Spotlight on CLAL

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New Book Champions Gender Equity for Women in Jewish Organizational Life
By Judy Epstein

While women make up a majority of the workers in American Jewish communal life, few have made it to the top of the career ladder. Many reach a ceiling and leave, resulting in a reduced talent pool and ultimately, a diminished workforce.

Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life (2008) by Shifra Bronznick, Didi Goldenhar, and Marty Linsky, a startling new book just published, looks at this phenomenon, presenting tools, exercises, personal accounts, and insights to help women advance professionally in the Jewish world, and in the end, revitalize and enhance American Jewish communal life. Culling strategies from leading women in the American Jewish world, it offers their approaches for success in navigating the organizational structure.

Leading the pack, in the first chapter entitled “Adaptive Change” that deals with building relationships, is CLAL’s Executive Vice Chairman Donna M. Rosenthal. As the opening quote from executives in the field, her advice is “to build all kinds of alliances. In the beginning I thought I had to deal with all the issues all by myself. What I learned was to go out and talk to others, not only to see where we all were, but to build a supportive cadre….Even if you are the only woman in the environment, there are others thinking in the same way…You’re really not alone in almost anything you do.”

Praising the authors and the book’s potential impact in the Jewish world, Rabbi Irwin Kula, CLAL President said, “…it is an important piece of work…that not only reflects the very best and most contemporary of social change theory and practice applied to an issue…which is central for the health of Jewish life, but you and your team have done so with wisdom, honesty, integrity, genuineness, and a generous spirit ─ probably the most difficult quality to embody for those of us who feel passion for what we know is just. And you have done so with a magnificent aesthetic sense.”

For more information on Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life, see attached. To order, go to www.advancingwomen.org or amazon.com. The price for a single copy is $15.


   

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