Monday, November 30, 2015

Why Judaism Needs Velcro

Why do we remember all the details of every urban legend we hear, but can’t remember the last PowerPoint presentation we saw?

That’s the question that brothers Chip and Dan Heath tackle in their outstanding book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Die and Others Thrive. The book answers the questions “What causes us to remember some things and not others? What makes something ‘stick’?”

Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly), for an idea to stick, the how matters a lot more than the what. After all, how many amazing stories have you shared on Facebook, only to realize later that they were hoaxes? Or, on the flip side, how many terrific educational ideas have you heard at conferences, only to have forgotten them even before you implemented them?

In other words, just because is an idea is good, it doesn’t mean that we will remember it. As we all know, bad ideas can be just as “sticky” as good ones, and far too many good ideas have been lost because they weren’t presented well.

So for those of us who care about Judaism and the Jewish future, then, we can’t just focus on the next big idea, or create more content, or believe that “if we build it, they will come.” Instead, if we want Judaism to “stick” for our students, we need to be intentional about how we do it.

And what we need is Velcro.

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