Jewish Leader: It's not about you

What does it take to be a Jewish leader? I've recorded different ideas on the topic over the years, including this blog post (Rabbinic Leadership), this one (Rabbi as Leader and Manager) and this one (You can be right and dead at the same time). But in a discussion at a Yehoshua class yesterday, I was reminded of another facet of Jewish leadership.

In the first chapter of Yehoshua (1:2), G-d tells Yehoshua that He is going to give the land of Israel "to them, to the Children of Israel". There is a redundancy here. What is added by saying both, "to them"; and "to the Children of Israel"? Don Isaac Abarbanel explains that G-d is telling Yehoshua that He is giving Israel to the nation, not its leader. Leaders come and leaders go, and the nation is the essential thing.

In the same chapter (1:17), the tribes of Reuven, Gad and Menasheh pledge loyalty to Yehoshua, but they warn him that they will listen, "only as long as G-d is with you, as He was with Moshe." In other words: We will follow you not because of your personality and identity, but because G-d is with you.

G-d supports the leader only for the sake of the nation. The nation supports the leader only for the sake of G-d. Yehoshua, and any Jewish leader, must understand this key point: It's not about you. The task of the Jewish leader is to enable the Divine summons to inspire each individual Jew, and to enable each individual Jew to respond, to rise, and to shine. The leader who accomplishes both of these things - neither of which is simple! - is a success.

Reacting to Scandal: A guide for rabbis

As I mentioned in my previous post, there is a second half to my discussion of community scandal: What does a rabbi do once a scandal has broken in the community, spreading pain, gossip and hard feelings far beyond those people directly involved?

Here's what I plan to say to my group of young rabbis; what would you add? (Again, please omit all reference to actual events from comments, or I may need to delete them.)

When it's a scandal involving someone else
Minimize your public comments
* Remember the great advice I once received from a congregant: If only 10% of the shul knows about an issue, and you address it from the pulpit, you have now made it an issue for 100% of the shul. Make sure it's worth it.

* Showing you know the inside scoop never helps you, and can hurt you.

* People respect a closed mouth - and are far more likely to trust it when it does open.

Dealing with a shamed person
* Remember that for many people, you represent Gd

* You can offer friendship without offering endorsement, but it's best to do it privately

* Organize others to offer friendship, where appropriate

* Remember the good in the person; it should not be overridden

* Don't put the person in the spot, particularly by forcing a conversation before the person is ready

When it's a scandal surrounding your own error
What to say
* Full disclosure of the mistake

* Full, sincere apology - not "if I offended" or "for anything I may have said" [And if you think you are right, and the world thinks you are wrong, then you are outvoted and it's time to get objective counseling.]

* Don't attempt to justify it or explain why it's not as bad as people are saying

* If you must talk to the media, do it via press release to maximize the chance that your actual words will be heard, in context

Retreat from the spotlight
* The length of time depends on the harm done

* Never assume the worst is over

It's never safe to joke about it
* There is no statute of limitations

* It will never be funny to the victim

How to avoid scandal: A guide for rabbis

I expect to deliver a class this week, for young rabbis, on "Avoiding Scandal". It may seem like a relatively simple topic - don't do anything wrong - but I do have some thoughts based on my own experience, and things I wish I would have been told 17 years ago, when I was starting out.

Here are my major points:

1. You can't prevent other people from doing scandalous things, but you can institute policies for yourself, and your shul, to avoid or mitigate problems.

2.  Financial issues
* Make sure that everything involving donations and tax receipts is on the up-and-up;
* Make sure you know how to file your own taxes and claim your deductions;
* Make sure you know the rules regarding Benevolent Fund tax receipts;
* Ensure that your shul employs people legally;
* Know your level of responsibility to non-shul institutions with which you are involved.

3. Sexual issues
* Never meet with women or children unless someone else is able to observe you;
* Keep your wife informed of your meetings, and have her as a check on your judgment;
* Make sure your shul has a sexual harrassment policy;
* Make sure that people within your shul administration are up on "today's norms", which are not the same as those of a generation ago.

4. Disputes between members
* Be clear that your role as an impartial mediator is clear to the participants;
* Know when you cannot be impartial, and admit it;
* When the shul is involved as an institution, make sure all roles and interests are clear;
* Know when you are out of your depth;
* Do not let yourself be bullied into taking on something you cannot take on.

5. Make sure all members of the shul administration know who is the shul's official spokesperson - and it may not be you.

6. When speaking publicly
* Don't talk too much; it's the last sentence that gets you into trouble;
* Don't assume that people will assume the best of you, or know what you meant

7. If you aren't sure whether it's ethical or right, ask someone.

8. You are a religious figure and a public figure, and so there will always be those who want to catch your mistakes. Don't make their job easier.

I would love to hear your comments - but please avoid mentioning any particular scandals, as that might force me to delete your comment.

I also have a separate component: Responding to scandal once it has taken place. Perhaps I'll post that next.

Curmudgeon

The other day, I heard a story about a boss whose employee approached him for encouragement. The employee was working on a project, and he asked the boss how he thought it was going.

