It’s All About Relationships...Especially After a Pandemic

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It’s All About Relationships...Especially After a Pandemic

I write this sitting in a Hilton Rochester hotel room in what is known as “Med City,” Rochester, Minnesota. My wife Susie and I have been in this same room since February 10 when we arrived to enter the world-famous Mayo Clinic kidney transplant center. That amounts to more than 90 days, isolated from most family and friends. We were sheltering-in-place for weeks before the rest of the world, living like John and Yoko during their “bed-in” protest for peace at the Hilton Amsterdam in 1969.

The good...scratch that...the great news is that Susie’s new kidney - she named it “Sydney” - is working magnificently. When we arrived here, her function was around 13%. It is now 75%. Twice as good as mine. I donated my “spare” to a lovely woman in Florida, whose husband is a Southern Baptist minister who studied at seminary with my friend Pastor Rick Warren, and who, after Googling me, wrote in an email: “I feel so blessed to have a Jewish kidney!”

So, for the most part, we have been alone all this time. Yet, here’s the thing. We are hardly “alone.” We are surrounded daily by our kids and grandkids, our cousins, our friends, and our colleagues who call, who write, who send, who never let a day go by without letting us know how much they care for and love us. Much of this contact has come through the amazing CaringBridge platform where they see daily updates on our progress. We have come to depend on these virtual connections that lift our spirits. We have been alone....together.

Who knew that the entire Jewish world would learn this same lesson, simultaneously, across denominations and heretofore impermeable institutional borders?

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Dos & Don'ts for a Great Seder: Crowdsourced Resource

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seder header.png

We are experiencing new and unfamiliar challenges together with the world community, and we all feel some uncertainty. However, what is certain is that Jews across the globe are beginning to prepare for Pesach, just as we have always done for thousands of years.

With that legacy, we share this crowdsourced seder resource with ideas that may add joy this year and inspire hope for future celebrations.

We thank the colleagues and friends who contributed to this resource of diverse suggestions about the Pesach seder. Submissions were solicited over several months. Most were shared in the spirit of the holiday celebrated every year, and some were specific to this year.

Looking Through a Multidimensional Philanthropic Lens

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Looking Through a Multidimensional Philanthropic Lens

After 21 years at The AVI CHAI Foundation, I am excited to begin the next stage of my career as the Mayberg Foundation Senior Advisor for Education Grants and Programs. It’s wonderful to be able to bring my experience to a new milieu, while at the same time have the opportunity to learn from and about different philanthropic models. After only a few weeks, I can already point to noteworthy variations in approaches.

Both AVI CHAI and the Mayberg Foundation believe that Jewish literacy is key to sustaining the next generation of Jews. It’s no surprise then that both foundations view Jewish day schools as an essential vehicle for imparting deep Jewish knowledge. Each focuses on acting as an agitating force for the improvement of the instruction of Jewish studies. Additionally, the Mayberg Foundation and AVI CHAI both demonstrate a respect for Jewish unity and Jews across the spectrum. It’s striking that despite these similarities in funding priorities, there are numerous differences in philanthropic practices:

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A Paradigm Shift for Thinking About God in the Classroom

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A Paradigm Shift for Thinking About God in the Classroom

Over the past 75 years, Jewish day schools in North America have experimented with ways of teaching Jewish identity. The methodologies ranged from heavy textual induction to deep discussion to Israeli dance to computer-based solutions to maker spaces to Project Based Learning. In that time a singular topic remains under-developed: how to teach about the Divine. Most approaches focus on either: trying to create an emotional connection with God through nature, meditation, or experiential learning; or sharing a significant amount of knowledge about the topic of God with the potential for some discussion from students.

What other methods could teachers employ to build a strong, lasting Jewish identity in their students?

