Tzimtzum Leadership in Action

I attended a concert of the Idan Raichel Project at the UMASS Fine Arts Center the other night. It was an amazing concert that was enjoyed by the crowd from the first notes until the last encore.

The IRP began when Idan recorded music in his parents basement--inviting an eventual total of 95 musicians from many ethnic backgrounds, musical styles, and languages to contribute to the ever-growing project. The Project's breakthrough single, "Boee," was different than anything on the radio in Israel.  It mixed Amharic, Arabic, Spanish with Hebrew lyrics and brought together musical styles from Africa, Europe, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

The roots of IRP are evident at the concert:  I had never been to a concert where the headliners did so little headlining.
From the start to the end of the concert, Idan was on the side of the stage (as far from the center as any musician performing with him) with three singers in the middle of the stage.  OK, he wandered a bit but rarely took center stage.  But the three singers pictured on the right were at the center of the group.  This is not accidental.  On the IRP website, it makes clear that this is part of the project's DNA:

"From the beginning, Idan saw the project as a collaboration between artists who each bring their own musical culture and talents to the stage. “There would be no front man,” Idan says. “I would sit at the side and watch things and see what occurs. Every song would have a different singer, we would sit in a half circle and each musician would have a chance to demonstrate what they have to offer" (http://www.idanraichelproject.com/en/)

At a reception following the concert organized by the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts, I went up to him to explain how impressed I was with his leadership style.  If I had it with me, I would have shared the famous article by Rabbi Eugene Borowitz entitled “Tzimtzum: A Mystic Model for Contem­porary Leadership.” (This is not an exact link but instead a link to an article in Shma that discusses the 1974 article).  This article discusses a method of leadership that is not about individual power but about the community empowerment: "leaders to exercise restraint of power in order to “make space” for people to emerge in their full humanity." 

Today it may not be as unusual as an idea as it was in 1974 but it is still far from the norm (especially in many parts of the Jewish community).  I have never seen as compelling example of this type of leadership as Idan Raichel in his performance (and in the project as a whole).  When I mentioned this to Idan (who recently shaved his well-known dreadlocks), he smiled and said "that is exactly it but I have never thought of it that way."  He may never have thought in terms of Leadership by Tzimtzum but it is obvious that he is a regular practitioner of it:

"This sentiment is reflected in the decision to name the collective The Idan Raichel Project. Says Raichel, “If I had called the album just ‘Idan Raichel,’ people would have thought that Raichel is the main voice on all the songs. I wrote the songs and I arranged and produced them, but I perform them together with other vocalists and musicians. On the other hand, we are not a group. It’s something in between." To date over 95 different singers aged 16 to 91 years old from dozens of different countries and cultural backgrounds haveparticipated in the Project’s recordings or performances.”  (http://www.idanraichelproject.com/en/)

What examples of this type of leadership do you see in your communities?  Does it work?

How can we better bring this type of leadership to our communities?

How can I be this type of leader?

I look forward to your comments and reactions.
Rabbi Bruce

For the last week or so I have been "all Passover, all the time."
I have been cleaning and kashering (Amherst and CBI first, now at home) and arranging for Seders (two seders at our house plus one at Amherst).

If you are joining us for Passover Seder or meals at Amherst and have not signed up, please do so now.

Starting a few weeks before Passover, I start seeing lots of material on Facebook or in my in-box.

Here are some selections of note:

• The Maccabeats released a Les Mis Passover medley

• Jacob Richman posts educational/entertaining videos for Jewish holidays.  Here is this year's Passover list.

• Rabbi Dov Lerner collects Passover material and has downloadable Haggadot for you to make your own at Jewishfreeware.org I have seen this site grow in material and use--it should keep you busy for years of Seders.

• For Kosher for Passover (K4P) recipes and great general Kosher recipes, I suggest Jamie Gellers' Joy of Kosher.

• I use the Rabbinical Assembly Pesah Guide and the Operation Pesach FAQs for information on K4P, kashering, ingredients, etc.

