January 28, 2005/Shevat 18 5765, Vol. 57, No. 22
Portraits of leadership in the Valley
DEBORAH SUSSMAN SUSSER
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 Rabbi Barton Lee of Hillel and ASU sophomore Heather Miller recently returned from a birthright Israel trip. |
The Insider
Adam Schwartz, executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix
Adam Schwartz has been in his current position for just under 18 months, but he's been with the federation movement for decades. He started in Cleveland, moved to Pittsburgh, and ended up in Metro West, N.J., before coming to Phoenix.
"I was lucky," he says. "I came through three outstanding federations."
Schwartz acknowledges that leadership is "a growing issue," and not just here in the Valley. For one thing, he says, the Jewish community has been slow to respond to the pressures and stresses of everyday life, what he calls "the 24/7 workload."
"There are lots more pulls than even 18 years ago when I started and started working with lay leadership," Schwartz says. "I think in some respects we have not as a system, or as a Jewish community, always continued to be as flexible and adaptive to opportunities, challenges, concerns, with regard to leadership."
Schwartz also notes the "growing prof-essionalization of much of Jewish communal life," and emphasizes the importance of good communication between professionals and lay people.
The local federation is currently developing a program to examine and foster leadership within the community. To determine the six "modules," or themes, that will be addressed in eight three-hour workshops scheduled to begin this spring, volunteer co-chairs Mim Bottner and Steve Weitzenkorn spoke with past and present federation leaders, executive directors and presidents of several Jewish agencies, board members, rabbis and synagogue leaders.
Weitzenkorn, an organizational psychologist who specialized in developing leadership programs, says that the workshops are unusual in that they aim to address several populations at once rather than speak to them separately. In that way, he says, leaders from across the spectrum of Jewish life locally can meet and learn from each other.
In his own position, Schwartz says that he tries to mentor others as much as possible. "I do operate with an open door," he says, "and I hope to be available." But he acknowledges that in a community the size of ours, the demands of his position sometimes make him less accessible than he'd like to be. That includes being accessible to his wife and three young children. "It's a struggle to balance," Schwartz says.
The Gadfly
Bill Straus, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League
Bill Straus got his current job by speaking his mind - something he's done professionally for many years.
In 1995, when hate crime legislation was a bitterly contested issue, Straus was working as a radio talk-show host. He got a call from county attorney Rick Romley and Joel Breshin, then the director of the ADL, both of whom were outspoken supporters of the legislation.
Straus invited the two to "camp out" on his show, the legislation passed, and thus began Straus's involvement with the ADL. For years he emceed their dinners - "I'm a better emcee than I am a regional director, I'll tell you that," he jokes - and then, when ADL found itself in need of a director, he suggested himself.
Straus says, "It's a fabulous job. I've said so many times to my boss, 'I wish I'd gotten involved in this long ago. I'd be approaching competency!' and her response is, 'You probably took the weirdest path of anybody to get here and you weren't ready for this job years ago.'"
Straus's weird path began with 10 years as a horse-racing announcer and odds maker, during which time he did radio shows for the race tracks. That led to a job in radio sales and then, in 1992, to a radio talk show. "I started out from 2 to 4 in the morning," he recalls. "Loved it. Loved it!"
One of the things Straus loves about his job now, he says, is "bringing the accomplishments of the Jewish community to the attention of people outside the Jewish community who otherwise may never know about it."
As to whether the Jewish community is experiencing what some have called a leadership vacuum, Straus isn't so sure. "It's not a vacuum," he says, "and it's not even that it's deteriorated, as much as it's that Phoenix is a way station for a lot of corporate leaders and a lot of civic leaders. It's not like it used to be, where somebody was considered a community leader for 20 or 30 years.
"There are very few, if any, places that have grown as fast as we have," he continues. "Not only the general but the Jewish community, and that's taken a toll on the perception of leadership."
Rachel Richter, ADL's regional director of development, sticks her head into Straus's office, and he beckons her in. Richter, 33, spent a year with AIPAC prior to coming to the ADL, and was the director of the Young Leadership Division of the Jewish federation before that. Straus predicts that Richter will have a different take on leadership issues in Phoenix, and he's right.
Like Straus, Richter speaks her mind. "I think we're more selfish," she says bluntly, "and I think people don't want to give their time. I think that has a lot to do with it. And I don't think our parents are giving us the same guilt, the guilt that they grew up with.
"The other thing," she says, "is there are more options. People really have the opportunity now to feel like they can be involved in the Jewish community through a number of different panels, where I don't think they had that opportunity before.
"One of the things that I'm trying to do this year is start reaching out to a younger group, not 'You have to give to ADL' but, 'By the way, do you know what we do, do you know that when your child gets teased or something there's actually a place to call?' Not going after the same big names."
In Straus's estimation, Richter is herself a leader. But Richter demurs, countering that she's not going to be "a leader in the community, in a lay leader sense, until my late 30s," after she's had children. She believes "perceptions have clouded the 50-plus person's way of thinking. If you're 50, you started getting involved in the Jewish community in your 20s. ... I think (older people) look at my generation and say, 'Come on, already.' And we say, 'Leave us alone, we're not there yet. ... We're taking our time."
The Up-and-Comer
Melissa Singer, Hadassah member, co-founder of Miriam
When Melissa Singer and a friend co-founded Hadassah's Miriam group five years ago, Singer already had a long history with the organization. Her mother made her a life member when she was 4 years old. Her sister, who was 7 at the time, became one too.
"My mom was membership V.P. that year," Singer, now 39, explains. Naturally, when Singer's own daughters were born, their grandmother made them life members, too.