The boss replied with something along the lines of, "I am not your mother. When you finish the project, we'll see how you did."

All of the people who were with me laughed at the story, recognizing the employer's approach as unhelpful. But I didn't.

I have learned a lot about management in the past few years of heading the beit midrash here in Toronto. Helping avreichim learn, teach and grow is quite different from leading a congregation, and it's been quite the learning curve for me. Among the lessons has definitely been that relationships cannot be taken for granted; praise must be expressed explicitly, criticism must be couched properly, and so on. And yet…

… I really like that "I am not your mother" line. It's military, hard-nosed. It's macho. Tommy Lee Jones. Mark Messier.

Listen to this piece from Sports Illustrated about Mark Messier, the Oiler-turned-Ranger:
There is an oft-told story—one that might even be true—that in 1987 Messier grabbed Kent Nilsson, a flashy but fainthearted Oilers forward, and told him that if he didn't play harder, he would have to kill him… Another former Oiler, who won't confirm the Nilsson story but doesn't exactly deny it, either, says, "You didn't get this from me, but I heard he also threatened [former Rangers coach] Mike Keenan."

True, the "I am not your mother" approach will likely prove unproductive; why wait for your employee to come back to you with inappropriate work, only to criticize him then? And it's not terribly Jewish; Moshe's model of leadership is כאשר ישא האומן את היונק, the nurse holding a baby. It's the shepherd tailoring his style for every sheep, per Shemot Rabbah.

But something in the curmudgeon really appeals to me. Maybe it's my New York upbringing.

Rabbinic Leadership

I first put this on paper five years ago, when I was in the shul rabbinate. I still believe it.

To me, the guts of rabbinic leadership is in Moshe’s challenge to G-d in Parshas B’haaloscha. Moshe asks: Did I conceive this nation, or did I birth it, that You tell me, ‘Carry him in your bosom, like a nurse carries a nursling, to the land I swore to give his ancestors’?

That’s rabbinic leadership in a nutshell, as Moshe understood it. Although Moshe wasn’t happy about it in Parshas Behaaloscha (and I imagine he couldn’t have been much happier in Sh’lach to hear that his tour of duty was extended from eighteen months to forty years!), he knew this was his task.

Curious Jew’s quote from Rav Soloveitchik, who was himself citing Rav Chaim Soloveitchik, says it all: “However, the main role of the rabbi is to help the needy, protect the persecuted, defend the widows, and sustain orphans. In a word, it is acts of loving-kindness [gemilat hasadim]. (The World of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, 193)”

This is not meant to infantilize the congregant; rather, it is meant to maternalize the rabbi.

This type of care is leadership, because it enables the rabbi to lead. Per Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and influence people,” the rabbi who shows people that he cares about them is the rabbi who will be able to lead them and help them grow.

This, then, is the rabbi’s job description: To care for each individual, and thereby lead the community. Examples:

In many communities, there are people who can give deeper or clearer shiurim than the rabbi - but will they give those shiurim daily? And will they offer more shiurim when people need more? And will they offer shiurim in varied topics, as people need? And will they arrange chavrusas for people? And will they go after people who are not learning, to find ways to match them up with learning opportunities?

In many communities, there are social workers and counselors who can take care of social services and counsel those in need - but will they seek out the welfare of every individual in the community, the sick, those with sick relatives, the needy, those with needy relatives, the bereaved, the depressed, and so on? Will they dedicate time from their schedules to call people and check in and make sure everything is all right?

In many communities, there are gabbaim and askanim who will make sure davening runs smoothly and distribute leining responsibilities - but will they go out of their way to convince people to come to minyan, not for the sake of the minyan but for the sake of those people’s personal development? Will they dedicate time to teaching new baalei tefillah and new baalei keriah? Will they sit down with people to explain how to put on tefillin, and perhaps encourage them to acquire tefillin in the first place?

And so on and so forth. The rabbi’s job is to help a woman get her husband’s pension. The rabbi’s job is to convince people to “go kosher” and to kasher their kitchen himself. The rabbi’s job is to encourage people to come learn parshah for an hour a week. The rabbi’s job is to arrange a loan so that someone can cover his son’s bail.

Why is this the rabbi’s job? Because, as Moshe explained, his job is to carry the nation as though each individual was his own son or daughter.

Again: This is not meant to infantilize the congregant; rather, it is meant to maternalize the rabbi. A particular congregant may not need anything at all - but the rabbi had better continue to look after that congregant, in case the day comes when the congregant does have a need.

Why parenting scares me

For me, the scariest part of parenting is not knowing where my actions or words will lead.

Parents talk to children, reward or punish them, assign them tasks and mark their progress, all with the best intentions and perhaps even with some knowledge, but who know where it's going to go? Who can predict the impact?

Who can predict whether going easy on a child who lied will encourage further lying, or whether punishing harshly will lead to rebellion?

Who can predict whether presenting cash incentives for academic success will spur interest, or deflate interest where there is no reward, or lead to an academic focus that blocks out other types of growth?

Who can predict whether pushing a child athletically will help her to grow, or will have disastrous results?

