Archive for August, 2011

 

What Non-Profit Leaders Can Learn from Steve Jobs

Posted on: August 29th, 2011 by Hayim Herring

Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs is an undisputed genius in the field of technology and computing. Someone with his brilliance is exceptionally rare. And while we can’t be Steve Jobs, non-profit leaders can still learn much from him about some fundamentals of leadership.

Innate genius is a gift. But leadership is something that you can cultivate in yourself and others.

Mission Statement: Missing in Action?

Posted on: August 18th, 2011 by Hayim Herring

I just had the pleasure of teaching an outstanding group of rabbinical students who are participating in the Schusterman Rabbinical Fellowship program. While preparing for­­­ a session on the importance of synagogue mission statements, I discovered something curious about them: only two of the roughly dozen synagogue websites that I reviewed featured their mission statements on the home page. In the other cases, I needed to hunt for them on the website. And that’s only those synagogue websites that even had mission statements!

We’re getting to the time of year when people who are not a regular part of the synagogue community will be “shul shopping.” Rosh ha-Shanah begins on the evening of Wednesday, September 28. The first place that people look to learn about anything today is on the web. If your mission statement, the most basic expression of your synagogue identity, does not readily appear on your website, what message are you communicating to potential congregants?

By the way, if you work for a national synagogue denominational office, you might want to check if your denomination’s mission is featured on the website’s home page.  You may be surprised by what you find.

B’shalom,

Rabbi Hayim Herring

Games Children Play: A Digital Upgrade for Jewish Education?

Posted on: August 9th, 2011 by Hayim Herring

Image courtesy of thejewishweek.com

In a recent article in eJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Owen Gottlieb makes the case for Jewish “Games for Learning,” writing that today’s learners “are increasingly Gamers, Designers, and Builders (Tinkerers).”  He argues that the expansion of these games in secular educational settings needs to be embraced by the Jewish philanthropic community if Jewish education efforts are to successfully meet Jewish learners where they are at.

Here are some powerful statistics from the Pew Center’s Internet & American Life Project¹ that confirm Gottleib’s point:

In yesterday’s opinion piece in the New York Times, columnist Virginia Heffernan argues that grade-school education needs a “digital-age upgrade.”  She asserts that 21st-century American classrooms, with their orientation to “teaching tasks, obedience, hierarchy and schedules” are a holdover from the industrial-era, when the classroom was retooled as a “training ground for future factory workers.” (I wonder what she would say about Jewish education!)

Heffernan claims that we need to bring education from the industrial-era model to a digital-age one:

Simply put, we can’t keep preparing students for a world that doesn’t exist. We can’t keep ignoring the formidable cognitive skills they’re developing on their own.

Her comments suggest a serious place for gaming in the educational system. We know that many aspects of Jewish education need a digital-age upgrade.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

B’shalom,

Rabbi Hayim Herring

Notes

¹Lenhart, Amanda, et al.  Teens, Video Games and Civics.  Report, Washington, D.C.:  Pew Internet & American Life Project, September 16, 2008. http://www.pewinternet.org/~/media//Files/Reports/2008/PIP_Teens_Games_and_Civics_Report_FINAL.pdf.pdf (accessed August 8, 2011).

Tisha b’Av: What is it Good For?

Posted on: August 1st, 2011 by Hayim Herring

Image courtesy of virtualjerusalem.com

Tisha b’Av is the most significant day of national mourning on the Jewish calendar. Tisha b’Av commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem and the forced exile of the Jewish people from the land of Israel. Traditional Jewish practice requires a full day of fasting (no food, no liquids), foregoing pleasures and reciting the book of Lamentations (Eichah), which vividly recounts the destruction of the Temple. From a Jewish legal perspective, although the last Jewish Temple was destroyed almost 2,000 year ago, the destruction of the Temple is given greater weight than the destruction of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust in contemporary times.

If you’re an Orthodox or traditional Jew, Tisha b’Av is straightforward. You observe its laws either because you believe that God commands you to do so or because you recognize that when you adopt an Orthodox or traditional Jewish life, you commit to practicing all of it and not some of it.

But I admit to having problems with Tisha b’Av. If I want to return to Israel, I can. If I don’t want to live there permanently, I can visit there. If I can’t afford to visit there, I can follow the daily news of Israel and view pictures and videos of a beautifully rebuilt Jewish State. And, I think that rebuilding the Temple and offering sacrifices would be a theological leap backwards-not to mention the political and military fallout that would occur by rebuilding a Temple on the current site of the Dome of the Rock, which has tremendous religious significance to Muslims. Besides, I don’t want to support Jewish religious fundamentalists who are serious about rebuilding the Temple, another reason that I have problems observing Tisha b’Av traditionally.

Some of my rabbinic colleagues try to reinterpret Tisha b’Av by lightening the laws or reinterpreting them with a contemporary twist. That works for some, but not for me. Neither approach acknowledges these fundamental shifts in Jewish history or the dangers of supporting fundamentalists. Sure, I’m inspired by Tisha b’Av’s message of renewal after devastation, and I believe that Jewish history and Jewish memory are essential to fostering Jewish peoplehood. But can’t we find another way to make this point?

If not, does that mean that Tisha b’Av is no longer relevant?  Or should this day take on new significance?  How do YOU connect to this day? Please share your comments below.

B’shalom,

Rabbi Hayim Herring