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Spotlight on CLAL
To access the Spotlight on CLAL Archives, click here.
New Book Champions Gender Equity for Women in Jewish Organizational Life
By Judy Epstein
While women make up a majority of the workers in American Jewish
communal life, few have made it to the top of the career ladder. Many reach
a ceiling and leave, resulting in a reduced talent pool and ultimately, a
diminished workforce.
Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in Jewish Organizational Life
(2008) by Shifra Bronznick, Didi Goldenhar, and Marty Linsky, a startling
new book just published, looks at this phenomenon, presenting tools,
exercises, personal accounts, and insights to help women advance
professionally in the Jewish world, and in the end, revitalize and enhance
American Jewish communal life. Culling strategies from leading women in the
American Jewish world, it offers their approaches for success in navigating
the organizational structure.
Leading the pack, in the first chapter entitled “Adaptive Change” that deals
with building relationships, is CLAL’s Executive Vice Chairman Donna M.
Rosenthal. As the opening quote from executives in the field, her advice is
“to build all kinds of alliances. In the beginning I thought I had to deal
with all the issues all by myself. What I learned was to go out and talk to
others, not only to see where we all were, but to build a supportive
cadre….Even if you are the only woman in the environment, there are others
thinking in the same way…You’re really not alone in almost anything you do.”
Praising the authors and the book’s potential impact in the Jewish world,
Rabbi Irwin Kula, CLAL President said, “…it is an important piece of
work…that not only reflects the very best and most contemporary of social
change theory and practice applied to an issue…which is central for the
health of Jewish life, but you and your team have done so with wisdom,
honesty, integrity, genuineness, and a generous spirit ─ probably the most
difficult quality to embody for those of us who feel passion for what we
know is just. And you have done so with a magnificent aesthetic sense.”
For more information on Leveling the Playing Field: Advancing Women in
Jewish Organizational Life,
see attached. To order, go to
www.advancingwomen.org or amazon.com. The price for a single copy is
$15.
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