In searching for something else on-line, I came across this video, "Transformational Leadership Example". It features a coach getting his star player to perform an incredible feat of strength – the Death Crawl – in front of the team, goading him on and pushing him even when he is clearly exhausted.




That was fiction, but it reminded me of a real story, memorialized in the film Miracle. Take a look at this:




And as I watch those videos, I think of this piece from the news a few months ago:

At a doublewide trailer along a dirt road in rural Alabama, authorities say 9-year-old Savannah Hardin was forced to run for three hours as punishment for having lied to her grandmother about eating candy bars. The severely dehydrated girl had a seizure and her death days later was ruled a homicide.

Frankly, reading more about the Alabama case makes it seem that there was greater dysfunction here – but that's not the point. How do we draw the line between pushing our children to be successful and endangering their lives?

Intellectually, I'd say to draw it far short of danger in order to avoid any risk – but while that's easy in the realm of the physical, it's a lot harder in other realms of instruction and growth.

Of course, the risk is present in all of our interactions; Rabbis, certainly, are capable of inflicting great harm without even knowing it, in a derashah, in a class, in private rebuke. I can remember several times over the years when I said the wrong thing and caused serious harm, and after-the-fact apologies could do little to repair it.

Still, for me it's hardest and scariest as a parent dealing with vulnerable children. How do you ever know the results of acting? And yet, how can you refrain from acting?

Synagogue members: Supporters and Directors

Regarding my "Owning the Rabbi" post, an anonymous commenter wrote:
One also finds the opposite situation: Rabbis "owning" the shul. That is, Board members voting against their true wishes for the shul policy position the Rabbi publicy supports.

I agree that this happens, but I'm not sure it's about rabbinic ownership of the shul. I suspect it's about two different kinds of membership: Supporters and Directors.

As a general rule, both Supporters and Directors want to have:
- a shul with a certain kind of davening and learning, and an approach to halachah that resonates with them;
- a shul community with programs they like and members whose company they enjoy;
- a Rabbi whose Torah and personality and leadership will guide/inspire/support them.

But Supporters and Directors seek to achieve their goals in different ways.

Supporters believe in hiring or appointing good personnel – Rabbi, office manager, president, etc – and empowering them to do their job as they see fit. Supporters help them carry out their initiatives. They take a Platonic, "The Republic" view of government; we elected these people because we believe they know what they are doing. And barring something egregious, the next time the Supporter will weigh in with an imperative is at contract time for paid employees, or election time for shul officers.

Directors, on the other hand, believe in guiding the shul's good personnel in their tasks, to ensure that their day-to-day performance is in-line with Director expectations. Directors weigh initiatives in terms of their own preferences and vision, and assist only if they approve; employees and officers are meant to carry out the Director's will, and imperatives can come at any time.

I'm not contending that either model is 'better' for an organization, just observing that both exist. I believe each has merits.

This dichotomy among members is not just about shuls, of course; this happens in families and schools and businesses, too. It happens in philanthropy; Supporter donors write a check because they believe the organization knows what to do with it, and Director donors write a check and tell the organization what to do with it.

Coming back to that anonymous comment, then: Supporter board members do exactly what the commenter noted, trusting the Rabbi to know what he is doing. Director board members, on the other hand, are more likely to write the letter that triggered my "Owning the Rabbi" post in the first place.

The Rabbi as Leader and Manager

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here]

While taking care of administrative tasks on Motzaei Shabbos, I listened to the opening salvos of the Republican debate. [Don't ask me why; I still live in the fantasy that somehow, magically, one of these anurans is going to metamorphose into a prince. Not a chance.] At one point, Rick Santorum declared that the President of the United States is supposed to be a Leader, rather than a Manager.

That set me thinking – What is a shul Rabbi? Leader or Manager?

For the sake of the discussion, we'll define "Leader" as someone who sets an example, acting and doing and modeling and inspiring others to do likewise. "Manager", on the other hand, is someone who enables others to use their talents, pairing people together and assigning tasks and motivating and critiquing and facilitating.

I tend to think that a shul rabbi needs to be both of these.

The rabbi is a Leader. Think of Moshe Rabbeinu, the ultimate leader - he acts, and others follow. He davens, and hopefully his davening inspires others. He reaches out to people within the community to assist them, and others see this and are motivated to follow his lead. He is a model of studiousness and scholarship.

On the other hand, the rabbi is also a Manager, like Betzalel organizing the various artisans to build the mishkan. He initiates projects, convening people to harness their talents, moving them forward, coordinating their work. The rabbi is a Manager in constructing community, creating connections between individuals and groups in order to tighten the bonds of chevra.

Unfortunately, rabbinic training, as it existed 15-20 years ago, didn't include sessions on Leadership or Management, and I think the latter role suffers for it. I sense that rabbis do succeed as leaders even without training, but I don't think management works the same way.

First, management is very challenging, a balance of צמצום (self-constriction) and direction, of praise and careful counsel and veiled criticism and unveiled respect.

Second, management requires consciousness, an awareness of what one is doing and what one is expected to do, in a way that leadership does not. I find it hard to think that a newly minted rabbi, not knowing there is a management role to play, could succeed in that capacity.

