On Oct. 8, the Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies announced the official national launch of its JData.com project from the Brandeis House in New York, which is intended to strengthen "the Jewish education system with high-quality, publicly-available, user-driven data," according to it's website. JData.com intends to address the lack of a consolidated research database for those involved in Jewish education, according to Project Director Amy Sales in an Oct. 21st interview with the Justice. JData also creates possibilities for further philanthropic work within the Jewish community by allowing users to use the statistics and reports compiled by the website to understand where and how resources are currently allocated, influencing donors' decisions regarding where they choose to donate.

The JData project is sponsored by the Jim Joseph Foundation, which the foundation's website states is "devoted exclusively to supporting education of Jewish youth" and was founded by Jim Joseph, a generous supporter of different Jewish organizations during his lifetime. The board of the Jim Joseph Foundation presented the Cohen Center with a grant for $1.5 million for its JData project.

Sales explained in an interview with the Justice that in the past, anyone wanting to study the field of Jewish education had to start "from square one," meaning that he or she had to collect basic data on the state of Jewish education before getting to the more specific topics of study that he or she was researching. This was because there was no consolidated, organized collection of statistics or facts on the current state of Jewish education.

In an interview with the Justice, Cohen Center Research Specialist Emily Einhorn explained that Amy Sales' 2006 paper, "Philanthropic Lessons from Mapping Jewish Education" first sparked interest in the idea of studying, compiling and comparing Jewish education around the country. This paper helped inspire the Jim Joseph Foundation and the Cohen Center to think about creating a database that could "support the field of Jewish education and raise the level, quality and accessibility of information about the field," according to Sales' interview with the Justice.

The Cohen Center launched a pilot phase of JData.com in 2008, which worked with the Jewish communities within San Francisco and Boston to collect data from organizations like day schools, camps, child care centers, youth groups and Hebrew Schools. In 2009 and 2010, this pilot expanded to include 10 communities around the country.

Since the launch, the Cohen Center has continued the process of encouraging more community involvement around the United States. Einhorn told the Justice that confidentiality concerns as well as hesitation in moving from "pen and paper" to a digitized system are issues stopping some communities from signing on; however, the Foundation for Jewish Camps will use JData for its annual census report.

Einhorn stated that the Cohen Center is hoping that JData will essentially be the "Common Application" for Jewish education, which, like the standardized undergraduate admissions form, would serve as a centralized starting point of information from which further supplemental research and work can begin.

Furthermore, the growth and expansion of the project allows for the increase of what Sales called "engagement capabilities." Still, Sales noted that using JData for engagement purposes rather than research would be a "byproduct" of the site's design. She noted that the JData team plans to "hold to the core of research." In an interview with the Justice, Sales explained that as more organizations join JData, community members, ranging from parents to donors to organizers, will be able to use the website as a starting point for research on possibilities for engagement in their communities.

The website also presents the possibility for a more fact-driven system, allowing school and synagogue boards and Federation presidents to make decisions based on concrete facts without the immense resources usually required to pursue studies about about the current state of Jewish education according to Einhorn. Einhorn explained that JData would make statistics regarding the allocation of funds and resources in the field of Jewish education more accessible to the public.

Sales told the Justice that she believes JData.com is a revolution for the world of Jewish education, since "in providing this information, ... it is requiring a major change in how people think and operate who are running Jewish educational institutions.