I have a new hero, and it’s a bit embarrassing.
Embarrassing to admit that I’ve studied and taught this character for decades and always assumed he was the anti-hero, the person we shouldn’t become, the epitome of someone who was impelled by a mistaken zeal to lead a mistaken life.
My anti-hero has become heroic.
I’m talking about Jonah.
Read MoreContrary to intuition, there are times when intellectualizing common-sense practice is a good thing. Take Institutional Learning, for example. Time and time again, I heard professors underscore the value of working for organizations that evaluate and adjust their own systems of operation. But it was only when I entered the workforce, and was fortunate enough to find myself working for actual learning institutions, that I realized how critical this ethic is to strategic, impactful changemaking.
Read MoreThe entire Jewish people are a single, perfect whole.
—Zohar
This lofty and poetic vision of unity as articulated in the Zohar has a modern-day defender in late author Michael Talbots book, The Holographic Universe (1991). Within its pages Talbot focuses on the parallels of quantum mechanics and ancient mysticism as he compares the universe to a holographic image; an image that when 'dissected' does not give us 'parts of the whole' but rather 'the whole in each part.' A holographic image cannot be halved or quartered or dissected in any way. Each time you divide it, it merely gives you smaller versions of the original image!
Read MoreFair trade. A concept that has become more popular over the last thirty years, its essential focus is to make sure that everyone is taken care of. The emotional drive behind this arrangement is that people care deeply not only about being taken care of, but also about taking care of others.
Read MoreWhen an organization is facing a big change - the arrival of a new leader, a shift in strategy, rapid growth (or decline) - one often hears the well-worn reminder that “change is not an event, it is a process.” Well-intended advice, perhaps, but not helpful. It is not helpful because when change is at hand, hard work is needed, not sage advice. It is not helpful because with all new pressures, we have to focus on the work, not words.
And it is not helpful, most precisely, because it is not true.
Read MoreAs I write this, in San Diego, a funeral is taking place for Lori Gilbert Kaye OBM, who was murdered by a 19-year-old at a Chabad during Passover services. You know of this event, and others like it. When such things happen, we might experience many emotions: sadness, fear, shock, anger, numbness. But we have one job before anything else. We must feel the immediacy of the event, we must overcome its seeming distance, we must know that it is our own family that has been affected.
It is natural to protect ourselves from the pain of the world through abstraction. It is easy to put up layers of armor against the assault on our sense of safety, and our moral sensibility, through distance. But Torah calls us to oppose that distancing. It calls us instead to closeness.
Read MoreDo you remember the song This Magic Moment by Jay and the Americans? Magic moments occur throughout the course of the Jewish year. Sometimes, the magic is overt and apparent and other times, we have a greater hand in creating our own magic.
At either end of the Jewish calendar lives a major week-long festival. In the springtime month of Nissan, we celebrate Pesach. It is a massive undertaking to create a seder with its numerous accouterments, not to mention the weeks of advance preparation for the holiday’s arrival.
On the other side of the year, in autumnal Tishrei, we celebrate Sukkot. This holiday, too, requires a great deal of preparation: erecting a sukkah, securing a lulav and etrog, and eating—if not sleeping— outside no matter the climate.
While the similarities are striking, there is a fundamental difference between the two that can be gleaned from the recounting of their respective biblical sacrifices recited in the Mussaf Amidah (additional holiday service standing prayer).
Read MoreGeography is not my strong suit. In fact, the blue Trivial Pursuit wedge represented the category that usually kept me from winning that famous ‘80s board game. Like many American Jews of my generation, my life and classroom experiences left me under informed about most places on the globe other than the United States, Eastern Europe and Israel.
You can imagine my enthusiasm when I learned our professional team would have the opportunity to accompany our foundation’s trustees and rising trustees to the little known country of Malawi in south-eastern Africa. Our site visit with a new grantee, Innovation Africa, gave me the chance to add a new country to my shortlist of spots I could find on a map. It also gave me a chance to answer this key question: why would a foundation committed to proliferating Jewish wisdom and values in the contemporary world deploy such a large delegation to visit unknown villages in Africa, so far from the heartbeat of Jewish education and outreach?
