Cover Story

Born To Connect

Robyn Faintich

By Ann Marie Quilll; photography by Marcy J. Levinson

As senior agency director of the new Tribe Three-Sixty, which has replaced the Center for Jewish Education and Experiences (CJEe), Robyn Faintich's job, as well as her passion, is getting Jewish kids connected.

The St. Louis native explains that she doesn't like some of the Atlanta Federation's centennial population study statistics she has reviewed: of the 9,700 teens in Jewish Atlanta's community, at most only 1,200 are engaged Jewishly; 67 percent of teens in intermarried families have not had any Jewish education; and 89 percent of Jewish teens in Atlanta are enrolled in public or non-Jewish schools.

But Faintich has hope for the future of Atlanta's Jewish kids. She becomes flushed with excitement when she talks about Tribe Three-Sixty's plans to Jewishly engage our community's youth. The revamped agency was launched July 1 after Faintich moved here last August to work with CJEe and evaluate how the organization could enhance its efforts to get Jewish teens excited about Judaism.

Hence the birth of Tribe Three-Sixty, which, with the motto "Atlanta's hub for today's Jewish youth," will offer innovative programming for eighth- through 12th-graders beginning this school year. (Read more about the programming and the transition from CJEe to Tribe Three-Sixty at www.JTonline.us.)

intich's passion for becoming Jewishly involved and connected started well before the birth of Tribe Three-Sixty, though. "I am blessed to have parents and grandparents who invested in my Jewish future," she says. "They understood that what I needed or wanted was different from my brothers."

She says her mother realized the need for personalized education. When Faintich was growing up in a Reform congregation in St. Louis, her mother was the religious school curriculum director. "It was the worst Jewish education I have ever had," she says.

Her mother, realizing Faintich's need for a different experience, hired a tutor for her — a local university student named Joanne Lipshutz, who is now, coincidentally, a teacher at the Weber School.

When Faintich got to high school, she says, there were a large number of teens who belonged to United Synagogue Youth (USY), a Conservative youth group.

"When they found out I was Jewish, they asked if I wanted to participate," she says. "I realized through some embarrassing moments that I didn't know what others knew. I knew on Shabbat there was no driving, no turning on lights, but I didn't know there was no writing. I didn't know there was more than one fast day. I didn't know studying was a tradition at Shavuot. That's when I discovered, even though my mother was the curriculum director, my Jewish education failed me."

But those setbacks didn't stop Faintich. Among other experiences, she went to the Alexander Muss High School in Israel her junior year and was nominated to the St. Louis Youth Leadership Council. "I'm a culmination of every great teen experiential Jewish youth opportunity," Faintich says. "My parents invested in each one of these things. Each requires a time and financial commitment."

When Faintich graduated from high school and attended Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, she found that the college did not have a Hillel. Faintich went to the local Federation to request funding to start a Jewish student club and became the founding coordinator for the Jewish Student Alliance in Des Moines.

"It's in my blood to create Jewish community," she says.

When Faintich graduated from college in 1995 with a journalism degree, she began working as a marketing associate. But "I was done with the real world. I wanted to be a professional Jew," she says.

The stars aligned, and Faintich moved to Dallas for a job as marketing director for a synagogue. Five weeks later, the shul started looking for a family education program director, and Faintich was game. Before coming to Tribe Three-Sixty, Faintich was director of youth education at the Bureau of Jewish Education in Orange County, Calif.

"I want to be a full-time professional Jew and give the kind of experiences I was given," Faintich says.