By Seth Cohen

“Now is a time for leadership.”

How many times have those words been said over the past year in the halls (or Zoom rooms) of Jewish organizations across America? In reaction to the combination of social, political, and financial challenges that the world faces right now, Jewish communal leadership has without question been demonstrating an unflinching commitment to the needs of the moment. In many cases that has meant the extraordinary raising of funds to sustain our communal infrastructure through the lean times of the recession. In other cases, it has meant raising our voices in protest and concern for our own community, and joining with other communities to advocate for the righteous protection of human life, dignity, and equality of all.

Yes. In a moment of unprecedented challenges, our community is rising to meet them in unprecedented ways.

And yet…

As 2021 gets underway, it is becoming painfully obvious that new chapters of adversity await us. While the calendars might turn a new page, for many of our communities’ professionals and volunteer leaders, the steep climb towards a “new normal” continues unabated. If “Covid fatigue” is gripping much of the world (even as the pandemic reaches new, deadlier, phases), those individuals who have served their communities tirelessly over the past eleven months are feeling it even more so. With frozen budgets and frustrated plans, many leaders are finding themselves struggling to endure… or at least do so optimistically.

So what can be done?

For years, many in the Jewish community have focused on fostering a paradigm of leadership that is grounded in professional excellence and an entrepreneurial mindset. Organizations such as Leading Edge, the JPro Network, and others help elevate the professionalism and efficacy of Jewish leadership across the United States. Initiatives such as Yesod do the same in Europe. As a result of these efforts, the Jewish community is meeting this moment with some of the most talented and trained leaders in our history. Their efforts, and the systems that support them, need to be reinforced with both resources and encouragement.

But to endure the next chapter of our community’s and the world’s adversity, we will need to do more than harness technical excellence, entrepreneurship, and resiliency. We will need to do something that, to many, can feel uncomfortable and even unexpectedly difficult.

We need to harness our individual and collective prophetic voices and share them loudly – not only to our communities, but to our nations and the world.

If so many of us feel like we are facing near-biblical challenges, then why not harness our inner biblical prophetesses and prophets? It’s not like we don’t have plenty of examples in our history. We have prophetesses such as Sarah, Miriam, Hannah, Abigail, and Esther, who brought forth words and actions of care and compassion. We have Devorah and Huldah who projected resolve and restoration. Among the men, we have Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Amos, and Micha, who used their prophetic voice to speak of justice, liberation, peacemaking, and possibility.

Yet while many scholars of our tradition teach that the period of prophecy ended with Haggai, Zachariah, and Malachi, the truth is that the elevation of prophetic voices is an intrinsic part of who are as a people. Throughout our history, Jewish women and men shared voices to combat injustice, to imagine the unimaginable, and to lift up the voices of those who were struggling to be heard. In fact, some of our greatest leaders are those who harnessed their prophetic voices to help our people navigate their lives in the time of difficulty, while also giving promise to brighter tomorrows.

So how can we do this?

First, we need to listen more carefully to the prophetic voices already speaking among us. The global Jewish community has an abundance of brilliant and insightful thinkers and writers. Yet far too often we listen to those with the biggest platforms (or Twitter followings), missing out on the smaller, yet even more powerful voices among us. Far too many men are over-speaking women, and too many cynical leaders are crowding-out and question the newly inspired. And while we are improving the ways we encourage and hear voices from underrepresented parts of our community, we still need to hear more of the prophetic voices from groups such as Jews of Color, trans/gender non-binary individuals, and principled progressive critics of Israel. And of course, we need to pay more attention to those rabbinic voices amidst us, particularly those who are coming of age in these turbulent times.

Yet we also need to do more than listen. We need to empower and train even more Jewish leaders to find and express their own prophetic voices.

First and foremost, we need to give greater permission to individuals, both professionals and lay leaders, to speak openly and passionately about what they see as challenges and possibilities in our communities. For far too often, professionals must constrain their prophetic voices for fear of alienating donors and supporters. Similarly, some of our most thoughtful critics of contemporary Jewish life feel frustrated by the paradigm in which lay leaders are asked to contribute to the conversation. By actively encouraging individuals to share their prophetic voices, we can simultaneously strengthen our community while boosting the sense of ownership and engagement by all its members.

Secondly, we need to provide the training and support for professional and lay leaders, respectively and in tandem, to explore their own narratives and voices, and the techniques by which they can better make them heard. This is more than just storytelling workshops. It is about trust building as well – gaining confidence in our own voices and our beliefs that others will pay attention. Yes, this can be done through large-system-shifting initiatives, but it also can be undertaken by even the smallest organizations by using tools and techniques that inspire openness and optimism.

Many of our institutional leaders have met this moment in history as best as could be imagined – yet we still must imagine more. Because an institutional response alone will not hale us to navigate these trying days; it requires all of us. Institutions themselves can only do so much.

In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail written in April of 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King articulated a similar challenge within the Christian church. “There was a time when the church was very powerful,” Dr. King wrote. “In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society.” 

Even in the metaphorically coldest of our winters, now is the time for each of us to check the functioning of our own personal thermostats and those of the organizations we help lead. By harnessing our prophetic voices, we not only can turn up the heat that will rejuvenate our community, but we can also speak and hear the words that will warm our hearts and the hearts of those we lead.

That’s not a prophecy; that’s a promise.

Seth Cohen is the founder of Applied Optimism, an organizational and experience consultancy that helps nonprofits, funders, and communities design optimistic solutions to complex challenges. Seth can be reached at seth@appliedoptimism.com