Leadership

There were times, when I was one of three students that would stay awake late enough to hear Rabbi Shlomo Riskin when he would stop by our beit midrash at Yeshivat Hamivtar to give a late night class. What I was so profoundly moved by was the fact that Rav Riskin would speak to the three of us as if there were 200 people present. He offered his normal passionate and engaging class since we were the right people in the room.

A 2009 study by the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies predicts that during the next decade 65 percent of mid- and upper-level management of Jewish organizations will retire and their replacements will increasingly be non-Jewish. That’s quite a radical concept to those of us who believe in the “soul” of our organizations.

On any given day, you can find Jackie Ebron answering the calls of the most desperate New Yorkers, navigating through despair, hunger, poverty and illness to try to restore some calm and dignity to their lives.

As the new presiding officer of the Nassau Legislature (giving Democrats control for the first time since the county adopted a legislative form of government in 1917) Judy Jacobs vows to bring a new "openness" and "humanness" to a county government saddled with a $100 million budget deficit.

One of the frustrations Israelis feel about the recently released Winograd Commission report is that it was too general in its stinging criticism of the Israeli government and army in their conduct of the 2006 war with Hezbollah. By blaming everyone — from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his cabinet to the commanders of the Israel Defense Forces — in a sense, it allowed everyone to remain blameless. Or more practically, it allowed each of the key figures to explain away his own actions and cast responsibility on someone else.