In so many places, we’ve taken the Jewish out of the experience of working at Jewish communal organizations.
by Liz Fisher
As a Jewish communal professional myself, and as someone who has interviewed, supervised, and mentored dozens of young Jewish professionals, I’ve read the recent eJewish Philanthropy stories by Mark Young and Ken Gordon with great interest. Rather than compete, they actually complement one another; compensation and passion, the two theses presented, are indeed crucial.
I can’t help but wonder, though, where the Jewish piece comes in. We are not MIT Media Labs. We are not Google. We are Jewish organizations with budgets of varying size, finding ourselves under constant pressure to operate more leanly and to spend less on overhead (i.e. ourselves) while spending more on programs and our clients. Yes – we are getting more professional, strategic, and efficient, all very important things. And as we do so, it is crucial that we continue to remember who we are.