California-bred Singer says that she and her sister always had their Jewish National Fund boxes, and were "always doing some tzedakah project - that was just part of our life." High school, she says, "was BBG," and in college she was involved in Hillel. After college, she taught in Jewish day schools in California, Indiana, Oklahoma and Texas before moving to Phoenix, but stopped when she and her husband started their own family.
Living in Dallas, Singer was very active in NCJW. But when she arrived in Chandler, she felt something was lacking. She started Miriam, she says, because "there was no other Jewish women's organization on this side of town, and I missed having that."
Singer praises chapter board member Thea Freidman as essential in helping get Miriam off the ground. "She's a seasoned Hadassah member, and she gave us a lot of good insight." And she cites past Hadassah president Lee Levine as a role model for leadership. "She was very understanding of people's differences," Singer says. "She told me once, everybody has whatever amount they can donate, but that doesn't mean that they want to donate it all just to Hadassah. ... You have to keep in mind, people come from different places and they're going different places and that Hadassah isn't everybody's whole life."
Hadassah isn't Singer's whole life, but it's certainly a big part of it. "I'm the co-education V.P.," she says, ticking off her list of Hadassah responsibilities, "and I am the chair for cards and certificates. On the chapter level I'm a membership mentor, and I am the High Society co-chair. I'm the Check It Out chair - this year we're going to go into the Jewish high schools and for junior and senior girls we go in and the nurse comes and teaches them how to do self breast exams. I've just been assigned that." Given a few more minutes, Singer remembers that she helped start a group for all the child life members because "my daughter was offended she never got to go to anything," and she also schedules the book group.
In October, she traveled to Israel for nine days with 21 other women from around the United States, under the auspices of the organization's Young Leaders Program. She says that she would like to be on the national level some day, working on starting new groups. "I think Hadassah is shifting a lot toward gearing toward the younger groups," she explains, "and I think it takes work to try to maintain them.
"Hadassah's something I'd love to have be my career," Singer says, "when I can do it." Right now, though, while her daughters are still in grade school, she says she can't make more of a time commitment than she already has. She credits her husband, "the man behind the woman," with making her Hadassah involvement possible.
"We pass each other in the driveway so that he can be home in time to catch the kids so I can go to all my numerous meetings," she says. "He's a huge Hadassah advocate." It turns out the tradition of valuing Jewish leadership runs in his family: His mother was the president of ORT when he was little, Singer explains.
"For him this is just second nature," she says. "This is my non-paying job - this is what I need to be doing."
The Empowerer
Rabbi Barton Lee, executive director, Hillel Jewish Student Center at Arizona State University
It's a sunny Tuesday on the Arizona State University Campus. Out on the mall, near a table marked "Hillel," some two dozen students sit at long tables eating falafel and pita and talking. Rabbi Barton Lee moves among them, greeting them by name and asking how they're doing. He seems to know everyone, and they certainly know him. He's hard to miss in his colorful tie, wide kippah and big black shades.
"We try to get out on campus as much as possible," Lee explains as he takes his plate of falafel from one of the people dishing out lunch. He sits down next to a young woman in a red T-shirt with Hebrew lettering. "This is Heidi," Lee says, introducing the girl to a visitor. "Heather," the girl corrects him good-naturedly. Lee is appropriately contrite. "We went to Israel together!" he exclaims. "How could I get your name wrong?"
"Heidi" is Heather Miller, a sophomore. She and Rabbi Lee have recently returned from a birthright israel trip, Lee tells me; Heather planted a tree there in memory of her father, and Lee planted one in memory of his Aunt Sylvia, "an old-fashioned Hadassah lady."
"Brian," Lee calls out to a student at the end of the table. "You're looking distinguished today!"
Lee has been with Hillel at ASU since 1972, when he moved here from his home town of San Antonio, and he's seen a good deal of change over the years. "One of the great problems," he says, "is that people have less disposable time." Like Adam Schwartz of the federation, Lee believes that the Jewish community hasn't adapted to that reality yet.
The way Lee sees it, organizations want people to come to meetings, but they also want them to do "educational things, so by the time we're done, that's a lot of demands on time."
Lee believes that organizations must find ways to be more creative in programming. "We have a lot of people who sign on to the board with the best of intentions," he says, "but are unavailable."
The other thing Lee wants to see - "Federation shmederation, shuls, Hadassah" - is training sessions for board members on how to run meetings, as well as clarification of the roles of volunteers and professionals within organizations.
He notes that his own role at ASU is different from that of most of his colleagues. "I'm the executive director of the agency, but I'm the rabbi on campus and that's a role that I relish. For me to be effective, I need to be on campus with students." But he says that other Jewish professionals suffer from the perception that they are on duty 24 hours a day.
Lee is interrupted by a student who asks if it would be possible to speak with him privately on Thursday. "Yes," the rabbi says, "I have a funeral in the morning and then I'll be in my office."
He returns to his falafel and the topic at hand: In his opinion, the expectations that people within the community have of Jewish professionals are not realistic. "We have to figure out a way to care for Jewish professionals better and have boundaries," he says. "When we do Jewish planning, we generally don't look at what's going on in the society around us."
Closer to home, Lee is working on creating paid internships for Hillel students that put them squarely in the Jewish community. He believes that fostering such relationships is part of "building a Jewish trajectory" for students "where they're part of the Jewish community beyond their own home."
Lee especially enjoys being, as he puts it, "a Jewish catalyst for personal growth."
"It's a strange kind of rabbinate," he says of his position, "but one that I like. ... What could be better than sitting out on the campus having a falafel on a day like today?"
He waves to a departing student, who waves back.
"Don't fail to stay in touch!" he calls.
This is the fourth in a four-part series. Past articles are "Tomorrow's leaders?" (Nov. 12, 2004), "Wanted: a Jewish leadership pool" (Nov. 19, 2004), and "Lay-professional link key to group success" (Dec. 17, 2004).