When most of our energy goes toward fixing what just broke, we have less time to ask what we would like to create when nothing is on fire.

The Jewish people are not always great at seeing the next crisis coming. After October 7, I saw people in Israel open their homes to families displaced by the war, many of whom they had never met before. Friends abroad were suddenly spending their evenings figuring out who needed housing, where money was needed, or who knew the right person to solve very specific problems. A lot of it was improvised, and somehow most of it worked.

I admire this about us. Our capacity to mobilize for one another has helped Jewish communities recover from situations that felt impossible. It also shapes the way we think.

However, when you spend enough time responding to emergencies, the emergency starts to become the plan. You become very good at protecting what exists and less accustomed to asking what should exist next.

As an investor, I once worked with a company that had developed new technology and had real interest from large companies, but struggled to acquire actual customers. They were having the right conversations with the right people, but months went by without anything moving forward.

So instead of looking at each stalled conversation on its own, we started at the end. If the goal was a signed agreement, what had to happen right before that? And what had to happen even ten steps before that? We worked backwards until we could see the full path from an interested customer to closing an actual deal.

Once we did that, it became much clearer where things were getting stuck, who needed to be involved, and what we could change.

It sounds obvious, but it changed the way we looked at the problem. Instead of saying, “we need to sell more,” we had a series of specific action items we could actually work on.

At work, this strategy feels pretty natural. When we set our goals for the upcoming year, we first look at the finish line, and then determine what it will take to get there. We figure out what has to happen along the way, who needs to do what, and whether we are making progress or just staying busy. In this way, the future shifts from being an idea our companies hope to reach to one they start planning for.

For some reason, we are much less comfortable building our shared Jewish future with intentionality.

We are known for optimism, especially the Israeli version: yihye beseder. It will be fine. And often, it is. But it is not a vision. It is definitely not a plan.

Now is the time for serious reflection. What does Jewish life look like in a time of prosperity, not only in one of danger? How do we build a strong Jewish identity when survival is not the main thing holding us together? What values can still connect Jews in Israel, the US, France, Argentina, or anywhere else, even when so much else about our lives is different?

We do not need one answer. That would be suspiciously un-Jewish. But we should have a thesis.

Israel and Diaspora Jews have learned how connected our futures are. What happens in Israel is felt by Jewish communities everywhere, and what happens to those communities is felt in Israel.

That means we are already shaping one another’s future, whether we plan it or not.

There is an enormous amount of talent, experience, creativity, time, money, and energy across the Jewish world. We are very good at putting it to work when something goes wrong. I am curious what we could do with it if we brought the same urgency to deciding what we want to create, not only to fixing what just broke.

We do not need one grand plan for the Jewish people. It would probably fail before the first meeting ended. But having a direction, a few things we think are worth pursuing, and some idea of how to get there seems like a reasonable place to start.

If we are already sharing a future, we might as well spend more time building it with purpose.