JANUARY 6 • 2022 | 11

OUR COMMUNITY

S

tart-up culture has a buzzword 
for everything. Why be a 
smart person with a good 
idea when you can instead be a 
“thought leader” with a “disruptive 
innovation”? Why look for customers 
when you can have “early adopters” 
who latch on to your “freemium” 
content?
There does not, however, seem to 
be a translation in start-up vernacular 
for hamish. So, Yiddish will have to 
suffice to describe the appeal of Jlive, 
a start-up being piloted here in Metro 
Detroit that aims to reinvent how 
Jewish organizations put on events. 
(Think: OpenTable for the Jewish 
community and you’re not far off.)
 Its down-home vibe is largely 
a credit to Julie Yaker, who heads 
up sales for Jlive but seems to take 
seriously the title in her email 
signature — “Person in Charge of 
Happiness.”
“I knew nothing about start-ups. I 
knew events and I knew our Jewish 

community. I knew the people in the 
rooms at the different buildings; I 
have the relationships,” Yaker said. 
Indeed, chances are good that 
if you’re reading this you already 
know Yaker or, at the very least, have 
interacted with her work, whether 
you’ve attended a JBaby class (which 
she started) or gone to a fundraiser or 
bar mitzvah she’s put on through her 
company, EyeCatcher Events.
Jlive may be less familiar to you. 
An initiative of Jewish Federation of 
Metropolitan Detroit and Federation 
CJA of Montreal, it launched in 
August 2020 and is still, per Yaker, in 
its “beta” phase. The JCC of Metro 
Detroit is also a key stakeholder 
and leader in the project, and the 
organization sees Jlive as a core 
aspect of its programming strategy. 
Today, some 25,000 people have 
already used Jlive to register for more 
than 500 events hosted by more than 
125 organizations, from JFamily and 
Aish to Temple Shir Shalom and 

Motor City USY. A more concerted 
rollout to users and expansion to 
other cities is already in the offing. 
The goal, in the coming months and 
years, is to become the one-stop shop 
for people looking to know what’s 
happening in the Jewish community 
and — through aggregated and 
anonymized data — to help 
organizations better understand what 
sort of programming those people 
desire.
“The real power of Jlive is in our 
ability to empower organizations 
to improve their programming and 
create more successful and enriching 
opportunities for Jewish people and 
their friends of all ages to enjoy,” 
explained Zach Weisman, head of 
product for Jlive. 
Yaker, affable and disinclined 
to speak in tech jargon, professes 
to dwell little on the Big Data 
possibilities of Jlive and more on 
the day-to-day ways it can make the 
community she’s lived in all her life 

Julie Yaker embodies the 
real power of Jlive. 

 The 
Connector

DAVID ZENLEA 
SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

COURTESY OF FEDERATION

Julie 
Yaker

continued on page 12

