News & Blogs Category: Guest Blog

In her now-famous study on leadership, Tina Kiefer, a professor of organizational behavior at the University of Warwick, asked participants to draw a picture of an effective leader. She found, not surprisingly, that the overwhelming number of people – no matter their gender – drew a white man. This study points to the fascinating way in which a particular mental model of leadership shapes both how we see the world and how we might imagine our future, as well as our unconscious biases of what a leader looks like. And it begs the question: what might we as a community achieve if we work to expand our mental models of leadership? 

The recent report from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) articulates a number of core challenges to attracting and retaining top talent for the Jewish nonprofit sector. In particular, it makes a strong case that without increased career development opportunities and resources for Jewish professionals, it will be challenging for them to succeed in their current roles and to advance into new leadership roles. These are indeed the very challenges that led to the founding of Leading Edge in 2014. And over the past five years, we have been working with our partners to nurture emerging leaders and to support organizations to create the kinds of workplaces that attract the best and brightest.

Through this work, one thing has remained clear: there is no talent crisis. There is no shortage of people ready to roll up their sleeves, enter our workforce, and advance to more senior roles. But all too often, our organizations are not ready for an expansive vision of who a leader is and what a leader looks like. Leading Edge believes it is in the interest of the entire Jewish community to have a vibrant sector that is able to recruit, develop, retain and advance leaders of all genders, races, abilities and sexual orientations. Doing so will require a great deal of intentionality and purpose.  

Here are a few insights that Leading Edge has gleaned through our work that may help us all  address challenges related to leadership development and retention.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast

If we want to recruit diverse talent to both join and grow in our organizations, we need to ensure that our cultures are built to empower a diversity of voices. The 2019 Leading Edge Employee Experience Survey found that while 70% of the employees surveyed believed that their organizations valued diversity, only 53% actually built diverse teams. There is a gap between our aspirations and our actions. To narrow this gap, we need, as Suzanne Feinspan articulates, to support our leaders in examining the implicit biases that we all carry and bring to bear on our work; we need to empower staff with language and skills around equity and inclusion and get board buy-in for creating inclusive organizational cultures. We need to create workplaces that promote trust, respect, and psychological safety, making space for courageous conversations that honor diverging perspectives. This not only aligns with our Jewish values, but it also drives stronger outcomes because of the innovation that occurs through the meeting of diverse perspectives.

We also need to ensure that our workplaces are free of harassment, discrimination and abuse. This is something that I think a lot about as a male in a field in which 70% of employees identify as female. I am aware of–and know that I still can learn more about–the opportunities I have been given and the way in which my voice has often been privileged over female colleagues because of my gender.  

The process shapes the outcome

We’re all familiar with the old adage “what got you here won’t get you there.”

Given the deeply networked and at times familial nature of our sector, recruitment and hiring in our field is often done in an informal and unstructured way and, more often than not, people hear about jobs through their connections. Networking to find talent can be a tremendous asset –and a tremendous liability that excludes talented and qualified candidates from landing roles because they do not hold the same kinds of relationships with connectors in the community. 

Leading Edge recently published a CEO Search Committee Guide, which among other things contains extremely helpful advice from feminist leader Shifra Bronznick, founder of Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community, on eliminating bias from the process of hiring a new CEO. Bronznick stresses that search committees should run an entirely structured process, from how resumes are rated to how interviews are assessed. Assessors should rate each candidate independently before knowing the ratings from other committee members. This will help eliminate groupthink where bias thrives.

The limits of Cultural Fit

The recent study commissioned by the Jews of Color Field Building Initiative finds that at least 12-15% of the 7.2 million Jews in the United States are Jews of Color. Though we’ve seen emerging efforts to support the leadership of Jews of Color in our community, it is clear that our workforce is nowhere close to representing our community.

Oftentimes the language of “cultural fit” is used to exclude candidates from under-represented groups, such as candidates of color, from being hired. The term cultural fit, which originated in the 1980s, refers to screening potential candidates to determine what type of cultural impact they might have on an organization (e.g. do they align with the values, beliefs and norms of the organization?) While we certainly believe in the importance of cultural alignment, we also see the way in which the language of “cultural fit” may be used to exclude candidates who bring an under-represented identity or perspective to the organization. This feels all the more live in our community, where a prerequisite to being hired is often previous work in or familiarity with the Jewish community. If we think about the history of those who may have been excluded from mainstream Jewish life, it is not hard to see how focusing on “cultural fit” in hiring processes can result in maintaining a certain level of homogeneity in our organizations.

Diversity as a lens

We know in our hearts that the opportunities for leadership are as diverse as the people who make up our community and er are constantly thinking about how we might support and amplify a wide range of models of leadership. We are inspired by such efforts both in our community, such as Yavilah McCoy wrote about recently and models of leadership beyond our immediate community. 

People often ask if Leading Edge will create a separate area of work to tackle issues such as women’s leadership. In fact, we are embarking on a project – generously funded by the Genesis Prize Foundation and the SafetyRespectEquity Coalition – to understand and address the root causes of the gender gap in leadership in our community. However, critically, we plan to integrate the learnings and actionable items from this project into all of our efforts, rather than maintaining it as a separate line of work.

This approach, we believe, is indicative of the urgency and possibility we see now in the Jewish leadership space. Yes, we need to act now to fill the void of leadership–and the diversity of leadership–throughout the Jewish community. And yes, the talent exists to support a new generation of Jewish leaders, reflecting an expanding mental model of leadership. We are learning about effective strategies to cultivate this development in long-lasting ways, and we share these learnings to help the field. Together, let’s support the talent within our community, welcome new talent, and continue to change how Jewish leaders are supported–and who Jewish leaders are. 

Mordy Walfish is Chief Operating Officer of Leading Edge

As part of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s investment in Leadership Development through ten grants following an open request for proposals, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) is conducting a cross-portfolio research study to understand common outcomes, themes, and strategies in developing Jewish leaders. The Foundation is pleased to share CCL’s literature review exploring this space, along with this ongoing series from leaders in the fields of Jewish education and engagement sharing reflections on this research and questions and challenges related to leadership development.

Efforts to define and address the contemporary nature of “Jewish identity” and to develop approaches to “Jewish continuity” that have the power to appeal to Gen-X, Millennial and Gen-Z audiences of Jews have been the focus of the majority of Jewish professional spaces that I have been blessed to navigate as an educator and communal professional for the last 20 years, and are highlighted in the Center for Effective Leadership’s (CCL) recent report on Jewish leadership. What I have seen less of in these spaces are approaches to engaging Jewish identity and continuity that do not operate from an often unconscious, yet underlying assumption that the Jews that we are attempting to most engage through Jewish services are White.

As a younger CEO of a newly established nonprofit, whose mission is to service and empower the leadership of Jews of Color, it is important for me to build partnerships with philanthropies and institutions that appreciate the rewards that our community has experienced through years of unified Jewish institutional focus on facing crises and existential threats to our survival. And it is important to find new opportunities that are emerging for Jewish institutions to embrace the diversity of contemporary Jews and environments where rapid social change and emergent realities encourage leaders to engage adaptability, versatility and innovation in order to secure impact and relevance within the communities they serve.

It seems that the state of life itself in 2019 encourages many Jews to seize the opportunities of a diverse world and be whatever type of Jew – affiliated, loosely affiliated or just human – that they would like. As a leader who has benefitted from various fellowships and leadership cohorts offered within Jewish institutional frameworks, this freedom to “Just do JEW” in many ways was granted to this generation by leaders of previous generations who innovated and resisted within the institutional frameworks of their day and created the security and social support necessary to yield a container for today’s most powerful Jewish innovators to flourish.

