T
o fulfill their promise as vital centers for Jew-
ish life in the 21st century, our congregations
must transform themselves. For over 18
years, the Experiment in Congregational Education
(
ECE), an initiative of HUC-JIR’s Rhea Hirsch School
of Education in Los Angeles, has not only championed
the transformation of our congregations, but also
taught them how to do it. We have worked with two
national cohorts of congregations from throughout the
United States, as well as with local cohorts of congre-
gations from New York, Washington, DC, Kansas City,
Los Angeles, and San Francisco. With the support of
generous funders and partners, including UJA-Federa-
tion of New York, the Partnership for Jewish Life and
Learning, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles,
The Nathan Cummings Foundation, The Covenant
Foundation, The Koret Foundation, the Mandel Foun-
dation, and others, we have worked with these
congregations to strengthen their abilities to enrich
the lives of their members.
Science fiction writer William Gibson said, “The
future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.”
For congregations that have em-
braced the work of transformation,
the synagogue of the future is in-
creasingly here because they have
learned to treat change and innova-
tion as constant companions, not
one-time events. Yet for many more,
the opportunity remains to make the
future far more evenly distributed
among our more than 900 Reform
congregations.
Central to our work in trans-
forming congregational life is the
challenge of creating Jewish learning
that makes a meaningful difference in
the lives of learners of all ages. A crit-
ical element of ECE’s approach to
fostering such innovation has been our
ongoing efforts to
model
and
cultivate
a new kind of congregational leader-
ship that is both deeply collaborative
and essentially Jewish.
Collaborative leadership
Reform Judaism rests on the
proposition that we can reconcile our
history and traditions with the con-
temporary societies and cultures in
which today’s Jews live. Yet when
many of today’s synagogue leaders –
clergy, professional, and lay – grew up,
the primary leadership paradigm was
that of the hero leader, the rugged
individualist blazing a trail for others
to follow. They earned their stripes in
corporations in which hierarchical
leadership was both practiced and
rewarded. Leaders who succeed in
fashioning the 21st-century congrega-
tion out of the 20th-century congregations they inherit
will not be lone heroes or hierarchical bureaucrats but
collaborative leaders.
Collaborative leaders view leadership not as a posi-
tion or a personal quality but as a set of behaviors, an
activity in which many people can partake and that can
and should be shared and distributed among members
of a congregation and its staff. They recognize that no
leader can bring all of the talents, knowledge, and capa-
bilities required to address the complex and
ever-changing challenges of congregational life.
Collaborative congregational leaders recognize
that a synagogue is not a business; its essential ratio-
nales for decision-making are not efficiency and
accountability. Rather, synagogues exist to help us
build real and meaningful relationships not only with
God, Torah, and the Jewish People, but also with one
another. They recognize that a vision that will energize
members and direct their energies in a unified fashion
cannot be one that a few people at the top hold and
pronounce, but must be one that everyone understands,
communicates, shares, and has a hand in creating.
Increasingly, as emphasized in our New York-based
work with partners The Jewish Education Project and
the Leadership Institute of HUC-JIR and the Jewish
Theological Seminary, we are demonstrating that col-
laborative leaders – both lay and professional – succeed
by collaborating well beyond the boundaries of their
own congregations when they interact in
networks
with
other congregations and sources of ideas and re-
sources that can help fuel and accelerate innovation.
Too many of our leaders mistake cooperation or
coordination for collaboration. Real
collaboration involves active inter-
change, and engaging by balancing
influencing and being influenced:
lis-
tening
to others – signaling an
openness to learn from others’ ideas
–
and
sharing
your unique perspective
and expertise – enabling ideas, lan-
guage, values, and ownership to
emerge in the space between “mine”
and “yours” thereby truly generating
“
ours.” It also can mean directly shar-
ing professional or personal expertise
or knowledge with other leaders in a
way that leads them to consider that
knowledge while remaining empow-
ered. Finally, real collaboration
sometimes means exercising
tz-
imtzum
,
engaging by consciously
withholding active participation at
select times in order to empower
and/or learn from others.
Jewish leadership
The Reform challenge of change as
a constant in dialogue with tradition
requires that our leaders interact in
a serious way with that tradition and
root their decisions not only in the
exigencies of today’s world but also
in the lessons and values of our
shared heritage and sacred texts.
Transformative leaders bring mean-
ing to what they do by spending as
much time studying our texts and
wrestling with their relevance to their
complex decisions as they do study-
ing budget spreadsheets and
synagogue by-laws. They understand
their leadership responsibilities as
part of a sacred covenant in which the voice of Jewish
values and texts must be heard and heeded.
The ECE’s experience shows that our congrega-
tions can transform themselves to once again become
and remain vital anchoring institutions in the lives of
North American Reform Jews. Succeeding in the chal-
lenge will require of all our leaders – be they clergy,
professional, or lay – collaborative Jewish leadership
for the 21st century.
Page 20
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
Jews affiliate less.
“
Family units” bear little resem-
blance to those of the past, and
their needs have changed.
Technology makes much of what
we used to gather for available
to us anytime, anywhere.
Knowledge is available at the
click of a mouse but meaning
remains elusive.
As leadership scholar Ronald
Heifetz put it, “The lone-warrior
model of leadership is heroic
suicide. Each of us has blind spots
that require the vision of others.
Each of us has passions that need
to be contained by others.”
Synagogue Leadership for the 21st Century
Dr. RobWeinberg,
Director, Experiment in Congregational Education;
Project Manager, Jim Joseph Foundation Education Initiative, HUC-JIR
Dr. Rob Weinberg teaching at an ECE conference where clergy, educational, and lay
leaders collaborate to transform congregational life through Jewish learning.