Perhaps we should consider a paradigm shift for thinking about God in the classroom. The idea of preparation plus opportunity equals success draws from the business world, but this wisdom points at a different way to think about educating children. Throughout a child’s life, many opportunities come up for the child to test, hone, seek out, and avoid a deep, individual understanding of God and how that understanding adds value to their life. Those pivotal moments can help a child actualize their beliefs instead of accepting someone else’s stock list, data points, or narratives about God. In this paradigm, the teacher shifts away from passing on the Mesorah to preparing the child for those non-classroom life moments when the student will examine the world independently and come to personal conclusions. In this paradigm preparation involves radical differences from other models.

Teachers can build their students’ spiritual development by nurturing specific traits. Spiritually healthy children...

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Engaging Gen Z by Engaging Their Parents

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Engaging Gen Z by Engaging Their Parents

As the Orthodox Union’s Chief Innovation Officer, I get the opportunity to work on innovation-oriented initiatives that our program staff involved in the daily whirlwind of outreach and engagement work don’t have the luxury of time to do. Over the last several months, I’ve been privileged with the task of exploring the different approaches used to engage GenZ and their parents in order to develop a 5-year plan for NCSY’s family programming. 

Since 1954, NCSY has dedicated its efforts to connect, inspire and empower Jewish teens and encourage passionate Judaism through Torah and Tradition. While our mission remains the same, we have found a shift in strategy necessary with each new generation of Jewish teenager. 

Looking back, we can now say with confidence that the switch from synagogue-based programming, designed for GenX (born 1960-79), to community and school-based programming was crucial for retaining participation of GenY and Millennials (born 1980-94). Similarly, we have realize the need to adapt our paradigm yet again, this time to include parents, if we want to engage GenZ (born 1994-2010). 

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ICYMI: Top Reads from the Mayberg Foundation in 2019

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ICYMI: Top Reads from the Mayberg Foundation in 2019

The Mayberg Foundation is grateful that many experienced, knowledgeable authors contribute to our blog or share thought leadership pieces with the larger community by writing compelling articles on the ways Jewish wisdom and values have a positive impact on Jewish life in the contemporary world.

We encourage you to peruse through our blog and news and media tabs for the content that is most relevant to you. Below are 2019‘s nine most read pages from those sections of our website:

Published Articles:

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Honoring Passion and Process Alike

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Honoring Passion and Process Alike

Dueling forces seem to be at work in the nonprofit and philanthropic world. Sometimes, passion reigns supreme. We give our highest praise to dreamers and free thinkers. Their creativity, conviction and courage inspire and excite us. At other times, we seem to be ruled by organizational policies and procedures. We love the passion, but we know that without systems and processes in place, even the noblest aims are scarcely more than fantasies. Structure and accountability protect us from the trap of spinning our wheels with limited impact. Indeed, these two forces  -- passion on the one hand and process on the other -- frequently find themselves in conflict in even the best run organizations.

Finding balance between sound organizational procedures and creative disruption is hard. In fact, it is one of the hardest balancing acts for nonprofit professionals and lay leaders alike. When do we stay true to structure, even when there are strong impulses (and good reasons) to make exceptions in support of the greater good? And when should we be flexible, allowing a suspension of procedures in order to capitalize on extraordinary circumstances, exciting ideas or unique opportunities? 

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Balancing Two Truths Requires Honoring Two Voices

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Balancing Two Truths Requires Honoring Two Voices

I have a new hero, and it’s a bit embarrassing. 

Embarrassing to admit that I’ve studied and taught this character for decades and always assumed he was the anti-hero, the person we shouldn’t become, the epitome of someone who was impelled by a mistaken zeal to lead a mistaken life. 

My anti-hero has become heroic. 

I’m talking about Jonah. 

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Relationships and Learning: Two Sides of the Same Coin in Grantmaking

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Relationships and Learning: Two Sides of the Same Coin in Grantmaking

Contrary to intuition, there are times when intellectualizing common-sense practice is a good thing. Take Institutional Learning, for example. Time and time again, I heard professors underscore the value of working for organizations that evaluate and adjust their own systems of operation. But it was only when I entered the workforce, and was fortunate enough to find myself working for actual learning institutions, that I realized how critical this ethic is to strategic, impactful changemaking. 