As a Jewish woman leader of color, navigating and seeking support within a majority White Jewish institutional framework, innovating and resisting has been challenging. It is crucial to study and appreciate how the work of powerful role models like Shifra Bronznick of Advancing Jewish Women Professionals and Ruth Messinger of American Jewish World Service have influenced my own journey. The strategies and frameworks that these White Jewish women utilized to create equitable pathways for what they hoped would be all Jewish women’s leadership empowerment were essential to my success and I would hazard to say the success of many Jewish women leaders today. Yet even with all of the strides and accomplishments in this space, the frameworks and pathways created for women leaders of 2019 do not establish clear roads to leadership for Jewish women of color nor sufficiently remove the equal sign that persists in many Jewish spaces between Jewishness, Woman-ness and Whiteness.  Welcoming the tension that exists between embracing the strides and ongoing challenges that Jewish institutions navigate regarding new opportunities to live Jewishly at the intersection of race, class and gender helps me to stay curious regarding what remains possible for a new generation of Jewish women leaders of color.

In 2014, 10 percent of American Jews identified as Black, Asian, LatinX or mixed, and 12 percent of all Jewish households in New York City, Long Island and Westchester identified as biracial or non-White.* These numbers indicate the presence, in the greater New York area alone, of over 66,000 Jewish Women of Color in the Jewish community whose lives and leadership matter.*[Pew Research Study on Religion and Public Life, 2014]

My desire to appreciate and utilize all that I have learned in White majority Jewish leadership spaces, while also agreeing to engage adaptability, versatility and innovation in my approach to being a transformational Jewish leader, inspired me to build programs within Dimensions that can support Jewish Women of Color in finding new language to allow their Jewish identities and leadership to be expressed and valued outside of an exclusive paradigm of Europeanness and Whiteness. Through “The Jewish Women of Color Resilience Circle,” Dimensions supports Jewish Women of Color (JWOC) in experiencing themselves as other than “other” as Jews.  In many spiritual communities and in Jewish communities specifically, Jewish Women of Color have yet to experience what it means to be central, clearly spoken to, and equally relevant in the derivation of Jewish ritual and practice. In Dimensions’ projects, we utilize a transformational leadership approach to support JWOC empowerment and to create a consciousness of JWOC thinking, JWOC love, JWOC spirit and JWOC power in the world. In our gatherings, I support Jewish Women of Color in developing a Jewish practice for themselves that resists any assumptions of White supremacy.  I do this work with love and compassion and I engage participants in supportive opportunities for ongoing reflection and re-evaluation.

As an aspiring transformational Jewish Woman of Color leader, I also model the prospect that JWOC can lead and operate meaningful leadership lives outside of a paradigm for work that supports our own oppression. In my leadership, I take seriously that in modeling and prioritizing my own self-care, I offer Jewish Women of Color a chance to connect to their humanness and thus their frailty.  My approach to leadership encourages emotional literacy and the confidence to admit when we are hurting or struggling, without succumbing to fear that we will be seen as weak or inadequate.  In my work with Jewish women of Color, I often address the challenge that when a woman leader of color lives even a small portion of her life publicly, that public too often expects perfection and, by virtue of being a leader, that she has already conquered the challenges she advocates against. My approach to transformational leadership provides Jewish Women of Color with opportunities to take off their capes and masks, be vulnerable, share our burdens, and seek and offer help to one another as we develop our capacities for leadership.

According to the Jews of Color Field Building survey “Counting Inconsistencies,” of the United States’ 7.2 million Jews, at least 12-15%, just over 1,000,000, are Jews of Color and in some communities, at least 20% of Jewish households are multiracial. For many, witnessing the profound social transformation occurring within contemporary Jewish communities might be cause for distress and alarm.  For others who are willing to engage the “Both-And” of Jewish communal growth, these times offer an opportunity to explore new ways of growing Jewish community and engaging Jews that will only emerge when leaders choose to welcome tension and swing between our established social polarities, as noted as one of CCL’s Jewish leadership challenges. The goal of Dimensions’ Jewish communal projects is to serve as a catalyst for enhancing the transformational leadership of Jews of Color and Jewish Women of Color. The JWOC Resilience Circle has created a necessary space for Jewish Women of Color to honor and care for themselves while giving voice to their experiences. It supports and makes more visible the leadership and meaningful communal work that Jewish Women of Color are accomplishing. Dimensions teaches our partners to center the work of Jewish Women of Color as valuable within larger Jewish communal spaces and encourages those interested in engaging under-served populations of Jews, to create personal and organizational resources for sustaining these extraordinary Jewish women.

Although the context has changed, Dimensions is leading initiatives that are concerned with Jewish identity and continuity. Our programs approach Jewish continuity as an opportunity to engage difference. We create Circles of Resilience that can sustainably engage Jews of Color, and Jewish Women of Color specifically, because we believe that the lives, families and future generations of all Jews are invaluable to the realization of a beloved, inclusive and multiracial Jewish future for all of us.

Yavilah McCoy is CEO of Dimensions Educational Consulting.

As part of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s investment in Leadership Development through ten grants following an open request for proposals, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) is conducting a cross-portfolio research study to understand common outcomes, themes, and strategies in developing Jewish leaders. The Foundation is pleased to share CCL’s literature review exploring this space, along with this ongoing series from leaders in the fields of Jewish education and engagement sharing reflections on this research and questions and challenges related to leadership development.

In their first-year interim report on Jewish leadership development, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) identifies five challenges facing those who wish to cultivate Jewish leadership today. One of those five, Education Challenges, encompasses, but is not limited to, the following:

• that there is a “lack of clarity around terminology,” and no “agreed-upon definition of Jewish education;”
• that trends in Jewish education have been towards a consumerist approach asking, “what does the market audience need (or want);”
• that individuals also want to be, as Dr. Jonathan Woocher z’l put it, “prosumers – empowered to create their own educational experiences, and to guide them on lifelong learning journeys;” and
• that it is not clear who “does the work” of Jewish education. Are they those whose job titles includes “Jewish educator” or those who work in a frontal classroom setting? Or, as Shuki Taylor of M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education says, “professionals from fundraisers to program directors to farmers need to see themselves as educators, who should approach their work from a learning perspective?” (I happen to agree with Shuki on this point).

Examining the above, it is clear that just within the Education Challenges bucket, CCL points to numerous challenges when thinking about cultivating leadership. My reflection after reading this section of the report is two-fold. First, we need to prioritize ongoing dialogue on these issues and second, we need to clarify the definitions many of us already know but others may not.

In regards to dialogue, CCL points out that as we think about the future of Jewish education—and its many related complex and important issues—people will articulate differing opinions and visions. Inevitably, some people’s will be strong and impassioned. Coincidentally, these three variables—an important issue, when emotions run high, and when opinions differ—often are the markers of a critical conversation between two or multiple parties that must occur to address and resolve differences. An effective and responsible leader makes it a priority to engage in these conversations head on, with transparency, a great listening ear, and kindness, no matter how fraught they may be.

The challenges stated in the CCL report should further motivate our Jewish education field to have these critical conversations. These conversations must be with diverse groups and held in public spaces.  A good example of this is the open and frequent dialogues hosted at the William Davidson School of JTS. These included conversations about the goals, purpose, and scope of education and involved colleagues from across the spectrum of Jewish life.

