Becoming a Jewish Leader
By Pamela Partridge, JFSA Digital Communications Manager
This past spring, just as I started as the new Digital Communications Manager for Federation, I joined the Yesod Jewish Leadership Course organized by the Young Adult Division (YAD) of the Jewish Federation. This course comprised a cohort of young Jewish professionals in the San Antonio community and was led by Rabbi David Komerofsky, previously of Temple Chai. Throughout the eight-week course, we watched TED talks, read articles on leadership in business, looked at case studies, and analyzed various texts. Each two-hour session had a specific theme, and at some point, we would split into Zoom breakout rooms for smaller discussions before wrapping up together.
I saw this course more as an opportunity to meet other young adults in the community, rather than learn more leadership skills. I arrived in San Antonio, having worked in the Hillel world for the past 3 years, where I mentored students, staffed Taglit Birthright trips, attended numerous professional development conferences, and worked to make lasting impacts on the campus community. Needless to say, I was fairly confident in my capabilities as a leader.
However, throughout the Yesod course, I started to realize that I never actually thought of myself as a “Jewish leader.” Instead, I always called myself a “leader who is Jewish.” And while those statements may seem similar, they have entirely different meanings and connotations. In my mind, a “Jewish leader” is someone who always has some back-pocket Torah ready to share. A Jewish leader went to summer camp and is well-connected in their community. A Jewish leader knows the long version of the kiddush…and probably doesn’t refer to it as the “long version.”
As I continued each week, logging onto Zoom and listening to Rabbi Komerofsky’s incredible “dad jokes,” I began to think about why I separated Judaism and leadership. I realized I held both identities individually because I never fully understood how to apply Jewish values and texts to my leadership style. Judaism never seeped into my decisions as a leader, and my leadership skills never changed how I live my life as a Jew. Slowly over the eight weeks, I was able to see that these identities should influence and interact with one another. That the Jack Welch article and Numbers 13: 17-33 can connect, and the lessons that are extrapolated can guide me in solving problems and understanding others better at work. By the end of the course, my perspective on how to approach my new position here at Federation changed. I thought about the texts and lessons together and saw myself not as a leader who happens to be Jewish, but for the first time as a Jewish leader.
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