What do you think? Leader, Manager, both or neither? And need these roles be taught?

Putting the kibosh on "dynamic"

Click here for "Rav Kingfish", an excellent piece by Jonathan Mark at The Jewish Week on the flaws of the "dynamic" rabbi.

Some of the article's key points match my own misgivings in many ways, including -
* the emphasis that 'dynamic' places on parts of the rabbinate at the expense of others;
* the problem of perpetually needing to 'top' dynamism;
* the way that "dynamic" can go to a rabbi's head.

And it reminds me of a piece I wrote in December 2008: Young and Dynamic and 124/78.

Here's something odd: Among the finds I reported in that piece was that a Google search for rabbi and “young and dynamic” yielded 604 results. Tonight it resulted in 501,000. The phrase "dynamic young rabbi" had 206, but tonight it registers 1,900. What do you make of that? Google's expanded reach, or something else?

What could a rabbi have said on September 11th?

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here]

I was 29 years old on September 11, 2001, several weeks into my rabbinate in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I was sitting in the office that Tuesday morning, working on something or other for Rosh HaShanah, when someone called and told me to turn on the radio. I listened, then called my parents, who were working in Manhattan.

I don't remember much else of that day. I remember talking to people in the shul office about how it couldn't possibly be Hamas, because they wouldn't dare to take on America. I remember trying to convince my parents not to go back into Manhattan for work the next day. I remember that Martin Tower in Bethlehem, the next town over, was closed out of fear that it might be attacked. I remember the self-righteous indignation of, "How can they tell Israel to absorb dozens of attacks like this, when Americans react with such furor to just one?"

That night we held a Tehillim session after minchah at shul and I spoke briefly there, and then I spoke about the attack again on Shabbos. I spoke at a municipal memorial program (theme: remembering the candles of heroes). I spoke about it again each day of Rosh HaShanah (1st day: Valuing life, and the mitzvos which are said to earn long life; 2nd day: Dealing with crisis and challenge).

It wasn't enough, at least for some. I was confused when someone said to me during Succos, "Rabbi, we need you to speak more about this." What had I not said?

I thought he was talking about other aspects of September 11th, so for Shmini Atzeres I spoke about the question of giving tzedakah to help 9/11 victims vs. giving tzedakah to help victims of terror in Israel. On Shabbos Bereishis I spoke about the crisis of faith involved, the "Where was Gd" question.

As I've aged, though, I've come to think that he was still looking for something different. Beyond the speeches and tehillim, beyond the one-shot activism of a blood drive or a community unity event, I think he wanted us to be engaged in some kind of on-going action and conversation that would reflect the sea change that had taken place in his life, and in the lives of many people in the community. He wanted, perhaps needed, his own life to become different, to reflect the change in the world around him.

I didn't really understand that at the time. It's hard for a 29-year old, even one who thinks of himself as worldly from his four years in the shul rabbinate, to understand what it means for a 69-year old to experience a paradigm shift. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Here's what I said at the tehillim program on the evening of September 11, 2001:

The thoughts that cross my mind seem so trite, so ineffectual after seeing those horrific images today on the various websites. What can we say, what can we do, in the face of this staggering level of destruction? New York has this image of brassy invulnerability, Washington is the seat of government of the world’s only superpower, and both have been bloodily violated, what is there for us to say?

Some of us have lost friends. I don’t know yet, but perhaps some of us have lost close family today. I know I spent the morning afraid of the phone because my parents work in midtown Manhattan.

Part of me wants to say, “I told you so.” Part of me wants to turn to all those people who said Israel should absorb terrorism and not fight back, and ask what they think now. Part of me wants to make sure they all saw CNN’s footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets, celebrating today’s attacks. But there will be time for recriminations later; we need a different sort of action now.

The Jew takes action – we donate blood, we offer whatever assistance we can provide, of course. But there is another kind of action we take, and that is prayer – we recite Tehillim, Psalms.

What good is prayer? Will prayer bring back the dead? Will my prayer help the thousands of people who are hospitalized? Can we roll back the last 20 hours?!

No, we can’t. But prayer is a crucial cog of communication in our relationship with Gd, and that relationship must persevere, that relationship must grow, because yes, that relationship defies death and destruction, and even keeps us alive.

We must be able to talk to Gd, directly, to express our hurt, to express our anger, to have a conversation, and prayer is the foundation of that conversation.

It’s hard to pray at a time like this; King David knew this. King David was a warrior, he fought Goliath, he fought the Philistines, he fled for his life and he fought for his life. And yet what is King David most known for, what is his legacy? The book of Tehillim, the book of Psalms. David knew the ineffectual feeling that comes from facing disaster, from facing death, and he knew that prayer would keep his relationship with Gd alive, that communication would help him survive. We read his words, we read what he wrote when struggling against powerful enemies, we read his letters to Gd and make them our own.

Judaism teaches that it is never too late to pray; so long as there is breath in our lungs, so long as our hearts beat, we are alive and we can recover. This is not a funeral; America yet lives, and we yet live. We are here to build, to grow, to recover, to re-visit that Divine relationship which is damaged every time we suffer a loss. We are here to use the words of King David, who was a great general but who knew “Gd is the One who saves me from my enemies.”