I suggest that an effective leadership approach to navigating the many issues CCL highlights is to prioritize discussion over determination, dialogue over absolutist decision-making, and be pluralistic and multi-faced when we decide whom to invite into conversation, gathering a diverse selection of Jewish educators and leaders and to create an environment that welcomes and appreciates various perspectives. In my view, such an approach will generate more innovation and collaboration then holding particular stances that can limit one’s impact or influence.

In regards to clarifying definitions, I was curious to see some of the challenges stated in the report, as I think at least a couple have already been resolved. For example, there are agreed upon definitions of Jewish education.  Most would commonly define Jewish education as involving the exposure to or transmission of knowledge and engaging learners in experiences between an educator(s) and learner(s) that involve or speak to a particular body of content. Now, what is included (or not) in this body of content? What are the shared goals and purposes of our work? These are great and deep questions—and ones we must discuss. Again, I don’t believe we should set a goal to determine finite answers. We will never get to consensus! Yet, we certainly can say that there is some consensus around what Jewish education is, and we should amplify this to as large an audience as possible.

A second example is the perceived conflation between informal and experiential education. Conflating these two educational approaches was an issue earlier this decade for many deeply involved in Jewish education. There is an understanding now that “formal vs. informal” references the Jewish educational setting, whereas “frontal vs. experiential” commonly relates to an educator’s approach to the educational experience or learning. These definitions, to me, are pretty clear and irrefutable, with many thanks to Dr. David Bryfman, Dr. Jeff Kress, and other colleagues who have written on this. The task now at hand is to amplify these definitions for clarity to the broader community. In our work to build the Jewish leadership field, we must effectively communicate what we already know.

Which brings me back again to the importance of dialogue. Many of the education challenges before us as outlined by CCL are indeed complex; thus our charge for leadership must be to advance the conversation, and to spur new innovations and paradigms for Jewish education to consider. We must also make our work a bit simpler by leading through the iterative process, allowing our work to constantly grow and evolve, and to communicate our work frequently and broadly so we all can respond, converse, and learn from each other.

Mark S. Young served as the Managing Director, Leadership Commons at The William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education of The Jewish Theological Seminary

As part of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s investment in Leadership Development through ten grants following an open request for proposals, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) is conducting a cross-portfolio research study to understand common outcomes, themes, and strategies in developing Jewish leaders. The Foundation is pleased to share CCL’s literature review exploring this space, along with this ongoing series from leaders in the fields of Jewish education and engagement sharing reflections on this research and questions and challenges related to leadership development.

In its insightful report prepared for the Jim Joseph Foundation, The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) reaches a conclusion which echoes an axiomatic foundational principle of our work at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America: that the conditions of social comfort and relative political security challenge us to articulate visions for Jewish community and Jewish identity that are robust enough for Jews to want to opt into them in an open marketplace of identities and choices. The CCL report wisely observes that the American Jewish project had shifted, by the end of the 20^th century, from the attempt to assimilate into trying to thrive after having successfully assimilated. In such a climate, with the absence of pronounced persecution on par with earlier eras in Jewish history, and with an increasing diversity of ideological expressions and even of the very definitions of Jewishness, Jewish leaders and educators face the challenge of having to “make the case” for Judaism itself to potential adherents who could easily default to opting out.

This is why so many of us do what we do in Jewish education: we believe there is a Judaism that is greater than the one forced upon us by the “crisis narrative,” that Judaism should not be a coercive default; and that a clear articulation of such a Judaism not only makes a better case for Judaism to survive and thrive today, but also reflects a deeper understanding of the covenant itself. My colleague Shaul Magid argues provocatively that to be fixated on existential threats – to be constantly concerned that the Jewish people will be destroyed – is its own act of disbelief in the covenant, a lack of faith in God’s promise that the Jewish people will not be destroyed. Or, if we prefer a secular framing: the Jewish people, in all its lachrymose history, has been relentlessly adaptable. Shouldn’t the business of Jewish leadership be to lead the people towards the next adaptation, rather than merely protecting the people against threats? After a while, if you don’t tend the house, what’s the point of guarding it?

Our institution has premised itself on this understanding of Judaism in general and specifically of American Jewry since its founding, and argues that one of the ways in which we “make the case” for a Judaism of meaning is through the quality of our ideas. David Hartman z”larticulated this in slightly different terms, and for Israeli society, in his landmark essay “Auschwitz or Sinai,” arguing that it was time for Israelis to move past a victimhood-consciousness – which impeded moral obligation and responsibility – and towards a Judaism characterized by the metaphor of Sinai, and the responsibilities created by covenantal commitment. Persecution and oppression may be useful catalysts to sustain community in moments of crisis; but over time, and when existential threats no longer describe the totality of a community’s experience, we need positive and constructive commitments around which to organize our sense of belonging. Failure to identify and invest in these commitments will not only mean that we will fail to hold onto our adherents; it will also seed suspicion in those who believe that our fixation on existential threats belies a vacuousness in whatever it is we seek to protect. For at least a generation, we have heard this refrain echo in the Jewish community: what, after all, is the meaning and morality of survival for its own sake?

Increasingly, however, I find myself conflicted. Antisemitism consciousness is again on the rise in the Jewish community, and I fear that in our haste to repudiate it, those of us critics of Judaisms built on survival and solidarity perhaps never really engaged with the seriousness of its claims. The philosopher Emil Fackenheim, writing in 1967 – still in the shadow of the Shoah, and in the midst of feverish rising hostilities on Israel’s borders – wrote as follows:

“I confess I used to be highly critical of Jewish philosophies which seemed to advocate no more than survival for survival’s sake. I have changed my mind. I now believe that, in this present unbelievable age, even a mere collective commitment to Jewish group survival for its own sake is a momentous response, with the greatest implications. I am convinced that future historians will understand it, not as our present detractors would have it, as a tribal response – mechanism of a fossil, but rather as a profound, albeit fragmentary, act of faith, in an age of crisis to which the response might well have been either flight in total disarray or complete despair.”

I feel indicted by Fackenheim’s words, and I am concerned that inasmuch we have insisted that a previous generation’s survivalism was merely tribalism, we are left unprepared to grapple with the urgency of its moral message. We have been so convinced by the need for a post-crisis moral language that we failed to harvest the moral possibilities and legacies of a generation of Jews whose very survival was an extraordinary affirmation in light of more plausible alternatives. In our haste to insist that the morality of our predecessors was insufficient, did we simply not do the work in understanding it?

Worse than that, we also see now that antisemitism didn’t disappear; the only thing that has disappeared has been the capacity of our community to organize with some sense of shared resistance to it, a commitment – even if ‘secular’ in nature, even if only committed to survival for survival’s sake – to fight it as a collective. Antisemitism for American Jews today is just another datum in the partisan divide, and this is the worst of both worlds: the persistence of a pernicious hate, without even the gift of solidarity among Jews on the other side. Is it possible that in fixating on a moral alternative, we evacuated the useful and instructive moral message of what it was that we were rejecting?

