committees. We want to merge our Jewish community with our social network, our Jewish lives with our postmodern living.

Tot Shabbat is fun, but it’s alienating for emerging adults. While the lackadaisical may say “they will return when they have children,” pragmatism forces us to re-engineer our thinking to address this new stage in active and creative ways that will establish a continual pathway of Jewish involvement from college to emerging adulthood to young families.