Fellowship program

Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI): Shaping Visionary Spiritual Leaders by Rabbi Irwin Kula

Articles, Featured

Organizations throughout the American Jewish community are painfully aware that the strategies and programs that may have been effective for a previous generation will no longer meet the needs of the younger generation of Jews who have been raised in a dramatically different world than that of their parents or grandparents. Indeed, many of those organizations are already experiencing attrition and loss of market share.

We are fortunate that forward looking philanthropists and foundations have stepped up over the past two decades to fund whole fields of endeavor that are having a dramatic impact on the vibrancy of Jewish life. The Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE) has strengthened our day school system. Birthright Israel has made it possible for 400,000 young American Jews to have a direct encounter with Israel. The Foundation for Jewish Camp has provided resources to improve the quality and increase the capacity of Jewish summer camps. It is long past time for the Jewish community to begin to invest in its rabbis.

Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership believes that the Jewish community can only be as strong as its spiritual leaders. Even though the Jewish community may rank among the most secular and least devout of any faith group in America when judged by weekly attendance at services or expressed belief in God, Jews represent a community of faith and of fate whose resilience and solidarity is unparalleled in the world. Jews continue to look to their rabbis to give voice to these bonds of communal solidarity that make Jews feel so connected to other Jews all around the globe and to teach and communicate wisdom that helps people improve their lives and become better, more compassionate, loving and happier people.

This is why Clal has invested major time and resources in the training of rabbis through its Rabbis Without Borders program directed by Rabbi Rebecca Sirbu. Since its inception four years ago RWB which received a 2013 Slingshot Award designating it one of the most inspiring and innovative projects in the North American Jewish community, more than 150 rabbis have participated in its programs and become part of the RWB network.

On June 1st Clal is opening the application process for a brand new program under the aegis of Rabbis Without Borders. It is called the Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI.). CLI is designed as a two-year program for early career rabbis to encourage innovative thinking and equip rabbis to serve as transformative change agents in the communities that they serve. We are looking for rabbis who think big, prepared to dramatically re-think how synagogues function or prepared to launch a spiritual alternative to synagogues of their own design. The syllabus will integrate methodologies from the field of leadership education and innovation with the best thinking in the field of synagogue transformation. The acronym – CLI – reminds us that clergy are intended to be human vessels that create sacred communities in which Jews can find meaning and purpose (klei kadosh).

Directing CLI will be Rabbi Sid Schwarz, whose book, Finding a Spiritual Home: How a New Generation of Jews can Transform the American Synagogue (2000) helped to define the field of synagogue transformation and which offered a model for a new paradigm for the American synagogue. His most recent book, Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Community (2013) has set an agenda for much of the American Jewish community as it seeks to remain relevant and engage Next Gen Jews.

Working with Sid Schwarz will be Marty Linsky, one of the top leadership consultants in the world. Serving on the faculty of the Harvard Kennedy School since 1982, Linsky is the co-author (with Ron Heifetz) of Leadership on the Line (2002) and The Practice of Adaptive Leadership (2009). He and Ron Heifetz are also the co-founders of Cambridge Leadership Associates.

The CLI program is informed by more than a decade of work that Clal has done with rabbis and rabbinical students across the denominational spectrum. There is a gap between rabbis’ desire to provide leadership to the Jewish community and their sense that they lack the toolkit to be effective in that role. Recently graduated rabbis regularly talk about the need for a support system to help them navigate the challenges that new professionals invariably face. Because so many rabbis enter the field with a need to support themselves and their families many choose more conventional jobs even when they might have an interest in experimenting with riskier, more innovative models because the former offers a more reliable source of income.

Compared with other professions, the American rabbinate is woefully weak in the area of professional development. The lack of such support has created rabbis who feel isolated and who often face mid-career burnout. At a time when dramatic changes are taking place in American society and among the next generation of American Jews, Jewish institutions will require visionary leadership to adapt to these changes. That leadership will need to come, first and foremost, from rabbis who are still held in high esteem by Jews and who see them as the standard bearers of the Jewish tradition.

Funded by lead gifts from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, and Alisa and Dan Doctoroff, the Clergy Leadership Incubator is designed to create an intensive mentorship program for some of the most creative and innovative rabbis entering the rabbinate from across the denominational spectrum. The challenges facing American Jewry can not be successfully met by any one denomination working in isolation. Furthermore, increasing numbers of rabbis are now being trained for a post-denominational Jewish community. The Clergy Leadership Incubator will make available to its participants the best minds and practices in the nonprofit sector around reflective practice, adaptive skills, innovative thinking and visionary leadership. Finally, it will provide as mentors to the CLI fellows the experience and wisdom of some of the most successful and innovative rabbis in the American Jewish community.

