ACRE Blog

The following remarks were delivered by Dr. Maury Hoberman, Trustee of the Lasko Family Foundations, during the 2nd Annual ACRE Conference on October 15, 2009. 

On Thursday, October 15, 2009, Dr. Tobin Belzer presented the Keynote talk at the 2nd Annual ACRE Conference.  Her topic was, "How Post-Boomers" engage with the Jewish Community."  Here is a summary of her presentation.

Belzer began her talk by defining two key phrases important to discussions of young adults: emerging adulthood and post-boomers. In the past 50 years, what most people experience during the years between age 18 to 35 in industrialized societies has dramatically changed. Instead of entering young adulthood - the developmental stage marked by long-term commitments to family and vocation - in their early twenties, most people now postpone these transitions. Scholarly attention to this change has increased in recent years and is now widely referred to as emerging adulthood. Those who currently occupy this new life-cycle stage are post-boomers. Belzer explained why the term "post-boomer" provides a useful way to think about young adults today. Drawing upon the insight of sociologists Don Miller and Richard Flory, Belzer explained that attempts to differentiate the subtle differences between how one age cohort is monolithically characterized in relations to others (e.g. how Millennials compare to GenXers), tends to decrease the terms' explanatory value. Instead, the term post-boomer refers to young adults whose formative experiences have been colored by significant social and cultural developments unique to their time and place in history. Just as baby boomers had multiple responses to such things as Vietnam and the "sixties," so too do post-boomers' responses to their experiences vary.

Chevre,

Many people, including me, have expressed some skepticism about the use of Twitter for educational purposes.  I have multiple Twitter accounts and rarely use them for such "high level" activity.  But much has been written about the added value of using Twitter for education, including conferences.