Archive for September, 2009

 

How Much Assessment is Enough?

Posted on: September 25th, 2009 by Hayim Herring

This is the second post on the topic of assessment. In my first post, my main points were:

  1. Healthy individuals take regular stock of their lives: where they’ve been, where they are presently, and where they hope to be in the future. The same is true of organizations.
  2. Assessment is another word for organizational learning. Its essential purpose is to help organizations measure whether they’re fulfilling their mission of changing lives and changing their communities.
  3. Assessment doesn’t just drive excellence; it drives the purpose of Jewish existence as expressed in the synagogue.

Many synagogues are hyper-active so it’s simply impossible to assess all activities. Conducting a comprehensive assessment of some aspect of the synagogue is a resource-intensive undertaking. It takes staff and volunteer time, funding and a commitment to go where the recommendations lead—even if that means sun-setting a program. Realistically, you should be able to thoroughly focus on one vital synagogue activity within about 18 months and generate a detailed action report with recommendations and modifications. At the same time, there are ways in which you can easily collect data on some discrete programs or processes in order to acquire quick, helpful feedback on other aspects of synagogue life.

For example, you might decide it’s time to assess the supplementary (now called, “complementary”) education program for children in kindergarten through sixth grades. But, just because your synagogue is engaged in this large effort, you can still be learning about the impact of other programs or processes in a more general way.

To drill down further, let’s say that a core group of 15 adults attend a four-part lecture series on Kabbalah and Jewish spirituality. As a part of each session, you ask participants to answer the same five questions at the end of class. You also leave room for them to add anything else that they would like to about the program and, on the last session, you also ask for their feedback about the entire series. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how much you will learn about what aspects of the series work well and what aspects need modification. And—you’ll be able to get all of that information with little effort on your part and the part of the participants.

Another illustration: a group of parents are leaving with their pre-school age children from a family education program. Five members of the pre-school committee are stationed at the synagogue exit. They are charged with asking two questions to as many parents as they can: “what did you like about the program,” and “what do you wish was different?” You haven’t systematically evaluated the program, but you are able to get useful feedback without much effort.

Creating a culture of assessment requires balance. You don’t want to drop assessment of every other activity during an assessment of a major area of synagogue life, while you also don’t want to drive people insane because you’re always asking them assessment-type questions. So here’s how I’d like us to help each other enrich one another with creative ideas about assessment:

  1. What areas of synagogue life lend themselves to a simple, quick assessment?
  2. How would go about getting it?

Share your ideas and I’ll be happy to compile a list.

Thank you,

Rabbi Herring

Image from Flickr, canonsnapper

When We Have More Again, Will We Remember When We Had Less?

Posted on: September 15th, 2009 by Hayim Herring

This has been a tough financial year for many people. And a change in financial status has other potential serious consequences: loss of self-esteem, anxiety and physical ailments, to name a few. It’s as if we’ve walked into a hotel, and the guest representative checking us in said, “If there is anything that you need, please let us know and we’ll teach you how to live without it.”

But a passage from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel z’l can help us recapture a perspective on what really matters in life: “Every human being is a cluster of needs, yet these needs are not the same in all men nor are unalterable in any one man.  There is a fixed minimum of needs for all men, but no fixed maximum for any man.  Unlike animals, man is the playground for the unpredictable emergence and multiplication of needs and interests, some of which are indigenous to his nature, while others are induced by advertising, fashion, envy, or come about as miscarriages of authentic needs.” (Between God and Man, ed., Fritz Rothschild, p.130).

With the economic realities of the past 18 months, many of us have come to appreciate Heschel’s truth anew. We see that the “playground” for “the multiplication of our interests,” is now littered with objects which are the illusions of authentic needs. Without minimizing the pain of the past 18 months, perhaps some good has happened during this time, too. We remembered what it means to have people who really care about us in our lives and what a blessing it is to be a part of a community. We struggled but came to embrace the distinction between self-worth and financial wealth. We recalled that we are not our jobs, that there is a self that’s differentiated from whatever roles we play. And perhaps we found a resilience that we didn’t know we possessed.

I hope that the economy dramatically improves soon! Too many people have suffered far too long. But as people of faith, when we have more again, will we remember what it was like to have less? Will we take Heschel’s words to heart and remain true to real ultimate concerns and not be lured back to artificial needs?