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The Holographic Jews

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The Holographic Jews

The entire Jewish people are a single, perfect whole. 
—Zohar 

This lofty and poetic vision of unity as articulated in the Zohar has a modern-day defender in late author Michael Talbots book, The Holographic Universe (1991).  Within its pages Talbot focuses on the parallels of quantum mechanics and ancient mysticism as he compares the universe to a holographic image; an image that when 'dissected' does not give us 'parts of the whole' but rather 'the whole in each part.' A holographic image cannot be halved or quartered or dissected in any way. Each time you divide it, it merely gives you smaller versions of the original image! 

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What Fair Trade Practices Teach Us About Finding Purpose in What We Do

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What Fair Trade Practices Teach Us About Finding Purpose in What We Do

Fair trade. A concept that has become more popular over the last thirty years, its essential focus is to make sure that everyone is taken care of. The emotional drive behind this arrangement is that people care deeply not only about being taken care of, but also about taking care of others.

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Change and Transition are Not the Same Thing in Innovation

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Change and Transition are Not the Same Thing in Innovation

When an organization is facing a big change - the arrival of a new leader, a shift in strategy, rapid growth (or decline) - one often hears the well-worn reminder that “change is not an event, it is a process.”  Well-intended advice, perhaps, but not helpful.  It is not helpful because when change is at hand, hard work is needed, not sage advice.  It is not helpful because with all new pressures, we have to focus on the work, not words.

And it is not helpful, most precisely, because it is not true. 

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Let Us Not Turn Away

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Let Us Not Turn Away

As I write this, in San Diego, a funeral is taking place for Lori Gilbert Kaye OBM, who was murdered by a 19-year-old at a Chabad during Passover services. You know of this event, and others like it. When such things happen, we might experience many emotions: sadness, fear, shock, anger, numbness. But we have one job before anything else. We must feel the immediacy of the event, we must overcome its seeming distance, we must know that it is our own family that has been affected.

 It is natural to protect ourselves from the pain of the world through abstraction. It is easy to put up layers of armor against the assault on our sense of safety, and our moral sensibility, through distance. But Torah calls us to oppose that distancing. It calls us instead to closeness.

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Are Fireworks Essential to Spark Enthusiasm?

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Are Fireworks Essential to Spark Enthusiasm?

Do you remember the song This Magic Moment by Jay and the Americans? Magic moments occur throughout the course of the Jewish year. Sometimes, the magic is overt and apparent and other times, we have a greater hand in creating our own magic.

At either end of the Jewish calendar lives a major week-long festival. In the springtime month of Nissan, we celebrate Pesach. It is a massive undertaking to create a seder with its numerous accouterments, not to mention the weeks of advance preparation for the holiday’s arrival.

On the other side of the year, in autumnal Tishrei, we celebrate Sukkot. This holiday, too, requires a great deal of preparation: erecting a sukkah, securing a lulav and etrog, and eating—if not sleeping— outside no matter the climate.

While the similarities are striking, there is a fundamental difference between the two that can be gleaned from the recounting of their respective biblical sacrifices recited in the Mussaf Amidah (additional holiday service standing prayer).

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Dropping a Pin: Finding Professional Development in Unexpected Places

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Dropping a Pin: Finding Professional Development in Unexpected Places

Geography is not my strong suit. In fact, the blue Trivial Pursuit wedge represented the category that usually kept me from winning that famous ‘80s board game. Like many American Jews of my generation, my life and classroom experiences left me under informed about most places on the globe other than the United States, Eastern Europe and Israel.

