Community and Society Archive
Welcome to Community and Society where you will find the latest thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the changing nature of community and society in America today. What are the challenges and opportunities these changes represent for the Jewish people in America at the dawn of a new century?
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Five Qualities of Successful Religious Leaders
By Tsvi Blanchard
What kind of religious leadership helps
to build strong Jewish communities? Recently, I interviewed five successful Jewish
religious leaders from different denominations. The interviews revealed important insights
that are, I believe, of value to anyone wishing to exercise leadership in a Jewish
community.
Although
each interview contained much wisdom, I have limited myself to presenting five key
insights that I culled from the interviews.
1. Religious leaders honor personal
integrity. They
teach others that one can negotiate the tensions that inevitably exist within a truly
diverse community without compromising oneself and without asking others to compromise
themselves. Good religious leaders model for the rest of us the preservation of one’s
integrity in a manner that does not require that one be judgmental of others who make
different choices.
2. Religious leaders are not afraid of
imprecision. They acknowledge and appreciate the ambiguities of
Jewish communal life. Communities that are as internally diverse as our own cannot be led
by leaders who insist upon uniformity, unanimity or the logical coherence of all communal
positions and policies. Capable leaders will cultivate their capacity to tolerate
ambiguity.
3. Religious
leaders are willing to take unpopular stands and to advocate on behalf of unpopular
positions. They accept that this means that they will sometimes feel as if they are
out of sync – or unpopular -- with the communities they lead. They accept that as leaders they must sometimes
bear the burden of being “the heavy,” of being the “bad guy” rather
than the “good guy,” of leading by being out in front of the community even when
the community is lagging behind. Their commitment to the community is a long- term
commitment and this helps them to avoid the temptation of being overly concerned with
short-term popularity.
4. Religious
leaders are committed to serious Torah study and scholarship – both for themselves
and for their communities. Leaders are learners and they help
communities to educate themselves. They work to build community by offering people a
vision of religious possibilities and then work together with them to help them to become
the Jews they want to be. They never pander
to Jews by presenting Judaism as a product that Jews can “buy” and completely
customize to fit their own preferences. Leadership
means helping communities to learn from Jewish traditions and teachings.
5. Religious
leaders lead through vital personal relationships. Religious leaders know and care about
the people in their community and share in their trials, their tragedies, their triumphs.
Religious leaders do not lead from “on high,” but are down in the trenches with
the members of their community, talking with them, arguing with them, celebrating with
them and suffering with them. Because they are there with them, religious leaders are
there for them as well. Strong communities depend on strong connections between members
and between members and leaders. Religious leaders embrace these connections and are
embraced by their communities in turn.
As part of my ongoing research into
what makes for successful contemporary religious leadership, I invite readers to submit
their own observations.
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