I am back! Last week, I had the amazing opportunity to be a part of a cross denominational group of rabbis, executive directors, and other Jewish professionals from across the United States, Canada, England, and South America, who participated in a week long leadership seminar through the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. The program was designed to give Jewish leaders increased skills and knowledge in areas such as values based leadership, financial management, fundraising, marketing, conflict resolution, and creating mission driven organizations. With hundreds of pages of literature, hours of lectures from top experts, and plenty of notes of my own, I come home with a tremendous amount of excitement and valuable, practical information to help us achieve our goal of creating a vibrant, dynamic, values driven, kehillah kedosha, holy community. The specifics of the conference are well beyond the scope of a Monday Morning Message, but I come home feeling reaffirmed that as a new congregation we are in an incredible position of strength to re-build ourselves based on best practices for today’s non-profits and synagogues.
As I learned from my very first session with academic director Dina Jacobs, the key to building any successful organization lies in “articulating your organization’s purpose, creating metrics for success, and deploying resources accordingly.” How appropriate that I come home to see our first congregational survey in my inbox! Creating this community starts with identifying our purpose as a congregation, and that begins with creating a collective vision that involves everyone’s input.
This is not my synagogue. It is not the board’s synagogue. It is OUR synagogue and we need everyone’ help. As we identify our mission and put together a vision for our community that is based on our values, we need to remember that building a community is a partnership between the leadership and the rest of our members. Please take a few moments to fill out the survey this week so that we can build for our future!
If you are interested in learning more about my experience at KJL, please call or send me an e-mail.
**As an aside, for those who were unable to join us for the second Israel informational meeting yesterday, please check out the following link for information about our trip. The itinerary is currently being adapted, but if you are interested, please let me know asap. All deposits must be in by January 15th. If you want more details, please e-mail me directly.