Defining a Profession – A Jewish Professional is…
By: Mark S. Young
Have we forgotten an important step?
As we commence 2015 and continue the debates of today’s Jewish world, I wonder if it’s finally time we properly defined who WE are – the Jewish professional (formerly Jewish communal worker). This is not a new issue but one that has lingered for generations. Unfortunately, the ambiguity has its consequences. JPRO Network organizes Jewish professionals, provides training, advocates for clearer career paths, stronger compensation, and effective management. It’s difficult to nurture a workforce whose definition remains unclear.
Dr. Chip Edelsberg, Executive Director of the Jim Joseph Foundation, has frequently broached this definitional challenge at JPRO Board meetings. He has prompted me to reflect on the definition’s importance. If we are to create standards for what Jewish Professionals need to know and how each should be valued so talent are retained and enriched: we need to know firmly who is considered in the field workforce.
A Jewish professional workforce doesn’t liken to doctors, lawyers, accountants, or marketing executives, all of whom have multiple professional organizations, agreed upon standards, and endorsed field-tests that define each workforce. Furthermore, many folks in these professions may also be within the Jewish professional umbrella.
So let me not be the first or last to provide a definition, and say a word of its importance and subsequent action steps:
A Jewish professional is (drum roll please)…
Someone who chooses to call themselves a Jewish professional and whose work is intentional to leading or supporting the needs, aspirations and achievements of the Jewish community.
You may ask, “So does that mean…”.
“You don’t have to be Jewish to be a Jewish professional?” Correct, the majority-tend to be though some of the best professionals in Jewish organizations I know are not.
“Is an individual NOT a Jewish professional if the person indicates no?” If the person says, “I am not,” then not! Unlike doctors and lawyers, this profession is, to a degree, self-selecting. A CFO of a JCC may love her work but if she has NO intentionality behind her work “being for the benefit of Jewish community or future,” then no, she is not a Jewish Professional. To me, this is ok.
Further, I view professional as anyone who gets paid for the individual’s work. A maintenance staff who is not Jewish but is in the work because of his intent to benefit the Jewish community should be considered a Jewish professional.
So let me restate, a Jewish professional is…
- Self-selecting in by their intent and work
- The word Jewish represents their intention to support or benefit the Jewish community
- The word Professional means to be paid for the work.
This includes clergy, fundraisers, HR Staff, and Jewish educators, who each may have distinct sets of skills and work responsibilities, yet remain part of the Jewish professional umbrella.
To the last example I’d add that all Jewish professionals have a role in Jewish education, educating Jews and all humanity the content and value of Jewish history, tradition, ritual and life.
I don’t think we are in the business of saying no, “you do not qualify,” unless there is no connection or intent between one’s work and Jewish community. This includes the banker who oversees endowment funds for Jewish organizations, or the benefits professional managing organizational pension plans. We are, however, at a critical time to expect a certain standard of knowledge, skill and passion for those who both qualify for and desire to embrace the category.
Proposed standards:
1, Jewish knowledge – I believe it is fair that all Jewish professionals know some things in depth about Judaism. This, I would argue, is why significantly more employers are seeking graduates of degree programs or in service professional-development institutes in Jewish Studies, Jewish Leadership and Jewish Education. I think we can say as a field, perhaps as JPRO Network considers developing a credentialing program, that each Jewish professional can articulate and demonstrate at an appropriate level of Jewish knowledge and understandings, and areas for growth. It is then incumbent upon the organization and umbrella agencies to provide pathways to obtain this knowledge and understanding through endorsed in-service trainings, professional development or degree programs.
2. Skills in their expertise – Jewish professionals in development need to have skills in fundraising, Jewish professionals who are clergy need knowledge and skills in Bible, Talmud and Homiletics, etc. We need flexibility given a Jewish professionals specific work but that doesn’t negate the need for standards within each expertise that weaves within the Jewish professional field. We should strive to hire and retain the top-notch experts and talent in each of their work expertise and be able to articulate what this looks like.
3. Skills in communications, collaboration, management and leadership – All Jewish professionals must demonstrate proficiency in the service skills 21st century service work listed above. Why category 3? This would set our field apart. No matter the position, it is clear that we are all in the business of creating a strong Jewish future that imbues effective and meaningful leadership. Therefore, we must instill and value these skill-sets for all who are under the Jewish professional tent.
Action Steps:
- We, with JPRO Network leading the way, discuss this definition openly – welcoming concurring and dissenting opinions, with a fierce discussion that hopefully builds consensus.
- We work towards agreed upon standards of what Jewish professionals should know and affirm clear career paths and best practices for growing and valuing Jewish professionals. We must value entry and mid level professional to the fullest extent possible, implementing the $54,000 Strategy completely to attract and retain the best and brightest to and in our field.
We need to hone in on the definition first. Let the conversation continue.
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Mark S. Young is the program coordinator of the experiential learning initiative at The Davidson School Jewish Education of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Mark is also the Board program co-chair of JPRO Network, and recent board chair of the Advancing Jewish Professionals of NYC, a local group under the JPRO Network umbrella.
I genuinely appreciate you making an effort, Mark, to catalyze communal conversation on the question of professionalism in the work we do. You know that I share your interest. It is in a spirit of fellowship that I offer the following critique of your “proposal” below:
I know of no group of professionals that has anointed itself as such—without an agreed upon set of standards (several of which you delineate); a means by which professional practice is codified (content and skills), regulated and enforced; sanctioned programs of study both for earning professional credentials and for maintaining that status through continuing education; an evidence base emerging from study/research of practice that in turn becomes an important component of the profession; and an enlightened volunteer leadership that values/requires credentialing and supports continuing education as critical to the hiring of talent and professional development of it. I believe passionately this is what it will take to professionalize the work we do.