But it’s not that I want survivalism and the crisis narrative to come back again as the organizing principle in American Jewish life, to swing the pendulum in the other direction to correct for the mistakes of having let it go too quickly. Survivalism is not only a set of fears and the framework for a moral response; it also brings with it an economy of actors and institutions who benefit when the energy and attention of our community fixates on self-preservation and political solidarity. Sometimes, in my more heretical moments, I feel angrier at anti-semites for warping our communal priorities than I even am at them for hating us and trying to destroy us. I feel in these moments affirmed by the Haggadah’s brash assertion that Lavan the Aramean was ‘worse’ than Pharoah, as he sought not merely to eradicate us physically but also to extinguish our spirit. When we become fixated on threats against us – on the enemies at the gates rather than on the covenant in the center of the camp – are we unwittingly complicit in our own demise?

I suppose that one of my hopes for Jewish education and Jewish leadership today is to find a deeper epistemological humility inside this swinging pendulum, more seekers of Jewish moral meaning of our most existential fears, a community of interpreters of our biggest political questions – committed more to the complexity found in imperfect solutions to Jewish problems than to advocacy for this tendentious choice or its radical alternative. We have to find ways to work on identifying the redeeming moral arguments behind the survival of the Jewish people just for survival’s sake, even as we hold alongside them our moral and sociologically-informed instincts that those arguments that fueled the Jewish past may not be sufficient to anchor a Jewishness for the Jewish future. I am not convinced that the most innovative and visionary leaders of the Jewish people are those that are capable of transcending the constraints and limitations of those that came before us. Jewish continuity has always been made possible through a weird hybrid of being forward-looking, and informed by the choices and mistakes of the past, all at the same time. It is possible that the survivalism of the 20^thcentury – with its secular commitments to “Jewish peoplehood,” and the odd continuity for its own sake – have what to teach even those of us who are skeptical of their hegemony. To move beyond the crisis narrative – which I still believe we must urgently do – we may need to revisit it.

Yehuda Kurtzer is the President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.

At Ayeka, we believe that Jewish education must be broadened to engage the whole student in his or her uniqueness: mind, body, heart, and imagination.  Only when students personally connect with the material will they find it truly meaningful. We partner with six day schools of different denominations across the country to train teachers in our unique pedagogy of Soulful Education.  Our goal is to nurture the inner lives of the teachers themselves and to provide them with the tools to personally, emotionally, and spiritually engage their students. As we near the end of year one, we have successes, challenges, and questions to share.

New Paradigm for Jewish Education
Ayeka shifts the paradigm of Jewish education; as a result, operative questions change. The student no longer asks, “What does this text mean?” but rather, “what does this text mean to me?” The teacher no longer asks, “Have the students mastered the material?” but rather, “Now that the students have mastered the material, how will it impact their lives?”  The role of the teacher also changes, from expert source of information to role model of a Jew on a life-long journey of growth, also learning and seeking to grow by engaging in Torah study.

At leading schools across the country, this paradigm shift is beginning to take hold. Seasoned educators are aware of the disconnect sometimes experienced between their students and the curriculum and want help engaging them. They appreciate the opportunity to step back from the frenetic pace of the school day to become learners again, to hone their skills and refocus their vision, and to renew and deepen their own spiritual connections. Some have been teaching for decades without a clearly articulated philosophy of education. Many tell us that it has been years, even decades, since they personally studied the texts they teach. Now they can approach it anew with fresh eyes. Moreover, students of all ages respond positively to the opportunities for personal reflection, and want more.

Overcoming Challenges of Shifting to Soulful Education
At the same time, we’ve discovered that a shift of this kind is difficult for many teachers, who associate Torah learning with purely intellectual discourse.  For some, this paradigm challenges what they long held as the goals of Jewish education, as the dominant school culture, or as the expectations of parents. We have learned that running immersive training programs is not enough to achieve the desired outcomes. We need to coach our teachers with 1:1 mentoring on a regular basis throughout the year.

For teachers to alter their pedagogy, and to both share more of themselves and invite students to do the same, feels risky. This requires teachers to step out of their comfort zones and to be vulnerable.  For this kind of change to succeed, program participants need the understanding and support of colleagues and the school administration. Ayeka works with at least two teachers within a school to help cultivate a peer-to-peer support system. We find that keeping the school administration “in the loop,”so they understand and support this new approach to learning is also critical. Ideally, at some point, an administrator participates fully in one of our training cohorts.

Site visits are invaluable, when we offer direct feedback to teachers after observing their lessons and meet administrators in person.  Moreover, each school is a universe unto itself.  The schools are vastly different sizes and in different geographic regions of the country. They serve different denominational communities, have diverse cultures, and operate in different educational systems.  Some schools are thriving and some are struggling.  Some buildings are decrepit and some are state-of-the-art.  When teachers gather from across the country to attend our training retreats, they are “homogenized” to some extent, and we see only the differences in them as individuals. Yet all of these variable factors and more influence what happens in the classroom, and we can best support our teachers by knowing the ecosystems in which they operate.

There are inherent challenges in trying to effect transformative change in an institution from the outside. We do not hire teachers, design curriculum, run staff meetings, or define school culture. Some schools, in their well-intentioned hurry to improve instruction, introduce multiple professional development initiatives at the same time, which can overwhelm its teachers. We need to teach our pedagogy in the most effective manner possible, while staying mindful of the limitations of our reach and the many factors influencing teachers and their capacity.

Big Questions to Consider Moving Forward
Ayeka partners with schools, but we train educators. We see a surprisingly high rate of transience in the day school workplace.  For instance, in our first year working with six schools, two Heads of School transitioned, and several teachers went on leave or are leaving the school.  This has led us to question the unit of change we are seeking and effecting.  If it is the individual educator, should we “follow” them to their new place of employment? If it is the school, how do we address the inconsistency and lost ground when participants leave?

Is a short-term partnership effective, or must the relationship be ongoing in order to have long-term impact?  How do we balance depth with breadth, rigorously training select educators while exposing the entire staff to core elements of our pedagogy and the paradigm shifts we are inviting?  How can we do this right and still keep it affordable?

At Ayeka, we believe we are all works-in-progress and on a lifelong journey of learning and growth. The first year of the Soulful Education Professional Development program yielded important insights and questions. We know there are more to come as we work with schools to make Jewish learning more personally meaningful for students and teachers alike.

Michal Fox Smart is Director of Ayeka North America

As part of the Jim Joseph Foundation’s investment in Leadership Development through ten grants following an open request for proposals, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) is conducting a cross-portfolio research study to understand common outcomes, themes, and strategies in developing Jewish leaders. The Foundation is pleased to share CCL’s literature review exploring this space, along with this ongoing series from leaders in the fields of Jewish education and engagement sharing reflections on this research and questions and challenges related to leadership development.

At a time when our country—and world—feel so upside down, effective and transformative leadership has never been more needed. The Center for Creative Leadership study commissioned by the Jim Joseph Foundation helps us name and tackle perennial challenges in Jewish leadership with the profound urgency this political and spiritual moment demands.

Reading through the report, I stumbled upon my own words quoted from a talk I gave in 2014 titled “Discontinuing Jewish Continuity.” My central argument, then and now, is that our American Jewish community is not suffering from a crisis of Jewish continuity, but rather from a crisis of Jewish communal purpose. And, I would suggest, we need visionary and ordinary leaders—leading from a multiplicity of locations, identities, communities and platforms—to help us articulate that purpose and shape our future.

As the study describes, the challenges of leadership include the ability to manage polarities, to build inclusive and diverse communities, to develop Jewish education that is rigorous enough to transmit core Jewish principles while being accessible to an increasingly expansive Jewish population, to build Jewish organizations that attract and retain talent, and lastly to elevate our leadership game beyond our primary institutions in service to activating and aggregating the power of our networks for maximum impact.