Let’s use the words of Tehillim, of Psalms, to connect with Gd, and to pray on behalf of both the victims and survivors of today’s attacks.

Three lessons of the rabbinate

I wrote this on the plane en route to Calgary, my first-in-my-adult-life long-distance trip just to see what's beyond the horizon. The feeling as the plane took off was unbelievable; more on that another time, perhaps.

[Now, if only I had planned the trip with sufficient time to get rid of my Three Weeks beard before the flight… Got some funny looks, certainly.]

With two years complete in the kollel, and marking two years since I left the shul rabbinate, I've been thinking about "Role of the Rabbi" lessons I learned in shul life, which carry over to many other areas:

1. The relationship shouldn't be assumed
In a shul, the Rabbi has a certain communal standing, but that doesn't guarantee any sort of standing vis-à-vis the individual. Of course, some congregants naturally feel close to the Rabbi, but for most people the Rabbi must establish himself as a resource. You start with a blank slate (assuming an absence of baggage…), and there is no presumption of closeness or sympathy. Hopefully, over time and the course of many interactions, you gain legitimacy as both friend and leader.

2. It's the investment, not the result
I am, by nature, geared toward solutions. I like to find the answers to questions, and to me the gauge of success is the quality of your conclusion and the speed with which you brought it to fruition. But that's not the way it works in a shul; the point is not whether the Rabbi is an out-of-this-world genius who can solve problems (although that is important, let's not kid anyone), but whether he wants to sit with you, however long, sympathetically discussing the problem. It really can be better to schmooze for an hour and a half before coming around to the right answer, even if you had a feeling that was the right approach from the start.

3. Communities don't occur naturally
Just because people live in the same area doesn't mean they are a community; shuls, regardless of their size, consist of multiple mini-communities, including communities of just one person. The challenge is to find the common denominators, the threads which weave people together, and use them to draw individuals into collectives.

There's more, of course... for another time, Gd-willing.

Rule for Rabbis: Official, not Officious

[Post I read this morning: Bin Laden captured in Jerusalem]

I’ve been compiling a list of “best practices” for Shul Rabbis. It’s not hard to come up with pithy sayings and simple advice (ie “Be a mentsch”), but I’m trying to create a coherent picture that includes a Rabbi’s various roles, and offers pragmatic counsel.

One rule I’ve been contemplating is: Be Official, not Officious.

In a sense, it’s just a variant on “Be a mentsch,” but in the rabbi’s job – as in the job of any manager - this can be harder than it sounds.

The rabbi, often in tandem with gabbaim, sets up the schedule for minyanim – which rooms will be used, and beginning when and ending when, for the davening.

Depending upon the shul’s staffing situation, he may be in charge of figuring out when the timers will turn on the lights and air conditioning.

The rabbi has kashrut oversight of use of the shul kitchen (other than where the shul has a caterer who is supervised by an outside kashrut organization).

The rabbi coordinates the Adult Education in most synagogues, and has Yea/Nay authority to decide whether films may be shown and entertainers hired for events.

And so on.

Bottom line: The rabbi is in charge of making sure “the trains run on time” in many aspects of the shul’s institutional life.

In the course of this work, the rabbi is the official timekeeper, official arbiter of disputes, official administrator.

So what happens when the rabbi needs to enforce his official decision – when he needs to tell people, “No, we’re davening at this time,” “we’re using this room,” “that food must be presented in this way at the kiddush,” “Y cannot receive that aliyah,” or even, “this mailing needs to go out on that day”?

This happens daily, and so it invites careless error and disaster; it's easy to offend with an unintentionally harsh tone, a raised eyebrow, an unintended scowl, even folded arms.

If the rabbi does it “right”, he comes off fine, just doing his job, nothing personal or arrogant involved - Official. But if he isn’t very careful, he can appear meddlesome, imposing his will on others, even self-aggrandizing – Officious.

Sounds simple, but it takes work. Any advice?

Lesson in community politics: Keep it out of the derashah

In my very early years in the rabbinate, a congregant gave me a valuable lesson in community politics; it’s guided me ever since.

There was a potential schism involving a handful of people substantively, and a greater circle of people casually. Of the 230 families in the shul, probably 10-15 were in the former group, and 20-25 in the latter. But to me it felt like everyone was involved, because it was an issue that was in my face daily, and because I saw many of the people involved daily. The matter became intense enough, ultimately, that I felt like I needed to speak publicly about it, to set and justify policy, in the derashah.

Of course, as I noted in this article a couple of years ago, the rabbi’s speech is a clumsy, awkward tool, and not one to be used to address real issues or instigate substantive and durable change. But the matter was so in-my-face that I wanted to go that route, to tell the community what I thought and vindicate my stance to any doubters.

Fortunately, someone involved convinced me not to go that route, but to handle things privately. I owe him a great debt for his advice. His point was simple: Right now, 10% of the shul is involved. If you speak about it from the bimah, that number will be 100%.

The math is simple. The logic is simple. But I couldn’t see it, because I was in the middle of it.

