by Yossi Prager As Shavuot approaches, I think of the multi-faceted nature of the Torah. It tells the stirring story of a small, complex family that grew into a great nation. It sets out the constitution for that nation. And it contains a detailed set of laws for interaction among members of the nation. As someone who has studied these different facets from childhood, I continue to be amazed by the richness of the written Torah as well as the Oral Law, a now-written set of books that includes the Mishna, Talmud, and medieval and modern commentaries and codes. Despite - or perhaps because of - my immersion in these sources, until last week I had not given much thought to what America’s Founding Fathers thought of it all. On a recent Shabbat, I heard Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik give a talk on the … Continue Reading
Organizations’ Plans For Succession Seen Lacking
by Helen Chernikof The resignations of the top executives at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society come just weeks before the release of a survey showing that an “overwhelming majority” of almost 450 Jewish executives have no succession plan prepared in the event of their departure. The Jewish community must do more formal succession planning and leadership development, said leadership expert and executive coach Steven Noble, who conducted the survey and wrote the accompanying report. Both will be made public on June 5 under the auspices of the Jewish Communal Service Association at its annual meeting in Baltimore. “This is really a call for change,” said Noble, a former director of the Jewish Federations of North America’s … Continue Reading
Jewish Organizations Should Focus on Building Great Organizational Cultures
by David Bernstein A young professional who works for a large Jewish organization recently confided in me that “my boss reads books on organizational culture but never does anything to improve our culture.” That’s probably a step up from many organizational leaders who are hardly aware of the concept of organizational culture and thus do not seek to improve it. Organizational leaders can build great cultures, but they must spend significant time, resources and effort doing it. When they do, the investment pays off in spades. Organizational culture is often misunderstood as a touchy feely concept that has little bearing on the real world. Yet when we think of many of the best companies around today, such as Google, Starbucks, or Zappos, these are places, generally speaking, with great … Continue Reading
An Innovation Portfolio Approach for the Jewish Community
Though the term “innovation” has become an overused buzzword in both the Jewish and general worlds, it nonetheless has become apparent that, like people, organizations need to continually progress in order to survive and thrive. What remains elusive, though, is how to focus resources and energy on growth and change initiatives in order to render them successful. In a recent article entitled “Managing your Innovation Portfolio” in the Harvard Business Review, authors Bansi Nagji and Geoff Tuff present a formula for allocating resources towards innovation, which they argue is necessary for those companies that wish to flourish in the long term. They explain that, for most companies, innovation is most successful when 70% of resources are allocated to innovations related to the company’s … Continue Reading
Funders and Apes: Seven Steps for Constructive Failure
by Andrés Spokoiny Friday, I wrote a bit about how funders, like all humans, are programmed by millions of years of evolution to hate failure. But our DNA hasn’t kept pace with the changing times. If our brains were adapted to the modern world instead of the prehistoric reality of the first apes with opposable thumbs, we would have created different neurological and chemical reactions to failure. We would have realized that in these times our survival depends on embracing productive failure. Until that realization occurs, we need to trick our brains into interpreting failure differently. For philanthropists and funders, embracing failure means creating a culture change. In complex endeavors, failure is a given. Here are seven strategies to help capitalize on the inevitable. Remain … Continue Reading
What Do Donors Want? Are Nonprofits Listening? Are Compromises Possible?
by Robert I. Evans and Avrum D. Lapin Nonprofit leaders face tremendous pressures today: living, operating and succeeding in a competitive marketplace of ideas, programs and services presents innumerable challenges. Donors who are guided by a passion for certain aspects of an agency’s mission and vision might be unaware, or unconcerned, about the everyday deliverables the agency must produce to achieve certain goals. Keeping both supporters and constituents happy is often a delicate dance. Nonprofit leaders must continuously upgrade and strengthen their abilities to translate their mission into a “selling proposition” for a variety of interest groups. This selling proposition involves creating a case for support that clearly communicates what the agency does, their goals, and the … Continue Reading
Funders and Apes: Our Troglodyte Approach to Failure
by Andrés Spokoiny Last year, influenced by the hype around Darwin’s 150th anniversary, I developed an interest in evolutionary theory. I read a few books about it, including the masterful Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, and since then I’ve been kind of obsessed. I usually find myself in odd moments trying to analyze human behaviors and traits, especially emotions, focusing on how they would have helped us survive and evolve in the savanna hundreds of thousands of years ago. What is the evolutionary reason for, say, love, or envy, or solidarity? Is art a “byproduct of evolution” or is it an extension of the capacity for communication and expression. As part of our new innovative content, this year’s Jewish Funders Network conference featured a forum on failure. While digesting the … Continue Reading
Limmud FSU Princeton: A Profound Self-Discovery
by Yoram Dori Limmud FSU is always a special experience for its participants. Limmud FSU Princeton, held from May 11 to 13, at Princeton University, was an especially unique event for me. As usual, I learned more than I taught. Some 650 young Russian-speaking Jews, originally from the former Soviet Union, paid good money to hear about Judaism, to learn about Israel, to meet their brothers and sisters, all in a pluralistic spirit, without coercion and without pressure. The lecture topics were determined by the young people themselves, and the theme this year was Albert Einstein, the father of modern physics who lived, taught and died in Princeton. Unlike other Jewish conventions that I’ve attended over the years, since I served as the Jewish Agency chairman’s spokesman in the 1980s, most … Continue Reading
Thinking about the Goals of Jewish Service-Learning
by Jon Levisohn Jewish service-learning is a hot topic, and rightly so. Funders, policy makers and academics have noticed a groundswell of activism and energy in the Jewish world, especially among young people, and have hopped on board. This has led to an expansion of service-learning opportunities for young Jews. This is a good thing. But what are the goals of service-learning? Service-learning is, obviously, related to service, and dependent on it, but they are not the same thing. The goal of service is to benefit the person or community served. The goal of service-learning is, in addition to the service performed, some kind of learning from the experience. The person who is doing the service ought to undergo some growth or beneficial development. What can we say about that growth? To … Continue Reading
A Conversation about the Relevancy of Denominations and 21st Century American Jews
by Robert I. Evans and Avrum D. Lapin Do lines really matter today between the various denominations of Judaism? That was the out-front question debated by four prominent rabbis in front of over 250 attendees at a panel discussion last week convened by the Philadelphia Board of Rabbis and moderated by Temple University Professor Lila Berman. Top U.S. rabbinic leaders participated in a lively two-hour dialogue: Rabbi Rick Jacobs, new President of the Union for Reform Judaism; Rabbi Steven Wernick, Executive Vice President and CEO of United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism; Rabbi Dan Ehrenkrantz, President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College; and Rabbi Michael Balinsky, Executive Vice President of the Chicago Board of Rabbis, representing the Orthodox perspective. “I think … Continue Reading
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