An event about the future of Jewish peoplehood should be full of its future. This one wasn’t.

A concern that has been sitting quietly in the back of my mind about Jewish communal continuity came into sharper focus at the Z3 conference in San Diego. It was not the content that troubled me. Several sessions were unusually substantive, featuring academics who rarely appear in mainstream forums. The organizers clearly invested in thoughtful, serious programming. What unsettled me was not what was being said on stage, but who was there to hear it.

Despite the conference’s forward-looking themes, the audience was overwhelmingly older. Close to ninety percent of attendees were well into their seventies and beyond. This is not a critique of older adults. They have sustained Jewish communal life for decades, their commitment is admirable, and their continued presence shows how we should never “age out” of these conversations. But their near-total presence at a gathering dedicated to a “future” of Jewish peoplehood raised a persistent alarm. If these are the conversations meant to shape the next generation, why is the next generation not in the room?

This disconnect became especially clear during a session titled “Young Zionists.” The panelists included thoughtful individuals in their twenties and early thirties who spoke about identity and leadership. They were also, notably, some of the only people under forty in the room, aside from a couple of tables of high-school students and yours truly. I sat near these teens and recognized the familiar choreography: the fidgeting, the whispering,........

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