A note for new readers

Welcome!

Just so you know, I'm in the process of transferring older posts from two separate, now defunct, discussion groups to my blog here.  So, while there may not be any new posts for a while, you might want to check the archives from time to time to see if anything new has popped up there.

Thanks!

-Meri

Concepts for Organization Growth - Note

Just a note about the format of these posts.  I am going to talk from the perspective that your organization is a synagogue.  I started writing and it's how the topic best presents itself - at least going from my brain to the page - in a way that isn't bogged down by the grammatical issues of using the phrase "your organization" or "the organization" all the time.  This being said, I believe that the concepts and lessons presented are applicable to all Jewish communal organizations (and non-Jewish organizations too).  Just change the references in your head to what you need them to be.

Concepts for Organizational Growth - Introduction

Something I've been "studying" - if one could call the organizational version of people-watching "study" - is why some organizations are gaining members and raising money hand over fist, while other organizations are floundering trying to maintain their current membership and budget.  What is it about these organizations that are in an extreme "growth mode" that makes them so successful?  Or, what are other organizations lacking that creates barriers to growth?

What I found was simultaneously surprising and not.  What was surprising is that the vast majority of growing organizations belong to what I would term "fundamental" movements.  In other words, extremist and fundamentalist religious and political groups.  What is not surprising are the key reasons why these types of organizations are growing.

It did not surprise me that extremist groups are growing - the world around us today is an ideal breeding ground for such groups and people looking for easy answers.  Rather, I was surprised that there are few if any mainstream groups/movements that show any kind of growth.  Most mainstream groups are stable or in decline.  The few that are growing are growing slowly, and the growth is a result of "natural causes" - for example AARP is growing in membership numbers, but that's expected based on the rising number of Americans becoming "senior aged" in this country.

As you would expect, the cornerstone of most extremist groups' membership recruitment and retention plans is fear.  Fear is a great motivator - someone is out to get you.  It causes your membership to unify and circle the wagons, upholding your message and financially supporting your cause.  The other aspects of what an organization like this does to recruit and retain membership range from expected public relations messaging to cult-like brainwashing.

I spent some time looking into these recruitment and retention tactics to see if there was something to be learned.  I could, right now, give everyone an easy recipe for creating a grassroots "renewal movement" within your organization, with clear, easy to introduce and maintain steps for membership growth and maintenance, as well as high-powered fundraising.  The problem is, I don't think anyone would have the stomach for implementing it... and if they did, I wouldn't tell them how to do it.

So rather than dwelling in the realm of manipulation of our base human natures, I attempted to distill positive lessons that we could apply to our organizational development.

I combined the best and most successful parts of the programs I studied, broke them into related categories - concepts - and then defined what those concepts mean on the organizational level, and how to apply them positively towards membership growth and fundraising efforts.

Look for future "Concepts for Organizational Growth" (COG) posts on each topic.

Things that make you go hmm - Pesach Edition

You know how the Rabbis always talk about spritual links between words that share root letters...

I wonder if anyone has ever noticed/written about how Moshe and HaShem are the same letters backwards/forwards:  Moshe - Mem Shin Hey - and HaShem - Hey Shin Mem...

*cue Twilight Zone theme*

The ShopRite Minyan

A wise Rabbi once remarked "Feed them, and they will come". A related corollary to that rule, at least here in Wilmington, seems to be "You will always find a minyan at the Shop Rite".

It matters little what day of the week, or what time of day (1am!), I always find people I know from the Jewish community. Grocery shopping takes me hours, because I end up in conversation with each fellow congregant.

Shopping for Pesach groceries this past Monday afternoon was no different. I ran into several congregants, as expected, and we all laughed about it being the season to congregate in the Passover foods aisle.

What is different though, is that this time of year allows you to expand that community to those who you don't already know.

You see someone pouring over the shelves of matzoh meal, it's a reasonably sure bet that they're Jewish. It's easy to strike up a conversation about some new product, or how prices have yet again risen this year on staple items, or frustration over how the store hasn't yet put out the pesadic dairy items. It's common to find someone offering assistance to another who looks lost or flustered, desperately searching for the white grape juice amid the bottles of regular grape and apple juices.

Community - being built right there in the Passover aisle.

Community - being built over food... a shared cultural eating experience.

Isn't that just amazing? I think it is. We are building community over something so trivial, yet also so vital to survival.

We may not be from the same congregation. We may not both belong to the JCC. We're not coming together over some shared interest. We're not meeting each other because we have a job or hobby in common. We're not classmates, or down the street neighbors. We're building community because we eat.

Of course, it's not that simple. It's not just any old food. It's Passover, and even the most secular and unafiliated Jews have held onto some aspect of the ancient traditional foods of the holiday.

This is why many Rabbis take the laws of kashrut so seriously. It's not just about what we eat or why we eat it... it's also about building community.

Keeping kosher does several things at once:

• Allows us to perform a mitzvah - to fulfill God's commandments about what foods we eat and do not eat.
• Elevates the basic act of eating, nourishing the body, to a holy level, so that it also nourishes the soul.
• Builds connections - having a kosher home means that everyone can visit and share a meal together, both those who keep kosher and those who do not.
• Creates community - Jews from all walks of life, if nothing else, have kashrut in common.

So, next time you're walking down the kosher foods isle of your local supermarket, remember to say hello to your fellow members of the Jewish community!

Current Events: Israel in the Media

I was trying not to do two current event items back to back, and was originally going to shelve this topic for a later date, but given the recent bombing in Israel, I changed my mind.