Read MoreIt turns out, there is an actual recipe for creating a leader. Start with a heavy dose of dynamic work experience, add a few dashes of mentoring, mix in a pinch of formal training and voila! You have a leader. It’s called the 70-20-10 leadership development model, and it was developed by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) decades ago.
Notice something interesting? A full 70% of this formula hinges upon the cultivation of increasingly challenging, on-the-job “work experiences.” Yet too often this key ingredient is overlooked by managers. After all, it is much easier to simply approve an employee attending a one-off, skill-building course, say, rather than meaningfully support them in leading a new program – a riskier and more time-consuming proposition.
But the latter is exactly what organizations need to do in order to successfully cultivate workplace cultures that enable individuals to develop as leaders. Unfortunately, our sector is falling short in this area.
Read MoreAs the cold of winter sets in and the barrenness of the trees outside my window becomes a little starker, it is easy to forget the powerful transformation nature is effecting beneath our feet, just out of view. The earth is rejuvenating through much needed rest, and seeds concealed within it are undergoing invisible preparation for what will appear to be a sudden miracle come springtime. The seemingly infertile freeze of winter masks what is actually the greatest breeding ground for quiet potential. Unseen processes can yield remarkable, life-giving growth.
And the same can be true in our offices.
Read MoreTwice in the last two weeks I heard the “Find Your WHY” construct referenced at Jewish education conferences. Interestingly, this platform for stimulating organizational clarity around purpose, first introduced in 2009 by Simon Sinek in his “Golden Circle” Ted Talk, is finally emerging in the Jewish education field.
I am hopeful this is a signal that we are getting real with the most pressing challenge facing Jewish education today. I am hopeful we now recognize how urgent it is for those involved in Jewish education to align on mission and purpose. If it were not challenging enough to agree on a universal mission, the real challenge comes in designing the components of Jewish education to produce the results our sacred texts deserve.
Growing up I wanted to be a stewardess, an actress and a lawyer. At no point did I ever think, say or strive to be a fundraiser. But since none of the eight women who founded the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project (JWRP) wanted to raise the money, I said I would try until we hired a professional. That was 10 years ago, and although it has not been easy, what I have learned through fundraising changed my life forever, and how I have grown far outweighs any of the challenges.
One of the biggest lessons is gratitude. The greatest philanthropists I ask to invest in our movement are the ones who after I thank them for giving say, “No, thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity.”
Read MoreAt my synagogue before the High Holidays three women with busy lives take on the annual task of putting name labels on the appeal cards that worshippers use to indicate how much they will contribute to the synagogue for its own and community needs.
The labels must be printed by the synagogue office staff before the volunteers can put them on the cards and often the printing isn’t done until the last minute, waiting for the last congregants to sign up for seats. Yet despite the mad rush at the end, every year the three women set aside the time to complete the work. Asked how they could give up precious hours when so much is needed to be done for their jobs, in their homes and for their families before the holidays, the women all said it was a task they took on delightedly each year knowing that “just a bit of peeling and sticking” would result in needed funds. “It’s my service to the synagogue and community,” said one.
Read MoreRecently I was working with colleagues at the Mayberg Foundation, preparing a presentation about our approach to entrepreneurial philanthropy. As we spun out some of the core operating principles we wanted to highlight, two of them struck me at first to be at odds with each other. The first had to do with the ills of over-bureaucratization. The Mayberg Foundation invests in passionate, driven, committed people. We have seen so many times that visionaries often become stifled while working in rigid organizational environments. This destroys their creativity and motivation. In order to innovate, experiment, learn and iterate, social entrepreneurs require nimble, adaptable environments. On the other hand, we are also staunch believers in the importance of proper organizational infrastructure. Those who work closely with me have heard me say time and again that all exciting ventures require three not-so-exciting counterparts in order to amount to anything real: structure, support and accountability. Process counts. As one of our trustees recently put it, “instinct only takes you so far.”
Read More“If we agree that we want to build Jewish self-esteem in students and cultivate their Jewish greatness, what role does administering exams and assigning grades serve?” – Manette Mayberg, Mayberg Foundation Trustee
How should Jewish Day Schools respond to this radical appeal?
