Assembling Community

A gathering for the people building Jewish life on the ground—and across the field

Downtown Chicago, October 26–28, 2026
Hosted by Assembly

Across Jewish communal life, there are many places to gather.

We gather by denomination, profession, institution, and network. We gather to talk about leadership, strategy, education, innovation, fundraising, and the future of Jewish life.

But there are very few spaces devoted entirely to the craft of building Jewish community itself.

How do we help people move from attendance to belonging?
How do we design Jewish experiences that remain relationally alive after the program ends?
How do we bring Torah, ritual, conversation, hospitality, and human attention together in ways that help people find one another?

You're invited.

Assembly invites you to Assembling Community, a gathering for people practicing this craft at different levels: those inviting, gathering, teaching, and connecting people directly—and those shaping the institutions, networks, resources, and strategies that allow relational community-building to flourish.

Some participants are sending the invitation, hosting the table, facilitating the conversation, and helping the next person step into leadership.

Others are asking how to align a team, reshape an institution, strengthen a network, or influence a field so that this work becomes more coherent, supported, and widespread.

Jewish life needs both.

Because Jewish community is not built by programs alone. It is built through:

Personal invitation.
Careful listening.
The art of the one-on-one.
The choreography of a room.
Learning circles, Shabbat tables, acts of hospitality, meaningful follow-up, shared responsibility, and the thousand small gestures that help people feel seen, known, and needed.

Relationships are not the soft part of the work. They are at the center of it.

Why this gathering, why now?

Lasting, vibrant Jewish communities do not simply happen. They are intentionally built.

People are seeking connection that goes deeper than attendance and lasts longer than inspiration. Some arrive at Jewish experiences carrying longing, uncertainty, hope, or questions they do not yet know how to ask. Many others remain just beyond our reach.

Yet our communal systems are often better designed to count people, email them, and invite them to another event than to receive them into real relationship.

Many organizations hold extraordinary Jewish wisdom but struggle to translate it into lived community. Others are skilled at gathering people but are searching for greater Jewish depth and substance.

And even where powerful relational work is happening, it is often sustained by one gifted practitioner rather than supported by the larger institution or ecosystem.

Assembling Community is an opportunity to change that: to strengthen the people doing the work directly and the leaders creating the conditions around them.

Who should come?

I'm interested.

People building community person by person

People building the conditions for community to flourish

Rabbis, educators, engagement professionals, program leaders, organizers, facilitators, hosts, and institutional entrepreneurs who are actively inviting, gathering, teaching, connecting, and cultivating belonging.

You may work in a synagogue, JCC, federation, campus, national organization, independent initiative, startup, or local Jewish ecosystem.

Senior leaders, funders, network-builders, strategists, and field-builders working to strengthen relational Jewish life across an institution, community, network, or field.

You are asking how excellent community-building can become more than the instinct of a few exceptional people: how it can be taught, modeled, resourced, reinforced, and woven into the culture of an organization or ecosystem.

Participants will share a core immersive experience, with opportunities to translate the learning through the responsibilities, questions, and leverage of their own roles.

This is a room for people who want to say, with pride and relief:

These are my people. This is my craft. This is the work I came here to do.

What we will do together

Over three days, we will learn, practice, experiment, and gather, exploring how to better:

Invite people in ways that feel personal, warm, and real.
Build trust through intentional one-on-one conversations.
Study Torah and translate Jewish wisdom into communal practice.
Facilitate conversations that move beyond politeness toward genuine connection.
Listen deeply, cultivate shared ownership, and help people step into leadership.
Design experiences that move people from passive participation to active belonging.
Recognize and work through the fears and sticking points that inhibit relational action.
Build teams, cultures, and systems that support excellent community-building practice.

Meals, tables, song, storytelling, seating, lighting, ritual, and hospitality will not simply surround the curriculum. They will be part of it.

Throughout the gathering, we will return to two questions:

What will I do differently with the people I am gathering next week?
What must change within my team, institution, network, or ecosystem so that this work can take root and spread?

What makes this different

This is not a conference where you sit in rows, collect notes, and return home with a tote bag full of ideas you may or may not use.

Assembling Community is part retreat, part lab, part beit midrash, part professional development, and part field-building experiment.

You will enter an intentionally crafted experience in which the form teaches alongside the content. Every invitation, prompt, transition, table assignment, conversation, and gathering moment will offer something to notice.

And we will pull back the curtain as we go.

Why did this invitation work?
What helped that room come alive?
How did a group move from polite conversation into real trust?
What made a teaching land?
Where did people experience friction?
How could a leader or institution make experiences like this easier to create consistently?

You will experience the work, examine how it was built, and practice adapting it for your own setting.

Bringing the learning home

Assembling Community is designed to move from insight into action.

Every participant will develop an Applied Practice Project: a small-group experience that brings people together around meaningful content, real conversation, and relationship-based community-building.

Your project might gather people in a neighborhood or congregation, colleagues within an organization, members of a professional network, or leaders in a cohort you support.

It is not intended to become a major new program or an additional layer of infrastructure. In most cases, it will be a light and flexible extension of work already underway.

You do not need to be a professional teacher or have every detail figured out before you begin. You need a group of people, a willingness to gather them with care, and a desire to create a space where people encounter both Jewish tradition and one another.

Assembly will provide curriculum, guidance, and follow-up support to help you bring the project to life.

What participants will carry home

Participants will leave with:

A clearer understanding of their role in the larger work of building Jewish community.
A shared language for relationship-based community-building.
Practical tools for recruitment, one-on-ones, facilitation, experience design, listening, and leadership development.
New ways to integrate Torah, ritual, and Jewish meaning into communal life.

A plan for applying the learning in direct practice, across an institution, or throughout a network or ecosystem.
A peer network of practitioners, institutional leaders, and field-builders.
An accountability partner to support continued action.
A ready-to-launch Applied Practice Project.
Pathways for continued learning through Assembly trainings, communities of practice, and future certificate opportunities.

Cost & subsidies

The true cost of participation is $2,500 per person.

Thanks to generous support, subsidies are available up to the full cost of attendance. We want cost to be as little of a barrier as possible for aligned participants.

Those with access to professional development funds, continuing education funds, organizational training budgets, or other institutional support are encouraged to contribute at the level available to them. These contributions help make it possible to gather a broad and diverse group of community builders from across the field.

Each participant will also receive a $250 microgrant to help offset travel costs. The microgrant will be disbursed after the convening, once the participant’s Applied Practice Project is underway—supporting both the journey to Chicago and the work carried home.

The larger invitation

At its heart, Assembling Community is about helping Jewish communities find their way back to one another.

Back to trust. Back to shared practice. Back to the table. Back to Jewish tradition that is lived, not only learned. Back to gatherings where people do not simply attend, but belong.

We believe the future of Jewish life will be built by people who know how to weave relationships, meaning, and practice together—and by leaders and institutions willing to create the conditions in which that work can flourish.

Person by person. Room by room. Institution by institution. Ecosystem by ecosystem. Artfully, courageously, and again and again.

If that is the work you are doing, or the work you are longing to do, we hope you will join us.

Assembly invites you to come be part of the room where this craft is named, practiced, refined, strengthened, and carried home.

Want to join us?

Fill out our Interest Form