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Sep
16
Here’s the speech I’m giving this morning, except that, so I don’t have to wear my glasses, which I only use for reading and computer work, I’m printing it out in super-large, bolded type. Ah, vanity. I’ve also added the more risque beginning and ending which I self-censored out of the one I’m giving in shul. I just knew the Rabbi would make me take it out and I wasn’t up for agitating. When you’re speaking for 13 people, you have to be respectful.
I’ve opted to wear the doily and not a hat, but thank you everyone for the feedback.
Good Shabbos to all.
Several years ago, a work colleague taught me about how, if you add two words to the end of your fortune cookie fortune, you could get a prediction about your love life.
Likewise, I believe, that if you add three small words to the end of any existential-type question, you can learn more about yourself and Judaism.
The best example of this would be to take the question, What do you want to be when you grow up and add to the end, “as a Jew.” Thus making the question,
What do you want to be when you grow up – As a Jew?
As I look back at the last thirty years of my life, it’s obvious to me that it’s a question I’ve been asking – and trying to answer – for a long time.
I was raised as a Reform Jew and my parents provided for me to have the experiences a parent should offer a child whom they hope will love and observe Judaism. I went on Shabbatons and did Israeli dancing. I celebrated the Jewish holidays in the company of many relatives and attended religious school weekly. I went to Jewish overnight camp for six years. And I was bat mitzvahed and confirmed.
And, although it might sound as though I strayed when I chose to attend Georgetown University – a more than 60% Catholic school – it turned out that being among other people who lived and breathed a particular faith made me want to dig deeper into my own. And so I lived and worked in Israel for a year through the Sherut La’am program, learning Hebrew through an ulpan, living on a moshav and in a development town and on a Kibbutz.
Upon my return to the States, I taught in my reform synagogue’s religious school for three years. Three years after I moved to Cleveland, during Kol Nidre services, I met and fell in love with my husband, Jeff, a wonderful, Conservative Jew.
Soon after our youngest son’s bris, my family and I joined B’nai Yish Shrune.
And then I joined the education committee. And I spoke up. A lot.
Three years into that work, I got a letter asking me if I wanted to be a Marcus Leadership Institute Fellow.
That letter threw me for a loop. Sure, I’d come a long way from the hippy shul of my youth that held services in a converted barn. But leadership? In a conservative congregation? Me?
I called past president and steering committee member, Jan Moskowitz. I said, you’ve got the wrong person. He said, no, we don’t.
I met with Rabbi Weiss after one of the first Marcus classes. I said, you’ve got the wrong person. And he said, no, we don’t.
Looking back now on their insistence, I believe the existential meaning was: Grow up, already! You’ve done all the requisite things. No one but you worries about whether or not it’s enough. So, grow up.
And into leadership.
And the Marcus program has provided the education to help me do that.
Through thoughtful and thorough presentations given by local and nationwide experts on organizational behavior, leadership and communication, we learned about the strengths and pitfalls of different leadership styles. Sometimes conversation among the Fellows ourselves became the biggest lesson of an evening. Other times, enlightenment came from listening to this synagogue’s clergy and its leaders as they offered anecdotes that highlighted how to and, sometimes, how not to work through a problem.
And finally, for me, my mentor relationship with Hedy Milgrom, who has prodded me as well as listened to me, has been perhaps the most instructive, comforting and hopefully enduring element of the Marcus Institute because of how I see in her such a unique example of a leader.
So, after nearly twenty-four months of involvement, what have we gained?
The knowledge base I’ve developed through the Marcus Institute is like an intense dose of medicine that, over time, makes it’s impact. Only two evenings ago, during a synagogue committee meeting, I reframed a discussion that had pitted several position against one another. I refocused our talk onto the common interest shared by those positions – a technique I learned several months ago during a Marcus session.
Of course, many of us you see here, listed in the program, you may think, are already leaders, because they come from families of synagogue leaders or have taken on and succeeded in other roles important to leading this shul in the 21st century. Maybe you even feel that way yourself – about either your efforts here in the shul or in your other areas of influence.
But this lesson, too, I take from my time in the Marcus Institute: no matter how many people we’ve managed or fired or trained or advised, we don’t ever stop wondering what we will be when we grow up – as a leader, or as a Jew.
It’s been more than two years now since I received my invitation to be a Marcus fellow, and was told that I wasn’t the wrong person for the program. And I am deeply humbled to be on our synagogue’s board of trustees and work with some of the most dedicated, loyal and sincere Jews, and individuals, I’ve ever met.
The Marcus Institute, through its implementation by Rabbi Weiss, the steering committee and my fellow graduates, allowed me, allowed all of us, to consider what we want to be when we grow up as Jews. Without any pressure about what we should be, or have to be, or need to be. But with respect for what we already were and how to help us be the best we can be – as people, as Jews, and for this synagogue.
It is with enormous gratitude that I now express my honor and pleasure and honest desire to apply the learning I’ve gained through the Marcus Institute to answer and demonstrate to this congregation what I want to be when I grow up as a Jew. Because I know that the leadership learning process spurred by the institute has prepared all of us to do just that.
Oh – the two words?
“In bed.”
By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:58 pm September 16th, 2006 in Politics
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4 Responses to “What do you want to be when you grow up”
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Great Job!! I was wondering about what you decided on the head covering. So how did it go?
Thanks, Cassie! Only like three women had hats on and they were the total Frum type – kind of like a pillbox style pulled down though. A few of my fellow graduates had on kipot but at least one or two others did the doily. It was totally fine.
The speech itself went incredibly well. I was nervous as all get out but I’m told that I did fantastic. She said blushing. I’m very very happy that it went over well and that my fellow grads liked it – since I was the speaker by proxy.
Thanks for asking.
I need to check on your thank you song saga!
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