You can imagine my enthusiasm when I learned our professional team would have the opportunity to accompany our foundation’s trustees and rising trustees to the little known country of Malawi in south-eastern Africa. Our site visit with a new grantee, Innovation Africa, gave me the chance to add a new country to my shortlist of spots I could find on a map. It also gave me a chance to answer this key question: why would a foundation committed to proliferating Jewish wisdom and values in the contemporary world deploy such a large delegation to visit unknown villages in Africa, so far from the heartbeat of Jewish education and outreach?

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Feedback is the Key to Developing Leaders... And It's the Gift We Aren't Giving

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Feedback is the Key to Developing Leaders... And It's the Gift We Aren't Giving

It turns out, there is an actual recipe for creating a leader. Start with a heavy dose of dynamic work experience, add a few dashes of mentoring, mix in a pinch of formal training and voila! You have a leader. It’s called the 70-20-10 leadership development model, and it was developed by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) decades ago.

Notice something interesting? A full 70% of this formula hinges upon the cultivation of increasingly challenging, on-the-job “work experiences.” Yet too often this key ingredient is overlooked by managers. After all, it is much easier to simply approve an employee attending a one-off, skill-building course, say, rather than meaningfully support them in leading a new program – a riskier and more time-consuming proposition.

But the latter is exactly what organizations need to do in order to successfully cultivate workplace cultures that enable individuals to develop as leaders. Unfortunately, our sector is falling short in this area.

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Hidden Seeds of Growth

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Hidden Seeds of Growth

As the cold of winter sets in and the barrenness of the trees outside my window becomes a little starker, it is easy to forget the powerful transformation nature is effecting beneath our feet, just out of view. The earth is rejuvenating through much needed rest, and seeds concealed within it are undergoing invisible preparation for what will appear to be a sudden miracle come springtime. The seemingly infertile freeze of winter masks what is actually the greatest breeding ground for quiet potential. Unseen processes can yield remarkable, life-giving growth.

And the same can be true in our offices.

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Distinction: The WHY of Jewish Education

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Distinction: The WHY of Jewish Education

Twice in the last two weeks I heard the “Find Your WHY” construct referenced at Jewish education conferences. Interestingly, this platform for stimulating organizational clarity around purpose, first introduced in 2009 by Simon Sinek in his “Golden Circle” Ted Talk, is finally emerging in the Jewish education field. 

I am hopeful this is a signal that we are getting real with the most pressing challenge facing Jewish education today. I am hopeful we now recognize how urgent it is for those involved in Jewish education to align on mission and purpose. If it were not challenging enough to agree on a universal mission, the real challenge comes in designing the components of Jewish education to produce the results our sacred texts deserve.

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The Attitude of Gratitude

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The Attitude of Gratitude

Growing up I wanted to be a stewardess, an actress and a lawyer.  At no point did I ever think, say or strive to be a fundraiser. But since none of the eight women who founded the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project (JWRP) wanted to raise the money, I said I would try until we hired a professional.  That was 10 years ago, and although it has not been easy, what I have learned through fundraising changed my life forever, and how I have grown far outweighs any of the challenges.

One of the biggest lessons is gratitude.  The greatest philanthropists I ask to invest in our movement are the ones who after I thank them for giving say, “No, thank you.  Thank you for giving me the opportunity.”

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Sparks of Service

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Sparks of Service

At my synagogue before the High Holidays three women with busy lives take on the annual task of putting name labels on the appeal cards that worshippers use to indicate how much they will contribute to the synagogue for its own and community needs.

The labels must be printed by the synagogue office staff before the volunteers can put them on the cards and often the printing isn’t done until the last minute, waiting for the last congregants to sign up for seats. Yet despite the mad rush at the end, every year the three women set aside the time to complete the work. Asked how they could give up precious hours when so much is needed to be done for their jobs, in their homes and for their families before the holidays, the women all said it was a task they took on delightedly each year knowing that “just a bit of peeling and sticking” would result in needed funds. “It’s my service to the synagogue and community,” said one.

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