I didn’t speak about it. The issue continued to percolate for a long time afterward, and it did grow beyond that initial group, but it never became the dominant issue I would have made it, and I never needed to become publicly involved in the potentially ugly side of it.

That day, I learned several things – none of which were new to me, but all of which definitely require regular reinforcement:

1) Use your speeches for what they do best; don’t try to turn them into multi-purpose tools.

2) Don’t confuse what’s on your mind with what’s on everyone else’s mind.

3) Don’t get carried away by your imagination of where political issues may go in the future.

4) And, of course: Listen to others; they can offer an objective voice, and they can offer a wise voice.

The First Law of Synagogue Politics

To paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton’s description of interacting bodies: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

That may have been the Third Law of Motion, but I believe it is the First Law of Synagogue Politics: For every action of the rabbi there will be an equal and opposite reaction from the congregation, and for every action of the congregation there will be an equal and opposite reaction from the rabbi.

Yes, that’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek; rabbis and congregations often – usually? – work hand-in-hand, their hearts in the same place and their eyes on the same goals. Everyone wants the minyan on time and the food kosher and the seats full of focussed daveners and the needy people pastorally counseled and the bills paid. Nonetheless, rabbis and their congregations often work unilaterally and even at odds with each other, whether directly opposite or at angles, and it may be helpful for each side to remember this law: Everything they do will induce an equal and opposite reaction on the other side.

This means that if the rabbi decides to radically change the shul’s rituals – say, by altering the Friday night schedule so that the shul davens minchah before Plag during the summer, just an example I picked out of a hat… - then he must expect that people within the shul will act to stake their proprietary claim over the shul’s rituals. Even if they won’t fight this point, the need to mark territory will emerge in some other way.

And vice versa – If the board sets policy unilaterally in a given area, they must expect that the rabbi will act unilaterally, in that area or in another, to make his mark and let it be known that he possesses a claim of his own.

If the shul pushes the rabbi on davening times, the rabbi might strike back by adding time to Shabbat.
If the rabbi pushes the shul on Adult Education spending, the shul might strike back by re-negotiating his health insurance premiums.
If the shul pushes the rabbi on being in the office during hours, the rabbi might strike back by using office hours to prepare classes rather than take calls.
If the rabbi pushes the shul on attending minyan, the shul might strike back by not attending classes.

I believe that all of this is healthy, normal, and, so long as both sides keep it in mind, quite manageable. Shul and board and rabbi can exist in a symbiotic balance, homeostasis if you will, and keep unilateral flare-ups and reactions to a minimum. The danger is when one side thinks the other’s reaction disproportionate. In reality, there is no such thing as a ‘disproportionate’ political reaction, because all offenses are gauged not by the offender and not by third-parties but by the victim. So when the board says, “What we did wasn’t so severe as to warrant that response,” the rabbi’s answer is likely to be, “But that’s the level of severity I felt when you did it.” And vice versa.

So where is all of this going? What dramatic current going-on is The Rebbetzin’s Husband about to share, more than 400 words into his exposition?

Sorry, no on-going cases to cite, now that I’m out of synagogue life. But I find this First Law a good one to keep in mind well beyond shul existence, so I thought I would share it.

What should be on the Rabbi's agenda?

[This is a quasi-rant. I apologize in advance. For other material, see this week's Toronto Torah.]

Ever since my first rabbinic interview, people have wanted to know my agenda.

On proba visits, I was asked a range of interview questions on this topic, including:
• Will you speak about Current Events?
• Will you promote Aliyah?
• What do you see as the major challenges facing Modern Orthodoxy today?
• What do you see as the major challenges facing the Jewish community today?
And so on…

These are significant items, but I believe – and I believed this when I was a shul rabbi as well – that none of these items belong near the top of a rabbi’s agenda. Rather, the rabbi's agenda should be about helping us become better Jews, better people, on a day-to-day basis.

This includes speaking out regularly about:
• Our awareness of Gd;
• Our sensitivity to each other’s needs;
• Our sincerity;
• The depth of our thoughts and our lives.

I want a shul rabbi to speak regularly about emotions, and less-regularly about elections.
I want a shul rabbi to teach more classes about davening and about honesty, and fewer classes about the ethical issues in separating Siamese Twins.
I want a shul rabbi to spend more time on his shul’s youth, and less time on newspaper columns.

I wouldn’t claim that I was perfect in any of these areas in my rabbinic years.

Further, I know that we also need the speeches about the elections, the classes on conjoined twins and the public stands on issues of the day. But these areas are, in many ways, low-hanging fruit bringing easy if superficial returns. If this is the rabbi’s agenda, he may well be popular as a public figure, but I believe he will have failed as a spiritual leader.

And I would add one more note: I believe that the same should be the agenda for all of us “private citizen” Jews.

The rabbi is a politician

My decrease in blogging frequency is mostly a function of the time I am now devoting to getting our new beit midrash off the ground, but there is also another factor: Many of the issues on my mind are political in nature, and not suitable for publication.