In regard to the leadership practice of collaboration and the power of network-level leadership, I have seen firsthand the exponential and longitudinal benefit of this approach. In 2004 Bend the Arc (then Jewish Funds for Justice) launched The Selah Leadership Program in partnership with The Rockwood Leadership Institute, with initial funding provided by the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Rather than develop a leadership program that would primarily benefit our organization, we designed Selah to be a world-class leadership program that would also create the conditions necessary for a Jewish social justice sector to emerge and thrive. Selah was a deliberate intervention into the Jewish community, and the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable is one concrete manifestation of this network-level investment. Selah is now midway through our second Jewish communal intervention: to support the leadership of Jews of Color through four consecutive Selah Jewish Leaders of Color cohorts. By lifting up and fortifying the leadership of Jews of Color, Bend the Arc is playing one strategic role among many in helping our multiracial Jewish community live into a greater commitment to racial equity. We are deeply grateful for the partnership of the Jim Joseph Foundation, as well as the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and the Jews of Color Field-Building Initiative in supporting this essential work.

And yet, on this question of network level leadership, I find myself grappling with some of the same questions that I articulated in that talk many years ago. When I think about the tremendous power of “network weavers”, the enormous resources spent on field-wide collaborations, or the well-meaning inclination for collective endeavors—all of which I support wholeheartedly—I come back to two questions: who has, de-facto, defined the parameters and actors that comprise the network, and when all is said and done “to what end”?

We know that most of our current Jewish institutions are not yet being led by Jews who represent the plurality and multiplicity of our community (including, but not limited to leadership by women, Jews of Color, and younger Jews), and we also know that many of our Jewish communal organizations are no longer feeling alive and relevant to a significant percentage of the [American] Jewish community. Given this reality, is it perhaps the strongest leadership move to pause before investing in the success of this iteration of our Jewish ecosystem? Or, if we choose to activate and harness the power of the networks we have, how can we be mindful of the perspectives, voices, practices and brilliance that is missing? What is our responsibility as leaders to mitigate this absence in our own institutions, and in our Jewish ecosystem as a whole?

And, as our Jewish community and communal ecosystems continue to transform, we will still need to answer the question: What is our shared vision, and why is it essential for us to reach for that vision together? How will we remain aligned and moving forward over time? When we work to elevate our own and other organizations in a networked system, the system itself is strengthened. Reinforcing an ill-defined system can create deeper challenges. I often wonder how much more powerful we could be if our networks had a conscious and explicit vision for our collective success.

Many Jewish social justice leaders are tackling versions of this problem together. Leaders and organizations from The Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, for example, have made a multi-year commitment to advance practices and policies of racial equity in our organizations and broader field. In moving together in formation towards our shared vision of making social justice a core expression of Jewish life, we are learning to share responsibility and accountability for the historic— and current—manifestations of racism inside the Jewish community.  This is network level leadership in action.

Developing the capacity of Jewish leaders to ask these bigger questions and skillfully lead our organizations—and broader community—is a critical need. We are grateful that the field is moving in this new direction and that the very nature of the ecosystem of leadership development is expanding and reshaping itself.

Stosh Cotler is the Chief Executive Officer of Bend the Arc

Parker Palmer – an educator who writes about social activism, values, and community engagement – has spent his life trying to convince teachers, civic leaders, and influencers that finding one’s inner truth is the first step in helping people achieve greater personal and professional fulfillment. The idea resonates well with Generations X and Y (millennials) and often informs the Jewish community’s next-gen engagement work. Hard-pressed to make decisions about what they want to do and who they want to be, today’s young adults struggle to understand what it means to be human in a world that constantly challenges their humanity. The result, according to Palmer, is a crisis of identity, which must be addressed.

The lesson for next-gen Jewish professionals is to address the complex issue of identity before presenting a pathway to communal engagement. Palmer’s ideas are prominently featured in an 18-month fellowship program developed by The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) in partnership with M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education and the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). He encourages an exploration of identity through truth – starting with one’s own truth – as a path to understanding where the most fruitful intersections with the world lie. It’s a version of the idea of “meeting people where they are,” but through Palmer’s lens, the success of “the meeting” can only be achieved through deep personal understanding. “Who is the self that teaches?” is the core question Palmer asks in his celebrated book The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life, which has become a mainstay for Jewish educators since its release in 1997. His ideas, which are derived from his Quaker roots, impart important lessons.

The JFNA fellows, 20 of whom will graduate from the program’s inaugural cohort in November, are young adults hired by local Jewish federations to lead next-gen engagement work. As representatives of the market, they were directed to follow Palmer’s recommendation to explore their own identities as a first step. Their self-exploration was complemented by a rigorous set of leadership questionnaires administered by the research-based CCL in Greensboro. CCL provides fellows with analyses of their leadership competencies, communication preferences, and tolerance for change through a battery of assessment tools typically used for top corporate CEOs. The goal is to allow the fellows an opportunity to understand the values at the core of their identities and how these values affect their performances and success at work. At the end of the 18-month program, these young professionals will be more intentional about how they engage their peers and also better positioned to guide their local communities.

From the start, the initiative was experimental. Next-gen federation professionals tend to have small budgets and operate several concentric circles away from their most senior federation colleagues and local board leaders. This significant investment in their professional growth and development is supported by a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation. Also, each federation is giving their fellows time for training and learning as well as supervision and funding for an applied learning demonstration project. Taken together, this effort is unprecedented in the Jewish community and reflects the federation’s commitment to cultivating talent and finding new ways to address one of the community’s most pressing concerns: next-gen engagement with and commitment to Jewish communal life.

Commitment, including its connection to values and identity, was also discussed. What does it mean to be committed to the Jewish people? How much of myself and my individualism am I willing to give up in order to be part of a community? These questions are central to the identity of next-gen Jewish professionals and their peers.

Presented with an endless number of ways in which to express themselves, every decision they make is riddled with complexities of who they truly are. That amorphous reality often provokes indecision and inaction. The fellows are learning to interpret and address these questions head-on in their next-gen work. They are learning to think like educators and leaders by practicing various methods that will enable them to elevate conversations about Judaism, Jewish identity, and Jewish commitment through an exploration of values.

The fellows are learning that people only make lasting commitments after they have wrestled with difficult ideas or experienced conflict. They must fall and then rise, get pushed and push back. Yet, conflict often involves risk and possible dissention – ideas not always embraced by federations that pride themselves on representing a community that speaks in one harmonious voice. To be successful, the fellows will have to counter these entrenched behaviors and solicit buy-in for new engagement tools from federation leaders.

Palmer also wrestled with similar issues related to cultural reform. He recognized that, on their own, his wisdom and passion were insufficient to ignite change. Part of the challenge he accepted was to communicate his ideas in a way that others can understand, spread, and scale. For example, he often used the word spirituality, which is loaded with various meanings and assumptions. However, Palmer reasoned, “When I actually did get around to talking about spirituality, I would say to people, before you stop listening, let me explain what that word means to me: spirituality is any way you have of responding to the eternal human yearning to be connected with something larger than yourself.” Once he provided this definition, people seemed more at ease.

The JFNA next-gen fellows aim to address an audacious and timeless question: How do we make Judaism matter for the new generation? The answer, they are being taught, can be found only by looking inside and discovering what they truly believe, for once they truly believe, they can convince others to believe as well. It’s a journey few in the Jewish communal space have had the luxury of experiencing with such intensity and commitment, and JFNA has high expectations for this group. As one fellow explained, “Ever since I came to understand the value proposition, I have not been able to stop talking about it. I have trained my colleagues, members of our federation board, and, of course, the young professionals with whom I work. Perhaps finding ways to engage the next generation in Jewish life may be just the beginning.”

