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January 2010/Tevet 5770

A JOURNAL OF JEWISH RESPONSIBILITY

Tzimtzum

Shawn Landres

Tzimtzum for Organizations . . . . . . . . . 1

Rachel Elior

Tzimtzum: A Kabbalistic Approach to Creation . . . . 2

Richard Hirsh

Rethinking Rabbinic Leadership. . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Stuart Kelman

& Alison Jordan

Rabbinic Contraction & Covenantal Education . . . 6

Doreen Seidler-Feller

Parents, Children, and Therapists. . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Ira Forman

Tzimtzum and Presidential Power . . . . . . 8

Hayim Herring

Closing the Gap:

Knowing and Doing . . . . . 9

Yosef I. Abramowitz

Tzimtzum and Executive Leadership. . . . . . . . . . . 10

Discussion Guide . . . . . . 11

Felicia Herman, Steven B. Nasatir & Barry Shrage

Strategic Thinking for the Federation System:

A Round Table. . . . . . . . 12

Darren Levine

Withdrawl Empowers Community. . . . . . . . . . 15

Asher Lopatin

& Rachel Kohl Finegold

Making Room for Others. 15

Leah R. Berkowitz

Tzimtzum or Temporary Expansion. . . . . . . . . . . 16

Steven Wernick

Tzimtzum: Finding the Space to Lead. . . . . . 17

Gordon Bernat-Kunin

Scaling the Ivory Tower. . 18

Lawrence Kushner

NiSh’ma ............ 19

Ruth Abusch-Magder

Sh’ma Ethics:

Kashrut & Community . . 22

Tzimtzum, the kabbalistic notion that God “contracted” as part of the process of creation, this month becomes a lens through which we look at much in Jewish life. The notion itself is carefully addressed in Rachel Elior’s deeply nuanced and insightful

essay, where she explores God’s relationship to all of God’s creation — being both present

and absent, both separate and connected. A therapist, a community organizer, a political

analyst, and several rabbis take on tzimtzum as a model of engagement: What does this

metaphor of contraction, or withdrawal, teach us about our relationships with God, authority,

and power, and what do we learn from it about serving our communities? Does tzimtzum have

any relevance in the age-old debate about the transmission of Jewish identity? Might it model

how we instill a deep attachment to ritual, history, belief, kinship, and the Jewish people,

while also facilitating a sense of distinction and the celebration of difference? —SB

Tzimtzum for Organizations:

How I Learned Everything I Really Needed to Know About

Collaboration from a Group of Teenaged Jazz Prodigies

SHAWN LANDRES

Ispent two summers, before 11th grade and 12th grade, at the National Music Camp in Interlochen, Mich., studying jazz piano and composition. Eventually, I became a solid, if unremarkable number-two pianist in the num-ber-one jazz orchestra (there were two). Still, in my own head, I produced virtuoso flights of fancy, and occasionally I was able to condense the music I could hear in my imagination into notes and bars on a page. I tried writing full arrangements, with instructions for every instrument, but they just didn’t work, so I stuck to my strengths: new melodies and creative chord progressions. Midway through the summer, my friends in the elite jazz sextet agreed to try out what I’d written. I was tempted to supervise: After all, this was my musical vision.

But that wasn’t the way it worked with jazz.

“Give us the chart,” they told me. “We’ll take it from here.”

even this journal — it is easy to imagine tzimtzum as an act of self-preserving constriction, a kind of defensive organizational belt-tightening. But in the Lurianic tradition, it has a generative meaning, opening up a space where creation is possible. In this sense, it has direct applications to organizational life.

Some years ago, leadership expert Ronald Heifetz developed the metaphor “getting on the balcony” — seeking the broader, long-term perspective on an organization’s work. Getting on the balcony isn’t just a way to evaluate an organization’s program effectiveness; it is also an opportunity to view that organization in the broader context of the ecosystem within which it operates. It means recognizing limits, seeking interdependencies, and understanding that no organization can achieve all its goals by itself.