(I am a member of the Rabbinical Assembly-- the international organization of Conservative/Masorti Rabbis.  Operation Pesach, run by Kosher Nexus, is a program of the Union for Traditional Judaism)

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• Last Minute Addition (not for those without a sense of humor):

It all started with a "birthday present" (not the one from the Hobbit). In a rush to run an errand on the way into work, I dropped my phone, an HTC Rezound. Just like not-yet King David defeated Goliath with a stone, my screen protector and case were defeated by a pebble on the ground. The cracked screen was barely noticeable at first until I opened the phone to put in the extended battery. Since I am not due for an upgrade for a while, I decided to live with it. Around two weeks ago, the plug stopped working consistently. I started to use the phone less while I researched my next move. No more mobile internet or gps use. I didn't have insurance, so I found the best step would be to replace the phone on eBay. First the main battery died and then my extra extended battery was slowly being used by "important calls." While I kept the phone with me, I did not use it last week at all. I ordered a phone from an eBay seller no specializes in phone replacements, had strong ratings, and a 30 day return policy. The phone arrived yesterday, working and in near perfect condition. A half hour at Verizon and time re-installing apps,and I back to where I was before. Or am I? (I will come back to this point).

It is not as though I had no technology access. Our family has three laptops, two iPads, one desktop computer with internet access, and two other smartphones and iPod touches (and a Nook that is mostly used when we go on vacation). I also have a computer in my Amherst office and one in my WNE classroom. I almost always have my laptop and iPad (although if I wasn't teaching at WNE, I would just use the iPad). None of the devices I use regularly have 3 or 4g mobile Internet, so I needed to be in a location with wi-fi to have web access. (By the way, it is a little depressing once I started making that list.  None of that includes non-working/old devices).

The problem is that most of my information life is on the cloud--housed primarily at google and Dropbox. This meant that I was always "behind" on email, didn't have up-to-date access to my calendar (yet alone Deborah's), ...

Since I was laid off from Smith in the 2010 budget cuts, I have added a lot of part-time jobs.  When working 8 years at Smith and Amherst, I thought it was hard having a full-time job split between two colleges 9 miles apart.  It is much harder working at one college 9 miles from, teaching two sections of an academic class 25 miles in another direction, and driving out to camp (45 minutes drive) every week or two for retreats.  I spend a lot more time in my car which means I get to hear lots of NPR and other talk radio.   Since November I have been at Amherst more as I am Interim Co-Director of Religious Life.  In general I spend a lot less time in one place than I used to.  Engaging in social media and writing my blog have suffered.  Also, I have found that I am reading different kinds of material than I used to read-- a lot about Israeli History, politics, and culture for my Modern Israel course at Western New England. It is not just the kind of reading that has changed, there always seems to be more I want to read. Having a smartphone means I can read a few emails or rss items while waiting or if I arrive somewhere early. It also means I find more to read.

Back to my 10 days relatively unplugged. I found that I paid closer attention to everything around me when I had no phone pulling at my attention. I enjoyed driving more when I didn't have the phone set to Google maps (where I always toggle to e.t.a.). Although I was not sure when I would get there, I got there with a more settled mind. While the cloud helps me have access to data, calendar, phone numbers, etc., it also saps at my attention span (academic studies have shown that there is little or no multi-masking in our brains).

The challenge is figuring out how to learn from this experience.  To bring it back to the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit, perhaps technology  is like the One Ring--it slowly takes over our lives.  At first we notice the convenience and the power but only later do we learn the consequences.  Does our (over-)reliance on GPS devices impact our innate sense of direction? (More on this here and here)  Phone numbers are much harder to remember since everyone has different area codes (seven digits was chosen in the 1950's because it was the typical capacity of working memory).  With cell phones, you don't even have to remember the phone numbers of your close friends and family.

While I hope to add to this in the future, I will start by sharing this selection from Rabbi Rami Shapiro's, Wisdom of the Sages (a modern reading of Pirke Avot):

"Rabbi Judah haNassi said:
What is the right path for a person to follow?
One that honors both self and other.

Be attentive in all you do;
Do not judge one deed small and another great,
for you cannot always know their significance.

Be virtuous, even if virtue is costly.
Avoid sin, even if sin is profitable.

Remember three things and you will not err:
If your deeds shouldn't be known,
perhaps they shouldn't be done.
If your words shouldn't be shared,
perhaps they shouldn't be spoken.
Act with attention, for all your deeds have consequence." (II, 1; p. 22)

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An hour after finishing the original draft of this blog, I received an email from Asking Big Questions with this month's discussion guide, How Does Technology Change Us?  Great minds think alike.
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Sunday March 10th:  I received this today from thedailyrabbi.com:  UNPLUG:  Spiritual Lessons From a Lost Cell Phone.