Pressure from testing and grading inculcates little love for learning among students and creates tension at home. However, the consistent rejoinders demur that Judaics classes without grades won’t motivate students – What would punish tardiness or disrespectful behavior or what gives a class gravitas? These criticisms have merit in the present form of Jewish Day Schools. The current hierarchical structure of many Judaics classrooms situates authority and knowledge in the teacher’s hands, leaving students to be graded on compliance, likability, and innate talent. This appeal dreams a world where new underlying assumptions alter the context, changing the espoused values of a Judaics classroom and producing artifacts that do not include grades or their harmful side effects.
Read MoreAny Jewish professional or lay leader knows that sometimes you have to field complaints. The optimist in me believes it’s because we come from a culture that thirsts for goodness, raised to believe we have the power to create the best scenario possible. But do we have the tools we need to get us there?
In the past few years at GW Hillel, residing in a temporary space without an oven, I often heard complaints about the cancellation of the beloved Thursday night challah extravaganza. Each week, stage one of the process involved one or two volunteers arriving to make the dough in the morning. Stage two involved many friends joining them later that afternoon, cramming into the kitchen to braid and kill time while the challah baked. Our students missed the camaraderie and couldn’t find a creative way out of this loss.
Read More“What can you tell me about your failures?”
This is a topic I commonly bring up with an organization before we consider making an annual gift to them. In asking about failure, I am hoping the organization can share specifically what didn’t go as well as they had hoped and what they are learning from this experience.
Read MoreAs we merited to make the journey, yet another year, from slavery to freedom, from the constraints of Egypt to the open desert, it is incumbent upon us to find the relevance of Passover in our lives.
There is a remarkable piece in Gd’s method of preparing the Jews to leave Egypt. Gd commands every Jewish household to take a lamb into the home for a few days, then slaughter it and mark the doorpost of the house with its blood. Imagine being in that place for a minute. Take a lamb, the very animal that is worshipped as a deity in the hostile society in which you live…care for it, then risk your life to kill it so that its blood will protect you from Gd’s final devastating blow. To take this action required such a deep trust in Gd, that most of the Jews didn’t do it. Most assimilated and were lost and only a minority followed Gd’s word and left Egypt.
This marking on the doorpost – it was the first mezuzah! Jewish Egyptians were challenged to distinguish their homes, not with a subtle mark, but with a bold, emphatic and risky statement. Gd clearly had an eternal message in this and it applies to us today.
As educators and investors in Jewish education, we are partners with the holiest institution since the beit hamigdash stood – that is the Jewish home. Many Jews, I would guess, the vast majority, have no idea that the holiest place is in fact, not the synagogue, but the home. Some even think, “I am a bad Jew because I don’t go to synagogue!” When in fact, every Jewish home has equal potential to instill the Jewish identity and values that sustain the Jewish people. The Jewish institutions that we devote ourselves to are extensions of the home. School is not a substitute for, but an essential limb of the home. When families choose to entrust their children’s education and direct their dollars to Jewish day schools, they expect an experience that, like their homes, is distinctly Jewish. Distinction is in our DNA and has enabled our survival throughout the ages. Scattered to all four corners of the Earth, distinction is the unifier that has made survival possible. Gd said, “mark your houses” because the values that you hold inside, are the hallmark of the Jewish family that will distinguish you for all time. When Gd commanded us to make ourselves distinct, it was by the unit of the home, not the individual.
Read MoreIt behooves all leaders, and certainly those who are new in their role or are in a new position or organization, to inventory their performance regularly with regard to taking responsibility.
Whether you are in charge of an organization, a department, a team or a project, one of the most important things successful leaders must do is accept responsibility. You will rely heavily on your team to get things done, to be sure, and you will need to stay open to others’ ideas, since they frequently will be better than your own. And yes, there are always unexpected bumps in the road that are totally out of your control. But if you are to be an effective leader you need to start and finish with the premise that the one thing you carry above all is ultimate responsibility.
I often ask people to write their personal leadership story in six words. This condensed leadership memoir forces people to focus hard on either the few key moments that have shaped their leadership or the leadership principles or behaviors they most value. The idea is to get people to surface something deeper, more elemental and distinctive about the way they lead, in the spirit of what author Octavia Butler observed about herself, “Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself.”
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