The following opinion column is from the Wall Street Journal. Since they have recently gone to a pay subscription only service, I reprint the article text here for your convenience:

BRET STEPHENS: A family of five slaughtered in their beds. Some Palestinians call it ‘natural.’
March 15th, 2011

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...el_opinion

Are Israeli Settlers Human?

A few years ago, British poet and Oxford don Tom Paulin offered a view on what should be done to certain Jewish settlers. “[They] should be shot dead,” he told Al-Ahram Weekly. “I think they are Nazis, racists. I feel nothing but hatred for them.” As for Israel itself, it was, he said, “an historical obscenity.”

Last Friday, apparently one or more members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the terrorist wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s “moderate” Fatah party, broke into the West Bank home of Udi and Ruth Fogel. The Jewish couple were stabbed to death along with their 11-year-old son Yoav, their 4-year-old son Elad and their 3-month-old daughter Hadas. Photographs taken after the murders and posted online show a literal bloodbath. Is Mr. Paulin satisfied now?

Unquestionably pleased are residents of the Palestinian town of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, who “hit the streets Saturday to celebrate the terror attack” and “handed out candy and sweets,” according to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. The paper quoted one Rafah resident saying the massacre was “a natural response to the harm settlers inflict on the Palestinian residents in the West Bank.” Just what kind of society thinks it’s “natural” to slit the throats of children in their beds?

The answer: The same society that has named summer camps, soccer tournaments and a public square in Ramallah after Dalal Mughrabi, a Palestinian woman who in March 1978 killed an American photographer and hijacked a pair of Israeli buses, leading to the slaughter of 37 Israeli civilians, 13 children among them.

I have a feeling that years from now Palestinians will look back and wonder: How did we allow ourselves to become that? If and when that happens—though not until that happens—Palestinians and Israelis will at long last be able to live alongside each other in genuine peace and security.

But I also wonder whether a similar question will ever occur to the Palestinian movement’s legion of fellow travelers in the West. To wit, how did they become so infatuated with a cause that they were willing to ignore its crimes—or, if not quite ignore them, treat them as no more than a function of the supposedly infinitely greater crime of Israeli occupation?

That’s an important question because it forms part of the same pattern in which significant segments of Western opinion cheered Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe and even Pol Pot. The cheering lasted just as long as was required to see the cause through to some iconic moment of triumph, and then it was on to the next struggle. It was left to others to pick up the pieces or take to the boats or die choking in their own blood.

Whether similar tragedies would unfold for Palestinians in the wake of their own “liberation” remains to be seen, though the portents—the experience of the postcolonial world generally and of the Gaza Strip specifically—aren’t good.

Even worse is that Palestinians have grown accustomed to the waiver the rest of the world has consistently granted them over the years no matter what they do. Palestinians ought to have expectations of themselves if they mean to build a viable state. But their chances of doing so are considerably diminished if the world expects nothing of them and forgives them everything.

It is precisely in this sense that the frenzied international condemnation of Israeli settlements and settlers does the most harm. Having been accorded the part of George Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein—perpetual target of the proverbial two minutes of hate—they have drained whatever capacity there was to hold Palestinian actions to moral account, to say nothing of our ability to understand the nature of a conflict that is more than simply territorial. The demonization of the settlers has made the world not only coarse but blind.

I write these words as one who has long entertained doubts about the wisdom and viability of much of the settlement enterprise, though I’ve never considered it the core issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—a point well borne out by the example of Gaza following Israel’s withdrawal.

Now I find myself cheering Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for announcing, in the wake of the Fogel family massacre, the construction of hundreds of additional homes in the settlements. Israel’s consistent mistake since the peace process began nearly 18 years ago was to suppose that conspicuous displays of reasonableness and moderation would beget likewise on the other side. The reality has been closer to the opposite.

For 60 years, no nation has been held to such stringent moral account, or such ceaseless international hectoring, as Israel. And no people has been held to so slight an account as the Palestinians. Redressing that imbalance is the essential first step in finding a solution to the conflict. The grotesque murders of the Fogels and their little children demands nothing less.

This week there was the bus stop bombing in Israel, and the continued shelling of Israeli civilians from points in Gaza. As members of the Jewish community, we hear about these things through multiple sources. Anyone outside of the Jewish community however, would be hard pressed to find mention of these events. If your local newspaper is like the bulk of American newspapers, these stories did not appear on any front pages, or even second or third pages... Instead they were buried in the back pages of the international section, if they appeared in the newspaper at all.

What kinds of media representation of Israel have you seen?

Do you think that Israel is treated fairly in the media?

Do you agree with Bret Stephens, that the Palestinians get a "pass", while Israel is unfairly condemned?


I am hoping that the resulting discussion of this topic will become a launching point for futher discussion about Israel and current events, so please comment everyone!

Current Events: Government Hearings on Muslim Extremism

Please visit the following JTA news article:

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/03/...nt-reasons

Don't worry, take your time reading, I'll wait...

Here's a salient quote:

Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.), perhaps the most passionately pro-Israel lawmaker in Congress, said in a statement that King’s tone mitigated against a sober assessment of domestic Muslim extremism.

“Instead of singling out this particular community for investigation, our focus should remain on the many sources of terrorism and violence that threaten our nation and its residents,” she said, noting her concerns about the “tone and substance” of the hearings.

“I ask,” she said, “if this hearing were focused on the Jewish community, Japanese community or the African-American community, or any other community, would we not be justifiably outraged?”

This week, my post is a simple question to you - From a Jewish perspective, what do you think about this?