In the many tributes and reflections on the Jewish philanthropy of Bernie Marcus, z”l, we learn how he co-founded the world’s largest home-improvement chain, The Home Depot. Yes, he and Arthur Blank’s innovative vision of a gigantic warehouse stocked with every conceivable product at discount prices was revolutionary. But as Bernie wrote in Built from Scratch: How a Couple of Regular Guys Grew the Home Depot From Nothing to $30 Billion, “everything in our business is about relating.” When I first read that line, I wrote one word in all caps on the margin of the book: “RELATIONSHIPS.”

How I met Bernie is itself a story of relationships. In 2002, Bernie invited Jay Kaiman, then the Southeast regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, to join The Marcus Foundation. Jay’s task was to find grantmaking opportunities to meet Bernie’s philanthropic objective of deepening Jewish identity and commitment, so he called fellow ADL directors, asking if they knew of any exciting initiatives. The Midwest Plains regional director happened to be my brother, Bob Wolfson, who told him about Synagogue 2000/3000, a synagogue transformation initiative I co-founded with Rabbi Larry Hoffman. Jay and I first met at the 2002 General Assembly in Philadelphia where we shared ideas about how to support synagogues over a long dinner. Eventually, Jay invited me to meet Bernie. The pitch was simple: “Synagogues are the retail outlets for helping Jews create meaningful lives.” With Jay’s guidance, The Marcus Foundation became the largest funder in the 20-year run of our project (at the time anonymous — Bernie wanted no credit), working with thousands of synagogue professionals and lay leaders in communities across North America.

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Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus speaks prior to a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, on Nov. 19, 2005

Bernie not only was a funder of S2K/S3K, but he also eagerly became our teacher. In a phenomenal workshop for clergy, staff, and lay presidents of Atlanta synagogues, Bernie shared his insights about quality service with these leaders. As with the nine outstanding leaders I interviewed for my new book, Jewish Communal Leadership: Lessons Learned from Leading Practitioners, gleaning lessons about leadership from Bernie that day 20 years ago influenced my own teaching in hundreds of lectures and workshops ever since. Here are just a few:

No stupid questions

I once went to my local Home Depot looking to learn how to grout kitchen tiles. I walked in, anxious and embarrassed. “I know this is a stupid question, but…” I told the associate in the grout aisle. “Oh,” he said, “There’s no such thing as a stupid question in our store” and began showing me how to grout. In Built from Scratch, Bernie explained “one of the core values is building strong relationships” with Home Depot customers. It was “important to not just develop an intellectual relationship with our customers…there also needs to be a tight, emotional bond.” Those employees in bright orange aprons were not only there to sell; they were there to teach. Bernie saw the store as a gigantic learning experience. From this I learned to teach that “there is no such thing as a stupid Jewish question” if the goal is to build an intellectual and emotional bond, empowering our people to embrace Judaism in their lives.

Teach people how to do Jewish

In the same chapter of Built from Scratch, Bernie reveals why initially there were no numbers on the aisles in the store. “If we had aisle numbers, when a customer asks, ‘Do you know where I can find this widget?’ it would be very easy for our associates to point and say, ‘Aisle eight.’ If there are no aisle numbers, the employee has to say, ‘Let’s take a walk and we’ll find it together.’ If I ever saw an associate point a customer toward what they needed three aisles over, I would threaten to bite off their finger. I would say, ‘Don’t ever let me see you point. You take the customer by the hand, and you bring them right where they need to be and you help them.’” This imperative to put people at ease and teach them how to do a task continued with another innovation — the free “How-To Clinics,” another way Bernie transformed a hardware store into a center of learning. From this I learned to teach, to never assume that the people who walk into our synagogues and JCCs know how to “do Jewish.” Think of these institutions as the DIY centers for Jewish empowerment. To borrow a powerful tagline used for years in The Home Depot advertising: “You can do it. We can help.”

Leadership lessons No. 1: Be a role model

In Built from Scratch, Bernie is crystal clear about what he considered the most important leadership quality in himself and his associates: “Living is the best way” for building and communicating the values and behaviors of the organization. “For us, it means walking the stores and hugging people, or the fact that our associates call us Bernie and Arthur, the fact that we will drop what we are doing to personally wait on customers in the store, the fact that we are willing to stop and teach and train somebody on the spot. Let me go back to the essence of what the company is: Role-modeling. Every manager…in this company is a trainer and a teacher. Their role is to listen, react, and get things done.” From this I learned to teach that everyone, both lay and professional, who leads a Jewish organization is a role model, listening, teaching, and empowering all of us to create flourishing relational communities of belonging, caring, and doing.

As we approach Thanksgiving, I am filled with gratitude for the opportunity to meet and learn from this extraordinary leader. May Bernie’s teachings continue to resonate throughout the Jewish community where the lessons of leadership we share with each other are ever more important.

Ron Wolfson is the Fingerhut Professor of Education at American Jewish University and the president of The Kripke Institute. His newest book is Jewish Communal Leadership: Lessons Learned from Leading Practitioners.