The Ethics of the Sages (2:8) offers an alternative to the fallacy of artificial needs– “…the more Torah the more life, the more schooling the more wisdom; the more counsel the more understanding; the more righteousness the more peace.” With words of Torah well-spoken, we have a unique opportunity to be a conduit for gently reorienting people toward matters of ultimate importance. May God bless us all in the New Year with life and health, prosperity and peace—and a long memory for ultimate, enduring values.

L’shanah Tovah,

Rabbi Hayim Herring

Bringing the Torah to Life: A Tale of Technology

Posted on: September 15th, 2009 by Hayim Herring

I recently learned from Elaine Kleinmann, a former STAR consultant, about how her rabbi is using technology in a very simple way to help his congregants prepare for Rosh ha-Shanah.  While this was done for Elul, it could be adapted to work with any holiday.  With thanks to both of them, I’m sharing it with you.

– Rabbi Hayim Herring

Elaine writes:

Rabbi Neil Kurshan of the Huntington Jewish Center in Huntington, Long Island, NY, started a lead up to Shabbat called “Torah Teasers”.  These are emails based on the parasha of the week, and raise questions which elicit responses that do not require additional knowledge of the Torah to answer.  The emails are sent to all those who had requested to be on his listserve, and it is a way to engage people and tie the Torah into personal experience.  Participants can then respond to the entire network. On Shabbat morning, in lieu of a sermon, Rabbi Kurshan gives some background of the parasha, raises the questions again with the congregation, asks for responses, and shares some responses from the listserve.  Following the give and take, he uses that opportunity to share his learning and perspective.

He sent a new request this summer to all those who are on his Torah Teaser listserve. He asked to “be able to share with all of you during the month of Elul some of the experiences that make Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur meaningful for all of us… just a paragraph about a High Holiday experience that was particularly meaningful for you.  It can be an experience from your childhood or from more recent years.  It can be an experience at services, within your family, in your home or from anything else connected with the holidays.  I just want you to describe in some detail the experience–what happened and what it meant to you.  I would then like to share these experiences during the days of Elul with the online community in our shul that makes up our Torah Teasers network.”

As a member of this network, I have been receiving these responses since Elul began.  One is about blowing the shofar, one from someone who underwent a health crisis in the past year, one was about childhood memories of Rosh HaShanah dinner, and one from someone who had moved (with her nuclear family but away from her birth family), and had her first encounter  at our synagogue on the high holidays. Rabbi Kurshan’s request  inspired and motivated me to write about my Russian born father, his ambivalence about Judaism in general and Yom Kippur specifically, and the irony of his death occurring a few hours before Kol Nidre 18 years ago.

Image from Flickr, Alexander Smolianitski

Assess All Year ‘Round!

Posted on: September 4th, 2009 by Hayim Herring

It’s hard to believe it, but Rosh ha-Shanah is closing in already! In the weeks leading up to the yamim noraim, the Jewish High Holy Days, we’re supposed to be especially introspective. We’re to take stock of the year and measure ourselves not against someone else—but against the better selves we can be. (Actually, according to Jewish tradition, we’re supposed to conduct a spiritual check-up at the end of each day!) And, as we get older, we don’t only take stock of the single year that has passed. We use the time to do a more complete assessment of our lives.

I didn’t intentionally plan to be writing about assessment during this season, but I’m glad that this topic will be the focus of my postings during this time when many of us are engaged in personal self-reflection. For as it’s supposed to go for the individual person—self-examination in small and large increments—so, too, should it go for an organization. Organizations which don’t regularly practice assessment are unlikely to make it into the future. Assessment, which is another form of organizational learning, is essential to growth.

Yet, in the many years in which I’ve worked work with synagogues, I don’t recall ever being contacted about a question relating to assessment.  It simply hasn’t made it onto the list of critical capacities that synagogues should possess.

Why should assessment stand at the heart of congregational life? Because synagogue leaders, who work hard to secure resources that make congregations vital, can learn whether these resources are having their intended impact. Applying an essential insight of Peter Drucker, the founding father of non-profit management, assessment can tell synagogues if they’re changing Jewish lives and changing the Jewish community in ways which are consistent with their mission. Assessment doesn’t only drive excellence; it drives the very purpose and meaning of Jewish existence.

Here’s where I can use your help in providing information:
1. If you have an experience involving assessment, please share it.
2. What would make you want to learn more about making ongoing assessment a part of your congregational culture?

Thanks and a shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Hayim Herring