Political intrigue is the price of working with people, and, certainly, in starting any new organization you must deal with people and their political issues. Courses of action must be weighed in terms of cost/benefit, in terms of impact, in terms of existing programs and in terms of existing standards, to avoid causing more harm than good. Sometimes you change your approach, your style, even your agenda, in order to be politically sensitive.

I know people who claim to be “above” all of this, as though political involvement was some kind of dirty, unseemly, underground and underhanded impropriety. Oh, no, the rabbi is involved in politics! And he admitted it! On a blog, for all the world to see!

But from a Torah-based perspective, political involvement is a tool which can serve the highest social goals of Judaism. Politics is simply an approach to achieving success in basic bein adam lachaveiro (social interaction).

Politics help achieve shalom bayit; we are required to be sensitive to the concerns of the people around us, and to the balance of shalom.

Politics help achieve tovat haklal (the good of the community), pursuing more than our own narrow agenda.

Politics help achieve hakarat hatov, recognizing the good done for us by others.

A Jew who looks down on politics and (gasp!) compromise is ignoring the lessons of Tanach and Chazal, whether from Sarah and Pharoah or Avraham's interactions with the Chiti or Rivkah and Lavan or Yitzchak and Grar or Rachel and Leah or Yaakov and Shechem (pre-Dinah)or Yosef and pretty much everyone, etc.

There are times, of course, when politics, like any tool, are cheapened. In particular, politics can be tainted by selfish pride, the desire to be everyone's best friend, which can lead to a sacrifice of all things ethical as well as sane. As a once-favorite Everclear song of mine goes, many people want to be everything to everyone. Rabbis are particularly vulnerable to this, because the price of not being everything to everyone can be high.

But to return to my starting point: Politics are part of the order of my day now (yes, more so than when I was rav of a shul), and even though it's an honorable pursuit, the details not for blog-posting. So I'll post more when I have something mutar to report.

Stay away from the cheerleaders

[Haveil Havalim is here!]

I've been going through the tens of thousands of emails stored on my shul computer, trying to decide which ones are relevant to leave behind for my successor. The result is a lot of trips down memory lane, mostly fun, a couple not so fun.

The other day I came across one particular set of unpleasant memories. It was a political issue, and I remember vividly how I got caught up in the stream of events and conversations, and was מפריז על המדה, going farther than was truly wise in the situation. It turned out mostly all right, but "winning ugly" doesn't leave me with a good feeling.

In retrospect, a lot of the problem came from listening to the Cheerleaders. I find that rabbis are particularly vulnerable to that problem.

A lot of us (even non-rabbis) believe we have everyone’s best interest at heart. Further, a lot of us (even non-rabbis, again) believe we are speaking based on Torah and Divine instruction (cf derashah here). The result is that we can slip into overreaching fairly easily. And cheerleaders make it worse.

Who are the cheerleaders?

People who share our agenda, so that they egg us on (from the sidelines, naturally) into ever louder, ever more vociferous commentary ("Yeah, you tell 'em, rabbi!"), and even more risky action ("Go for it!").

And not just those with a direct stake in the outcome. Friends in whose eyes we are surely in the right, since we are their friends. Friends who might be more objective but don’t live in our communities and don’t know the players, but who are certain that we must be on the side of right. And the enemies of our enemies, people who would not ordinarily stand by our sides but who will make an exception in this case because their foes are being vanquished.

These are the cheerleaders, and they are dangerous. They allow us to talk ourselves into taking outspoken positions, into overstepping reasonable rhetorical bounds, into acting before the time is right. (No, it's not just "They," it's very much "We" for listening, but this post is about the "They" part of it.)

All of which means we need to be carefully about choosing our sounding boards, and about listening to well-intentioned counsel.

Ah, the lessons to be found in well-preserved emails...

Who needs rabbinic leadership?

The other day I quoted a 2007 survey performed by YU’s Center for the Jewish Future (in its Community Growth Initiative) on the way that young couples choose a community.

According to the CJF's published report, they surveyed 100 “young families” from Riverdale, Washington Heights, Teaneck, University of Pennsylvania, Einstein, Kew Gardens Hills and Holliswood.

The participants were from early 20s to early 30s, from newlyweds to families with 2-3 children under the age of 5. The great majority of the participants had grown up on Long Island (16.4%) or in Queens (14.4%); the highest-ranking non-NY/NJ hometowns were Chicago, LA and Philadelpha, each with 3.4% of the participants. There was no small community with 2% or more of the results.

As I explained in that previous post, these families ranked the importance of 12 factors for choosing a community. The overall result was:

1. Hashkafa
2. Choice of Day Schools
3. Affordable Housing
4. Job / Higher Education
5. Young Couples
6. Eruv
7. Values
8. Mikvah
9. Convenience
10. Proximity to Family
11. Rabbinic Leadership
12. Kosher Restaurants

Which led one commenter to note how low rabbinic leadership ranks in the survey results. To me, though, this makes perfect sense, for several reasons:

• As the study authors noted, younger families usually have not experienced a need for real pastoral involvement, as in helping people through severe illness or marshaling community resources in a crisis;

• As the study authors also noted, the families interviewed still had strong connections to their rebbeim from yeshiva and may not have seen the need for a communal posek or pastoral authority;

• The study authors also noted that a great percentage of the young families surveyed lived in apartment communities, without any substantive rabbinic presence. [Similarly, many of them ranked eruv and walking-distance mikvah low on the list; presumably they felt they could always build one easily enough, with or without rabbinic leadership?]