Rabbi David M. Kessel is the Associate Vice President of Young Leadership and Next Gen Engagement for The Jewish Federations of North America. The second cohort of JFNA’s NextGen Fellows began in May, 2019.

Learn more about the Next Gen Jewish Federation Fellowship program here.
cross-posted in eJewishPhilanthropy

It starts simple. One problem. One need. One idea.

At Sefaria, we take that simple start and grow it collaboratively into robust and sometimes game-changing solutions. This is the heart of our approach to research and development: we listen to our users, we study the potential impact of implementing new tools and features, and then we innovate. We have an ambitious vision to make Torah more accessible and we balance a long list of new product ideas and everyday maintenance needs along with a constant stream of user feedback. This vision is best pursued when our funders view themselves as partners in this journey—ready to celebrate successes and to learn from failures with us—and when they understand why and how this approach yields the innovations that the field embraces.

The Winding Journey to Innovation
As a fast-moving organization, one that is committed to launching early and often, and pivoting when necessary, long-term plans can be tricky. We release a new feature about every three weeks. Some of them you’ve seen, because they’ve gained traction, while others quietly morph into other features, getting redesigned and redeployed later on. Like most tech companies, our product roadmaps primarily exist to help us prioritize the most important work at that moment, and plan the sequence in which we’ll release features as they relate to our strategic goals.

Estimating how long it will take to create an entirely new tool or feature is always a challenge. We do, however, use a quarterly planning process adopted from a technique made famous by Intel and Google measuring objectives and key results–or OKRs. This approach allows us to remain flexible and open to new opportunities while also holding ourselves accountable to internal deadlines and benchmarks. As we grade the previous quarter and plan for the next one, we can adjust to new circumstances, adapt to changes in the broader world of technology, and allow our small but mighty engineering team the opportunity to support the needs of our audience. Furthermore, some of the most successful tools, products and interfaces pioneered by Sefaria – including our Source Sheet Builder – were not initially on any product roadmap.

Source Sheets have long been a fixture in Jewish education. For decades, rabbis, teachers and professors would physically cut and paste these sheets together so that students could learn together in a classroom setting. For a long time, this tool served its purpose.

When Sefaria was first building its library, our team repeatedly heard requests from users: Can I build a source sheet on your site? Given the importance of this pedagogical tool and how inextricably linked it is to the way we study Jewish texts, we knew that our users were onto something. So we listened and responded, building a product that digitized the source sheet.

At first, that’s all it was: just a direct digitization of a once-analog product. Of course even that was a giant leap forward, allowing users to pull from texts without scissors, a glue stick and a copy machine. This new life for the traditional source sheet quickly evolved as we learned from our users.

Soon, we upgraded the ability to add multimedia. A community educator could add video classes to a sheet. Or a teacher could add an image of a Marc Chagall painting to illustrate how a text inspired a piece of art. Or perhaps a singer-songwriter would write music based on female characters in the Bible and upload the recordings with links to the texts that inspired her.

But because Sefaria is an ever-evolving platform, we kept reaching. Again, we turned to our users to listen, learn and grow. We soon realized that we needed a way for educators to reach an eager audience. It wasn’t enough just to host their source sheets–even in their new upgraded form. Now, we needed a method to connect users to the type of content they were seeking.

To this challenge, we responded by developing our Groups feature. Now, organizations and schools, as well as individual artists and thinkers, could launch their curriculum, classes, resources and ideas in a low-risk, high-reward environment. This evolving feature already hosts more than 45 groups including Moishe House, One Table, ELI Talks, various synagogues, schools, Hillels and more.

And it doesn’t end here. As you read this, our team is working around the clock on enhancements for the Groups feature, for the Source Sheet Builder and new tools we have yet to even announce.

Funding the Unknown and Embracing Change Together
For some funders, our approach is unconventional, and the nature of the work can be unsettling. One problem begets one solution—and the work takes off from there. Truly innovating often means embarking on the unknown, including not knowing when—or if—a new project will be completed.

As a software platform that will succeed or fail based on its utility, we are wary of making promises—whether it’s a new feature or an engagement tactic—before anything has been tested by users. If we were to make specific commitments simply to satisfy a funder looking for a detailed project plan and timeline, we could end up building products that are not adaptive and don’t work for the majority of Sefaria’s users.

That’s why we particularly value our relationship with funding partners who learn with us and remain open to flexibility and change throughout the grant period. These partners also understand that risk-taking is a critical part of innovation. And because traditional, “transactional” grant reports sometimes fail to capture progress made and valuable information learned in any period, we appreciate the opportunity for regular check-ins. Our ongoing conversations give us the opportunity to build trust, share honest feedback, learn from each other and, ultimately, better support the Jewish community together.

We’ve been very lucky to work with several major foundations and individual investors who have been willing to take this journey with us. And while we have made a lot of progress making the Jewish library more accessible, we still have a lot of work to do!

Annie Lumerman is Chief Operating Officer of Sefaria.

As educators working to engage teens in meaningful Jewish experiences, all of us in the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative know the facts surrounding teen angst and concerns about young people’s mental health. We wring our hands over the impact of social media on our teens, providing “connections” yet ultimately often leading to loneliness and self-loathing. We have read countless articles, watched documentaries, and spoken with mental health professionals. We brainstorm with each other about workshop ideas, potential speakers, and ways to frame the conversation through a Jewish lens.

And then we saw Dear Evan Hansen together. Along with 25 Bay Area teen educators and 50 teens, members of the Funder Collaborative sat in the intimacy of a darkened theater and watched the statistics come to life. We forced ourselves to not look away when Evan Hansen struggled to get through the first day of school while harboring a painful secret. We watched as he tried to fill the holes in his life in unhealthy ways. We shared the gut-wrenching experience of listening to the sobs and sniffles of audience members all around us. We walked out of this experience with a shared sense of empathy for both our teens and their parents — along with a renewed sense of commitment to dig our heels deeper into this complex challenge.

As members of the Funder Collaborative, each of us strives to meet the needs of our unique communities. While there are shared goals and measures of success, the on-the-ground work in each community looks and feels quite different, as one would expect from 10 cities of various sizes and cultures. With this experience of Dear Evan Hansen, however, the differences fell away. Sitting side by side watching the drama unfold, we were empowered knowing we are connected in the sacred work of helping teens feel a sense of belonging.

Margie Bogdanow, Senior Consultant, Teen Education and Engagement in Boston, expressed:

The play touched on so many of the issues that we are addressing in our communities. By viewing it together we could connect to the universality of the issues.  I think we all felt like it represented things happening in our communities.  There are times when what we are doing (in the Funder Collaborative) feels very separate and different, and other times when it all ties together. This was one of those ties-together times.

Experiencing Dear Evan Hansen was a gift I wish I could bestow on all teen educators. One powerful element is the insight it provides into not just the lives of teens, but also of their parents. Audience members gain the valuable perspective of parents trying the best they can, aware of their inadequacies while feeling frustrated and scared. In the opening song, “Does Anybody Have a Map?” Evan’s mom captures the desperation of parents everywhere who are searching for something akin to Waze to help them navigate an unpredictable journey.