The future vitality of the American Jewish community depends on our ability to train and nurture a cadre of young, visionary spiritual leaders. No seminary can do this alone. CLI will leverage the many assets of the Jewish community and tap into the great wisdom beyond the Jewish community, to create this cadre of new rabbinic leaders for our community.

To apply for participation in the program go to rabbiswithoutborders.org/?q=forrabbis#CLI

Rabbi Irwin Kula is the President of Clal: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He is also the author of “Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life”. 

New International Fellowship Program on Judaism and Human Rights

Articles , , , , , , , , , , ,

Last week an application process was launched for a brand new program called the René Cassin Fellowship Program (RCFP). With hubs in New York, London and Jerusalem, the RCFP will select 36 outstanding Jewish young professionals, ages 25-35. The year-long program of study, travel and hands-on impact projects does not take the place of one’s current employment or program of studies. It is rather an enrichment experience that will explore Jewish visions for a just society and will provide young Jewish professionals with the knowledge, skills and contacts needed to enhance their activism in the areas of social justice, international human rights or related fields.

It is sad and a bit ironic that some in the Jewish community have acquired an aversion to the array of organizations that deal with human rights. This stems from the fact that for several decades many human rights groups have put a spotlight on Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinian population living in the territories captured by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War. The U.N. has been a forum particularly hostile to the state of Israel, with many resolutions of condemnation failing only because of a United States veto in the U.N. Security Council. The U.N. sponsored 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban South Africa became a flashpoint for the obscene and disproportionate attention paid to Israel as compared to many other countries with no tradition of democracy or legal due process and with far worse records on human rights.

The RCFP starts with a different premise. We believe that the many international, national and NGO forums in which human rights is the focus can either support or detract from the legitimacy of nations. Israel and the Jewish people have an important stake in the issues addressed by these bodies. While it is unfortunate that Israel must engage in a debate over its legitimacy in the community of nations 65 years after its founding, the choice to be absent is an error. Israel was created by an act of the United Nations. Even in the face of the most outrageous accusations and plentiful evidence of double standards being used by states whose record on human rights are among the worst in human history, Jews must appear at such forums and speak the truth in the noblest tradition of Jewish values. The Fellowship program is designed to equip participants for just such kind of engagement.

The sponsoring organization for the fellowship program is René Cassin, a human rights NGO based in London that uses the experience of the Jewish people and Jewish values to campaign and educate on universal human rights issues such as discrimination, detention and genocide. Founded in 2000, the organization is named in honor of René Cassin, a French Jew and Nobel Laureate who was one of the principal co-drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With special consultative status at the United Nations, René Cassin uses that forum to give voice to Jewish values within the international human rights community.

The RCFP is funded by a lead gift from New York UJA/Federation’s Commission on the Jewish People. A critical dimension of the program is having three cohorts of fellows each from a different center of world Jewry. Between monthly study sessions, there will be regular Skype conversations between Jews in the United States, the United Kingdom and Israel. Each will bring their unique historical and cultural background to bear as they reflect on the very challenging issues presented in the international human rights arena. The group will participate together in a study tour of Israel in June 2013.

Partnering with René Cassin in Israel will be Makom, a division of the Jewish Agency for Israel led by Jonny Ariel. Makom is playing a leading role as a catalyst for effective and compelling Israel engagement and Israel education. The lead educator in Israel will be Rabbi Gideon Sylvester, an Orthodox rabbi from the UK with expertise in human rights who now lives and teaches in Israel. The lead educator in London will be Simone Abel, a human rights attorney who is also the executive director of Rene Cassin.

The deadline for applications is December 1, 2012. Those interested in learning more about the fellowship program or who would like to obtain an application form please email info@renecassin.org with subject line “RCFP”. Applicants should be between the ages of 25 and 35 and live close to one of the three regional hubs – New York City, London or Jerusalem. Selections will be made by February 15, 2013, with the program commencing in May. To learn more about the program, please visit: http://bit.ly/UCaRz3 which is part of the René Cassin website.

Rabbi Sid Schwarz, author of Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World and the forthcoming, Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future, is the director of René Cassin Fellowship Program and will also serve as the lead educator in New York.

(Originally posted on http://ejewishphilanthropy.com)