• I would also add that the young families surveyed likely had little awareness of what a rabbi does in a community, particularly a small community. Coming from Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens and Teaneck, their experience with community organization and growth would be entirely theoretical. Speaking for myself, I had no clue about the role of a rabbi in a non-New York community.

• And, finally but perhaps most crucially, good rabbinic leadership generally takes place behind the scenes, so that these families, and most families, would likely not be sensitive to it. If a rabbi does his job well – organizes help for people in need discreetly, works well with committees, arranges for shul and community decisions to flow properly – then no one knows what he has done.

So, no, I’m not that surprised by the result. I’m curious, though, as to what those same couples will say if they are re-surveyed five and ten years down the line.

I love meetings (I'm not kidding)

[Some of the ideas here are reflected in this article on Committee Chairs, too.]

I spoke at our Federation’s annual meeting last night, and said something that earned a surprised laugh from a few participants: I Love Meetings.

But it’s true – I do.

Not all meetings, of course; I can’t stand meetings that have no agenda, meetings that are for the sake of meeting, meetings that never lead to action, meetings that serve the primary purpose of having people rehash past discussion or past accomplishments or irrelevancies. I have no stomach for sitting in a room for 45 minutes, an hour, an hour and a half or more, only to come out wondering what we accomplished.

But I love meetings that are well-planned, that involve passionate, creative people, that lead to a concrete purpose.

I love learning from other people’s thoughts. At this stage in life I know my own ideas fairly well, and I grow far more from hearing what other people believe and want. I certainly learn much from the words they choose to phrase their ideas, and the methods they develop for achieving their goals.

I love being motivated by people who are passionate about their goals, even if their goals are not relevant for me, and even if their goals are the opposite of mine. I may disagree, even vehemently, but it’s energizing and inspiring to hear people put forth a reasoned argument in which they really believe, without pretense and without arrogance.

I love feeling like I am part of a hard-working team, a group that is dedicated to developing a thoughtful approach to solve a problem. I love working with people who do their jobs between meetings, so that they come in with a full report on the things the rest of the team needs to know in order to move the operation forward.

I love watching a chair who knows what she is doing, who taps people for jobs not because they raised their hand but because they are best suited for the task, who devises clear priorities and procedures, updates everyone in a timely and helpful manner, and keeps the process moving.

I am playing with an idea, some type of leadership development program in which we could bring kids – early teens – to serious community meetings, and have them observe as well as contribute. Perhaps that would help them see what I see, become inspired as I am, and grow up to love meetings, too.

"Giving it to him" is usually a bad idea

A friend related that he had finally told off a very difficult person at work. “I really gave it to him,” he said. The conversation reminded me of a shul finance official who once told me he wanted to contact people who don’t pay their dues, and “really give it to them.”

(I suspect this is the sort of giving many people are actually contemplating when they say, “It’s better to give than to receive!”)

I’ve never found this tactic useful. I'll admit that I've done it a few times, but it's never accomplished anything positive, and it has generally yielded negative results.

Sure, unloading on someone allows me to express my frustration, but it's just that, an emotional reaction, not a reasoned strategy. Worse, it makes people defensive, it tells them they have gotten to me, it sounds like a child’s tantrum… it’s a negotiating disaster, in other words.

Juts look at the Torah’s classic example of "giving it to someone," Yaakov’s lecture to Lavan (Bereishit 31:36-42) after Lavan had chased him down and accused him of theft. I love this tirade. Translated loosely:

And Yaakov was angered, and he fought with Lavan, saying to him, “What is my rebellion, what is my transgression, that you lit out after me? You have felt through all of my possessions, what of your household items have you found? Place it here, before my brothers and yours, and let them identify the truth between us!

This is twenty years I’ve been with you, your ewes and goats never lost their young and I never ate any of your sheep. I never brought you a torn up animal; I made it up myself, you demanded it of my hand, whether it was stolen by day or by night.

I was consumed by dry heat in the day and frost by night, and sleep flew from my eyes. This is twenty years for me in your house, I worked for you for fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your sheep, and you even altered my salary ten times! If the Gd of my father, the Gd of Avraham and the One who awed Yitzchak, had not been with me, you would now have sent me away empty-handed! Gd has seen my poverty and the strain of my hands, and judged it last night.

That’s a great tirade, Yaakov really let loose on him. I love leining it; the words, combined with the trop notes, are so energized, so dramatic.

But what does Lavan do? Next sentence:

And Lavan asserted and said to Yaakov: The daughters are my daughters, the sons are my sons, the sheep are my sheep, and everything you see is mine…

“Giving it to him” doesn’t work, folks; it didn’t work for Yaakov, and it doesn’t work today.

Instead, Tanach’s recommendation (Mishlei 15:1) that ומענה רך ישיב חמה, “A soft assertion will settle anger,” works far better for me.