Another stumble as I’m reaching for the right thing to say
I’m kinda coming up empty
Can’t find my way to you

 

Does anybody have a map?
Anybody maybe happen to know how the hell to do this?
I don’t know if you can tell
But this is me just pretending to know

 

So where’s the map?
I need a clue
‘Cause the scary truth is
I’m flying blind
And I’m making this up as I go

It offers a strong reminder that often the role of our youth professionals includes guiding and inspiring the parents as well.

My colleague Melanie Schneider, Senior Planning Executive, Jewish Life at UJA Federation of New York, captured what many of us were feeling:

Indeed, Dear Evan Hansen was both incredible and a truly moving and enlightening experience, both professionally and personally. As the mother of young adults, with the teen years not too far back in my rear view mirror, I resonated with Evan Hanson’s portrayal of the needs and struggles of parents and teens in juggling full work and academic lives, parenting expectations, as well as the occasional fear of shame, isolation and just plain overwhelm. So while I joined my colleagues in some teary moments, and also laughed….the end result is that Evan Hanson is a piece of theater that will stay with me always and exposes a wide-spread American challenge.

Many of the Funder Collaborative communities are already immersed in addressing the challenges depicted in the show, with an emphasis on supporting the diverse adults who support our teens. Last spring, the Los Angeles Jewish Teen Initiative of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles hosted Building Resilience in Teens: A Wellness Conference for Parents and Educators. Over 200 parents, educators, and mental health professionals attended the full-day conference, which offered expert-led workshops and presentations on critical issues regarding parents, teens, and their relationships. San Francisco is hosting the February 2019 Teens Thrive Un-Conference, where, over the course of four days, diverse educators, clergy, and community stakeholders will experience workshops and keynotes from experts in the field on different angles of teen health — spiritual, emotional, mental, and sexual. Youth professionals across the communities are offered in-service programs with clinicians and experts that provide training and resources to guide their work with teens and their parents. And, inspired by the experience we shared, the Boston Teen Initiative is planning to take their educators to see Dear Evan Hansen this summer, with pre-show and post-show dialogues designed to maximize the impact.

Many communities also provide engagement opportunities for parents who are seeking strategies, practical tools, and support to know they are not alone facing the challenges of raising teens. As summer drew to a close, the Chicago Teen Initiative screened the film “Eighth Grade,” helping parents and youth professionals navigate the feelings it raised and prepare their children and themselves for the start of a new school year. In Los Angeles, our Federation offered Starting the Conversation: Talking to Your Teens about Vaping and Marijuana Use, where participants learned the current language around drug trends and gained tools to communicate effectively with their teens about the sensitive topic of substance use.

Following the convening and the Dear Evan Hansen experience, we all returned to our home communities fortified and reinvigorated. We are grateful to be able to engage in this critical, timely work and for this meaningful theater event that reminded us that we are not alone. Our 10 communities are in this together — supporting teens, parents, and ourselves.

Jessica Green is VP, Jewish Education and Engagement (former Director, Los Angeles Jewish Teen Initiative), The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles

The Jim Joseph Foundation is one of many funders invested in the Collaborative. 

“Diversity” might not be the first word that comes to mind when we think about living a Jewish life—but it should be. Our heritage’s creation story—human beings created in the image of the Divine—makes an unequivocal statement that all people, whatever our race, ethnicity, class, culture, language, ability or identity, are infinitely valuable and equal. Our history of oppression teaches us to stand up for—rather than exclude or marginalize—minorities. And even the tradition of reading the Torah aloud, with one voice and many listeners, began with a commitment to embracing the unique differences in how each and every one of us views the world.

The book of Nehemiah tells how Ezra the scribe brought the whole Jewish community together to hear the Torah for the first time, and while the people listened, 13 “interpreters” fanned out into the crowd to interpret the text and make it meaningful to each. From the very beginning, this tale teaches us, the Torah was not meant to have just one meaning; it was intended to be adapted, interpreted and transformed for each listener’s worldview.

I was blessed to learn this deeply moving teaching from Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, founder of Lab/Shul and a Global Justice Fellow of American Jewish World Service (AJWS), at a thought-provoking gathering with leaders of 26 organizations convened by the Jim Joseph Foundation. We were a diverse group representing organizations from across the Jewish community: There were fellow social justice organizations like Bend the Arc and Hazon. Youth and young adult engagement organizations like BBYO, Hillel and Moishe House. Foundations like Wexner and Schusterman. And religious institutions like Union for Reform Judaism, Jewish Theological Seminary, and IKAR.

Like the Torah interpreters of Ezra’s day, each of our organizations was interpreting the stories and lessons of our tradition and applying them to respond to the particular challenges of our day. To take just one example, some of the groups represented at this gathering are using the lessons of Jewish history to inspire solidarity with others seeking freedom—from the Rohingya Muslims of Burma who are being subject to crimes against humanity, to the thousands of asylum seekers crossing our southern border in the hope of a safe life in the U.S. Other organizations are engaging youth to connect with Jewish text, or creating new rituals for observing Jewish holidays in the 21st century.

While the gathering celebrated the beauty of this rainbow of Jewish organizations working on a multitude of different goals, it also highlighted the ways in which we are falling short of our obligation to respect and embrace the diversity among us.

In a powerful session lead by Stosh Cotler, Yavilah McCoy, April Baskin and Cheryl Cook, we heard about the devastating experiences many Jews of color have within our institutions and communities. They recounted people asking Jews of color, “how are you Jewish?” or arriving at synagogues only to be mistaken as janitorial staff because of the color of their skin. Some described their yearning to have Jewish role models who look like them. And others shared a desire to hear more music of their own heritage—from gospel music to Sephardi or Mizrahi Jewish tunes—sung in synagogue and other spaces of Jewish life. We were reminded of the racial and ethnic diversity of the American Jewish community, and the continued work we have to do to embrace our full spectrum of lived experience.

Crucially, we also focused on how we, as Jewish leaders, can promote diversity in our own organizations and programs, first by understanding the various ways—personal, cultural and structural—that people are being marginalized; and then by creating initiatives that foster diversity and proactively work to transform our organizational cultures to address these problems.

Since I’ve returned from this gathering of American Jewish leaders, I’ve been thinking more and more about what it means to embrace the pluralism and diversity within the American Jewish community, in light of my organization’s work to create a truly pluralistic world in which all people of every race, faith, gender, identity, ethnicity and ability can live with dignity and human rights.

In our work at AJWS to promote human rights in 19 countries in the developing world, we work with grantee partners of diverse races, ethnicities, and religious backgrounds worldwide—Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, secular intellectuals, feminists, and many others. This is fundamental to our mission, since AJWS is inspired by the core Jewish notion that all people were created b’tselem Elohim—in the image of God. To create a world in which every person’s dignity is upheld, we promote gender equality in India, supporting girls and young women to make their own choices about marriage, careers and futures. In Kenya, we defend the rights of LGBTI people, supporting organizations that combat homophobia and violence, ensuring that people of all sexual orientations and gender identities can live with dignity. In Mexico, we support a movement of indigenous farmers working to stop discrimination against indigenous people and halt land grabs that rob them of the farms and resources they need for survival.

Just as we work with diverse partners around the world, we are blessed with a relatively diverse staff, with members of our staff from many cultures, faiths, intellectual traditions, and sexual and gender identities. We believe that diversity is not just about who is on our team, but how we tap the talents and different experiences they bring to our mission and work.