Twenty years ago, I heard Dr. Seymour Sarason (then at Yale) define a professional in this way: “the person’s training makes clear that there are boundaries of responsibility into which ‘outsiders’ should not be permitted to intrude.” Couple this stark observation with Sam Silberman’s assertion made 43 years ago (Sam was then President of the Bureau for Careers in Jewish Service in NYC) that “No matter what the situation, the effectiveness of voluntary efforts always depends, in large measure, upon the competence of its professional leadership”…well, somewhere in this space is professionalism I would yearn for us to attain.
It is an honor to eavesdrop on this conversation. I have lots of thoughts, but probably one of particular value here is the suggestion – in discussions such as these – to differentiate between aspirational concepts and applied values. While I might (and do) hold higher hopes for what we professionals might/should become as a collective force for good in building and sustaining Jewish life in America, I am also very much alive to the realities in which we operate: the diverse educational credentials we bring to the field; the silos that segregate the work that we do while employed by Jewish communal organizations; the motive forces that lead us to such jobs; etc. As such, we are compelled, I believe, to humbly acknowledge the limits of terms like “profession” and “field,” while still working toward those values – professional and Jewish – that are constitutive of the field/profession of Jewish professional service. Thanks for including me in this very rich discussion and for allowing me my 2¢ worth.
Well, I want to take exception to the thoughtfully considered opinions and important insights of my respected colleagues
Because
I believe for the good of the Jewish people, in a time which feels to me to be a period of profound change (and threat) in the world, that professionalizing the work of these diverse persons around a “common core” of knowledge, skills, values is in order.
Why?
• To make for a stronger, more knowledgeable and skilled (management and executive level) work force
• To respond to the realities, as articulated by Steven Windmueller in his 2/2 eJP article “Creating a New Model of Jewish Professional Leadership,” which if left unaddressed will likely undermine Jewish communal coherence and vibrancy
• To re-balance critical lay leader/management and executive talent roles and responsibilities focused relentlessly on commitment to continuous improvement and enhanced performance of Jewish nonprofit organizations
• To create a discourse that enables Jewish management and leadership talent to have a common language with which to explore, problem solve, and grow professionally
• To wrestle with questions about what managers and executives in Jewish organizations really need to know and be able to expertly do in an effort to delineate core competencies that distinguish who we are.
For example, should Jewish professionals be expected to:
• Be conversant, in some demonstrable and life-long way, with the teachings of Torah
• Possess basic knowledge of the history of the Jewish people and of the founding of the state of Israel
• Demonstrate working knowledge of Jewish polity in America, specifically relative to the character of the “organized” Jewish community and of the history of the Federation as well as the roles that JAFI and JDC play
• Be proficient in conversational Hebrew (I am not, embarrassingly)
• Attain a level of cultural literacy demonstrating awareness of Jewish achievement in literature, art, theater, dance, music, sport, law, politics, finance, etc.
• Describe the current and evolving role of Jewish philanthropy in communal dynamics within the context of understanding the relevance of the American Foundation philanthropy to the social sector
• As for management/leadership skills, I suspect competency in supervision and talent development of personnel; nonprofit budgeting and finance; organizational life cycle knowledge; governance models; fundamentals of fundraising and institutional advancement, all embedded in an increasingly technology saturated, networked universe—these are among areas of content and skills that arguably set a standard to which Jewish communal organization managers and leaders should be held.
So the list here could be endless, but it would not be, because exactly the point of the arduous activity is to develop consensus on a starting point for the key constitutive components of Jewish communal professionalism.
My 2 cents worth, ladies and gentlemen, is that professionalizing the field is about codifying expertise. Insurmountable as it might seem (I have been accused of being quixotic), conferring professional status on the paid talent that manages and leads Jewish organizations and institutions is past due.
Of course you are right on target, Chip. You have delineated the skills and areas of knowledge that our ideal work force should have—professionalizing the field, regardless of whether one is a planner with an MPA, fundraiser with an MSW, educator with an MA, or marketing director with an MBA—or any of the other degrees employed in the Jewish community. I have always thought that our different backgrounds strengthen us as a sector and these areas of competency, values and skills are what unite us as a field/profession. These are the competencies we should all hold to be certified Jewish Community Professionals. As Jacob articulated, we have aspirational values and the realities in which we operate. Perhaps I, too, am quixotic in believing that we can—we must—articulate and work toward the implementation of professional standards regardless of our backgrounds. We may not hold licenses to practice, but we can be certified and that is an obtainable goal. Certainly the challenges of today, and Steve Windmueller’ s excellent delineation attest to this, should be motivation enough.
As someone who has spent much of my career supervising and partnering with “emerging professionals” in the Jewish community, I want to ensure that we don’t forget that what we know about the multiplicity of personal identity in today’s world also exists in professional identity. For many professionals, a Jewish communal professional identity is only PART of their professional identity. For instance, a Jewish head of school might identify as a Jewish educator, a secular educational leader, and perhaps with an educational movement, such as Montessori. A professional at an organization such as Keshet might identify both (and perhaps even primarily) as an LGBT activist and as a Jewish communal professional.
Given that, I suggest that we shift our focus slightly from defining, as Mark suggests, what a Jewish professional is, to identifying, as Chip suggests, how we might create a shared language and expertise. Thus certification, if it is going to take place, should focus on certifying our skills in certain areas, not on labeling us or creating a “club” in which some are in and some are out.
Thanks, JPRO, for starting this important conversation.
Excellent point, Liz. I completely agree!