In Jewish life today, the ground never stops shaking. War, rising antisemitism, campus hostility, political polarization, financial uncertainty: Our organizations have been living in a state of “permanent emergency” for years. Jewish nonprofits are being asked to hold trauma, safety, identity, peoplehood and the responsibility of serving as a public voice all at once — often with lean, tired staff and fragile budgets.

In this context, fear is not just an emotion: it is the persistent environment, and it moves through our systems along the fault lines of power — between boards and executives, between major donors and organizations and between people who have formal authority and those who do not but carry the day-to-day responsibilities of our institutions.

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Illustrative.

The question is not whether this fear exists. The question is whether we will let it run the system, or whether we will grow the kind of differentiated, resilient leadership that can steady the ship while the waves keep coming.

What our leaders are telling us

Through the Nonprofit Leadership Diagnostic Survey — 40 in-depth structured interviews using a consistent protocol and scoring rubric (full findings and a complete methodology note soon to be available at streargroup.com) — a consistent picture emerges: Our leaders are deeply committed, exhausted and often lonely in their roles. Many describe boards that genuinely care about the mission but oscillate between two painful extremes — checked-out from the hard decisions on the one hand and anxiously micromanaging on the other. Neither is what these executives need. The exhaustion runs deeper than workload. One senior executive at a large urban synagogue put it directly:

“Some of the burnout is not necessarily just because I’m underpaid and overworked. Some of it’s cultural… Congregants aren’t always as nice as they could be, and the expectations from the congregation on our professional team and on the clergy are higher than they were two to three years ago. The times we live in just make it a lot worse if you work for a Jewish institution.”

Executives also report confusion about who truly “owns” key decisions in moments of crisis — the board, the executive, the loudest and most generous donor — and a sense that they are always one misstep or controversial statement away from losing trust or funding.

The undercurrent: low differentiation in a high-threat world

Bowen Family Systems Theory uses the language of self-differentiation: the ability to stay connected to others while maintaining a clear sense of one’s own principles and identity. When differentiation is low, anxiety does the driving. We overidentify with the loudest voices, confuse other people’s urgency with our own responsibility or retreat into avoidance.

In our communal context, low differentiation can look like boards that confuse governance with management, executives who suppress their best judgment to keep peace with a handful of powerful stakeholders, and donors whose passion inadvertently narrows the organization’s focus. One CEO with over 15 years in his role put it plainly: “We spent too much time in the desert looking down at our feet,” he said.

When these patterns interact with chronic crises, the result is predictable: mission drift, burnout, constrained imagination and a community that feels like it is constantly reacting and rarely discerning.

How power amplifies vulnerability

To talk about resilience honestly, we must talk about power. A small number of people — board chairs, key lay leaders and major funders — can heavily shape what gets said, funded and risked. Executives live at the intersection of these expectations and the needs of staff, participants and the broader community.

Even well-intentioned donors can destabilize organizational focus. One federation CEO described the dynamic with specificity:

“People really feel strongly, constantly, including some board members, that they should be able to push things on us that they believe are priorities. It drives my team crazy. It puts pressure on them, and they feel like they have to respond… It would be helpful if the leadership of the board said to the rest of the board and to donors: “We appreciate it, and this is what we’re focused on for these reasons right now.”

Many executives do not feel safe saying out loud how close to the edge their organizations — and their own nervous systems — really are. One president of a large senior living campus said it with unusual candor: “I’m kind of embarrassed about a bunch of these things, but… this is a battleship trying to turn, and it’s been hard so far.” That kind of honesty deserves a community that can receive it, not one that punishes it.

From crisis governance to resilient stewardship

One of the quiet findings in our data is that organizations with clearer operating systems report better board-executive relationships and less chaos. One long-tenured camp director described his organization’s relationship with their strategic plan. “It’s not an exaggeration — we look at it daily,” he said. “We always get it down to an 8.5-by-11 and put it right in there.”

Structure like that lowers systemic anxiety; it gives boards room to do the work only they can do and gives executives room to lead without constant second-guessing. What executives consistently say they need from boards is not more control, but clearer partnership: allies who will stand with them in the hard calls, not just evaluate them afterward.

Practices of differentiation and resilience for this moment

A few practices are emerging from our work:

Board-executive covenants: Jointly crafted covenants articulate how power will be shared: which decisions belong to the board, which are delegated to staff, and how both sides will avoid triangulation when things get hard.

Courageous, bounded candor with funders: Executives and boards can meet with key donors not only to “pitch” but to share an honest picture of capacity, risk and staff well-being. Many funders are themselves searching for more authentic, trust-based relationships with grantees.

Leadership development that develops self-differentiation: The leaders we interview are asking for help knowing where they stand — so that when a major donor pushes back or a board chair calls at 10 p.m. with an ultimatum, they can respond from firm grounding rather than from fear. That means practicing, in cohort settings, in coaching, in peer conversation, the discipline of holding a position under pressure, disappointing someone powerful without losing the relationship, and staying genuinely curious about someone whose view of Israel or organizational identity differs sharply from their own. This is the internal work of leaders. And as any honest leader will tell you: If we don’t grow on the inside, we will never grow our organizations on the outside. Most leadership development programs in our sector don’t offer this leadership development.

Shared rituals of reflection and accountability: Regular board sessions that review not only finances and programs, but also the quality of board-executive partnership, have proven surprisingly powerful.

The story emerging from the Nonprofit Leadership Diagnostic Survey is not one of bad actors, but of good people under immense pressure, often acting from unspoken fear. The invitation of this moment is not simply to be more resilient as individuals, but to become more differentiated as systems; to grow boards, executives and funders who can live inside disagreement and danger without abandoning mission or each other.

We do not know when the external turbulence will calm. We do know that, together, we can change how power is practiced inside our institutions. If we can learn to use our authority — financial, positional, relational — in ways that lower anxiety and raise responsibility, we will not only protect our leaders from burning out. We will help our community step forward with more courage, clarity, and heart than this fearful era ever expected of us.

Rabbi Jay Strear is a leadership consultant and the founder of The Strear Group. He served as president and CEO of JEWISHcolorado from 2018 to 2022 and previously as senior vice president at American Jewish University.