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With much of the organized Jewish community preoccupied with figuring out how to appeal to young adult Jews, one researcher thinks the bar should be set a bit higher -- in years, that is.

"The reality is there are twice as many baby boomers as there are people in the 20-35 age cohort and we have no understanding of what these people are going to do," David Elcott, the Henry and Marilyn Taub Professor of Practice in Public Service and Leadership at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, told The Jewish State.

Elcott is the author of a new report that examines the potential landscape of the Jewish community as many baby boomers enter into the second phase of their careers.

The report was conducted under the auspices of New York University's Berman Jewish Policy Archive and the Wagner Research Center for Leadership in Action.

Based on the responses of 12,000 Jewish baby boomers conducted by Jewish federations in 34 communities across the country, the study looks at the implications as this group seeks work in public service and other volunteer opportunities, what are known as "encore careers."

"You have got people in their 60s and 70s who are actually at the height of their financial capacity and have honed skills and their children have now left home and they're looking for something interesting to do and meaningful to do," Elcott explained. "And in the case of baby boomers, who were deeply affected by the late '60s' early '70s sense of 'we can change the world,' then we don't know what they are going to do."

The study found that 86 percent of boomers said they would be interested in working for a Jewish organization as part of an encore career, while only 37 percent said they would prefer to work for the Jewish community. Sixty percent of respondents said that either Jewish or non-Jewish would be acceptable.

Baby boomers are looking for encore careers they find meaningful, regardless of whether those opportunities are Jewish or not, according to the study.

"What was clear in the study is that the preference would be to do it through the Jewish community, but if ... the Jewish community doesn't provide them the meaning they're seeking, they will go elsewhere," Elcott said. "And that's the radical shift between this generation and the war generation."

The organized Jewish community must therefore find ways to appeal to this demographic, Elcott contends. Otherwise, Jewish organizations will lose many in the most populous and financially prosperous group of American Jews. Among non-Orthodox Jews, furthermore, this group is also the most Jewishly affiliated -- they are more likely to give to Jewish charities, belong to a synagogue, and have visited Israel than the general non-Orthodox population.

"We presume that identity is fixed by the time you reach middle age, but there is a lot of evidence, particularly with baby boomers, that this is not the case," he said. "For the Jewish community, we can't presume allegiance going into later life, and if we can't depend on that then from both a financial point of view and a participatory view we're in danger."

Elcott called the prospect of Jewish organizations losing boomers to non-sectarian ones a "historic break." In earlier generations of American Jews, affiliation with Jewish institutions was not only the norm, often it was the only option.

"They joined the JCC because they weren't welcomed by the YMCA when they were young so they affiliated in the Jewish community because you weren't welcome in other areas," he said.

But today, with Jews occupying the boardrooms of corporate America, the hallways of academia, and upper echelons of political and communal life, the situation is no longer as it once was.

"Whereas we were not welcome in the prior generation, we are more than welcome now, and the cost of that is that the bulk of Jewish giving today is not to identifiably Jewish causes," Elcott said. Tapping into this demographic is not just a luxury for Jewish organizations, it is an existential issue, Elcott noted.

"While its crummy in America when you only have 55 percent of people voting, America is not going to die because of that but minority communities are absolutely dependent on voluntary association," Elcott said. "If they don't participate, then you can't have a minority community because it has no basis for existence."

At the same time, however, in focus groups that Elcott conducted with professionals in the Jewish organizational world many expressed "great anxiety" that the demands of baby boomers satisfying their personal needs will overwhelm the institutions.

"We have a real disconnect here between how the Jewish institutions and the Jewish community sees this age cohort of baby boomers and what baby boomers are going to want," Elcott said of this potential conflict of interests. "The real challenge will be how to do we find ways to bridge what right now seems to be a significant gap between the two groups."