To do this, we have begun a diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative to continue to build and sustain a diverse, just and inclusive work environment where all employees—of all races, religions and identities—feel safe and respected. We are celebrating the ways in which we are succeeding, and taking a hard look at the ways in which we are falling short, in order to be a community truly rooted in our core values.

As we work to achieve a diverse, pluralistic and respectful world for all people, we must do the same in the Jewish community. This means we must understand the wide scope and respect the full diversity of diaspora Jewish cultural groups—from the many Ashkenazi traditions, to Mizrahi Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, to Sephardi Jews of Spain—as well those in multi-faith, diverse and hybrid families. That also means respecting religious and secular Jews in their many varieties, and Jews of various world views and ideologies.

To create the kind of pluralistic world we want to live in, we must include those who have never been fully included before, in every society, including the Jewish community. We must challenge restrictive norms that oppress women and foster violence against them. We must take on institutional racism, conscious or not, that affects how we look at (and too often limit) people of every background. We must embrace the dignity of LBGTI people. We must be truly open to “the other” and “welcoming the stranger” in our community and in the broader world.

Just as we are learning, in this authoritarian age, that one authoritarian abets another, we understand that diversity anywhere can catalyze diversity everywhere. That’s our work. Those are our values. That’s who we are. In fact, part of creating a diverse and pluralistic world is creating a diverse and pluralistic Jewish community. And to create a diverse and open Jewish community, we must be situated in a diverse and open world community. These goals cannot be separated and cordoned off from one another. They are one.

The Jim Joseph Foundation gathering provided a significant opportunity for these conversations to take root. I left thinking how powerful it would be if each of the 26 organizations in attendance would take up this mandate, together and in our own communities in real and authentic ways, and to challenge our colleagues throughout the Jewish world to do the same. This would mean a stronger Jewish community for ourselves and a better world for all.

Robert Bank is President and CEO of American Jewish World Service

A rabbi, an activist, and a researcher walk into a bar.  It’s not the beginning of a joke, but the makings of the late summer Jim Joseph Foundation convening, that brought together lead staff from across the Foundation’s leadership development grantees.

As the Executive Director of Avodah, I have the privilege and pleasure of getting invited to many convenings, and I treasure them all.  Convenings such as this, especially if they are designed well, have the ability to build deep and lasting relationships that can have great outcomes.   I’ve been thinking about the deep work and value of relationship-building and want to offer a few thoughts about why I think it is worth spending time and money to pull people together.

1. It pushes us to learn about better practices, especially practices that take more courage and intention. I loved learning from Yavillah McCoy, April Baskin, and Stosh Cotler about how they are embracing racial justice practices to transform their organizations, and how this work can help set a path to creating a more inclusive and reflective Jewish community.  I’ve been working on integrating racial justice into the core of our goals and values at Avodah, and this conversation helped me see how others have done this work, and also some of the challenges they have hit.  I want to continue this conversation to learn from those who are doing this work better than me, and also to support and possibly inspire those who are ready to step into strengthening their own racial justice practices in their organizations.
2. They can counter loneliness at the top. While I feel very privileged to be a CEO, it can be exceedingly lonely at times, and building and strengthening a network of CEOs means I’m just a phone call away from advice and support from someone who is juggling many of the same things as me.
3. They plant the seeds for members to see each other more as collaborators, and less as competitors, and to identify ways to cross-pollinate each other’s work. There’s sometimes a tendency in our work to feel resource scarcity rather than resource abundance. I have spoken to funders who get similar sounding proposals from different organizations, and have to figure out how to sort through those proposals, and try to understand who is best suited to do that work.  When those of us in the field are brought together to build relationships, it allows us to see up close what other leaders and organizations have to offer.  On a personal note, it reminds and inspires me to think deeply about ways that other organizations can enhance our work, and how Avodah can enhance the work of other organizations.  I also want to note that I am rarely in shared spaces with organizations that are traditional Jewish educational institutions, and I found that this specific convening sparked some new thinking for me about ways that I can learn from the larger field of Jewish education.
4. Funders and people in the field need to know and trust each other for all of us to succeed. Creating a space where leaders from the funding world and leaders from the not-for-profit world can have a level playing field and talk about how to create a stronger and more vibrant Jewish community is rare, and feels so vital for our future. This convening was one of those exceptional spaces, where we had the opportunity to talk about issues that are beyond our own organizational or funder vantage point, where we could begin to share our hopes and dreams for the larger field of Jewish education, and think together about how we can get there.

A convening like this summer’s convening is a piece of the puzzle in building a lasting network that can move the field of Jewish leadership forward.  I hope that there will be continued opportunities to collaborate and I am excited that Avodah is part of this learning cohort.

Cheryl Cook is Executive Director of Avodah.

There was something a little uncanny about my last trip to Chicago.

Let me explain: I’ve spent much of the last eight years planning and executing residential education programs as the Academic Director of the Yiddish Book Center. In these programs, different sorts of participants—high school students, college students, writers, media professionals, and, most recently, through a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation, high school and middle school teachers—gather at the Center to learn Yiddish, study modern Jewish literature, and connect with one another.

Overseeing and teaching in dozens of these programs over the years, for more than eight hundred participants, I’ve figured out a lot about what makes them work.

So, what was unusual about my trip in August for a Jim Joseph Foundation gathering was not just that, for a change, I was in the role of participant rather than organizer (that happens, from time to time), but that all the other participants, themselves directors of Jewish professional development programs of one sort or another, have similar experiences to me. It’s funny to do an icebreaker when you know that all the people doing it are, like you, people whose job it is to lead icebreakers.

That, of course, was what ultimately made the gathering meaningful. As different as our organizations and programs are, so many of the issues we face on a regular basis are uncannily similar. All of us are trying, in one way or another, to educate Jewish educators. Both in the substance of what it means to do that—how do you help an educator to do their job more effectively?—and in the methods we use to accomplish our goals (retreats, seminars, websites, and so on), we found a whole lot to discuss and debate.

Rosov Consulting, which facilitated the convening, created many different kinds of opportunities for us to share challenges and experiences, and to brainstorm and be creative. One moment stands out to me in this regard in particular. I casually spoke with a couple of the other participants about an aspect of our work I always find challenging: connecting with program participants virtually, after a workshop or retreat has ended.

As we talked about this, someone raised the idea of holding regular e-conferences, using platforms like Zoom, GoToMeeting, or Google Hangouts. One of the participants responded emphatically: “Those really don’t work for us. No matter how we do them, and even if the technology cooperates, it’s just never really satisfying.”

That was important for me to hear because I also feel those platforms don’t fully work for the Yiddish Book Center’s programs either. I’ve always wondered why we don’t see stronger results when we try to use those with our participants. Were we doing something wrong, choosing the wrong platform, or not approaching an e-conference in the right way? Why was it that in-person gatherings were always so much more intense and meaningful, in so many of our programs? It’s certainly possible that we can still find ways to make this kind of post-program virtual meeting work for us; but it was, frankly, a relief for me to hear that it’s not just us who find that modality mostly lackluster. I began to feel less anxious about trying to make that particular approach to alumni engagement work, and it inspired me to put more energy into exploring other methods for connecting with our participants once they’re home.

And, of course, one of the most useful outcomes of this Chicago gathering was that I now have a diverse and enthusiastic group of program directors to whom I can turn with questions about what works for them, and what doesn’t.  This is exactly the type of community that will help support me as I pursue my goals and look to advance our alumni engagement in new and meaningful ways.

Josh Lambert is Academic Director at the Yiddish Book Center