How to Succeed in Business? Some Advice.

At this time of year, when the College graduates new professionals and veteran professionals are making transitions, it is helpful to get some advice from others who have succeeded professionally.

Several weeks ago Advancing Women Professionals held a first of its kind professional development day for women working professionally in the Jewish community. In a show of the importance of networking and mentorship, over a dozen leading Jewish figures briefly shared pieces of wisdom that they had learned along their professional journeys. While their words were meant for this female audience, the advice they shared can be helpful for all Jewish professional

Adene Sacks, Program Director at the Jim Joseph Foundation, spoke of the importance of networks both in helping organizations chart courses and for personal professional advancement; a point that was demonstrated throughout the day as people connected with each other on both levels. Deborah Pinsky, Peninsula JCC went on to highlight the importance of those networks for organizations. Her advice after a career working running major organizations on both coasts is that one should “work with partners, even if they do nothing.” Ultimately these connections bring good will and broaden your influence.

Sacks also spoke of the importance of mentors in her own life and the shift to being a mentor herself. Her sentiments were echoed by Connie Wolf Director of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, who stressed that whenever taking a job, she has looked to see if their would be mentors for her in that job. At the same time, she has also had to learn when to ignore the advice of mentors and go with her own sense of self.

That sense of self is important, especially when you work for the community and others are continually judging the work you do. Jennifer Gorovitz, CEO of San Francisco Jewish Community Federation has learned to withstand that judgment by having a laser focus on mission, being compassionate and finding a group with whom she can laugh at her mistakes.

Mistakes are more likely to happen when we are not willing to question policies or make changes. Both Toby Rubin the founder and Director of UpStart and Debbie Findling Deputy Director of the Goldman Fund discussed the need to be willing to change. Drawing on her experience with social entrepreneurs, Rubin encourages people to, “Ask what holds you back from making changes? Resources? Values?” Findling’s own experience with deciding to eat meat after decades as a vegetarian, taught her that it is important to ask yourself whether the principles you hold dear serve your purpose.

All of this happens most easily when we know ourselves and can put forward our ideas in ways that can be heard. Katie Orenstein’s OpEd Project, which ran a seminar that day, is a great way not only to sharpen writing skills but a sense of vision and purpose while the negotiating strategies suggested by Askforit.org can be helpful as we navigate our way forward.

A Rich and Critical Resource for all Matters Jewish

Golda Meir, Bella Abzug and So Much More: The Jewish Women’s Encyclopedia

Golda

Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia is a welcome addition to the landscape of great Jewish resources. Hosted by the Jewish Women’s Archive and launched recently on March 1^st in honor of Women’s History Month, this encyclopedia represents a rich and critical resource for those interested in all matters Jewish. Publishers Alice and Moshe Shalvi together with editors Paula Hyman and Dalia Ofer, have gathered critical information about Jewish women in an extensive collection of topical and biographical essays.

Abzug at Feminist Seder

At their best encyclopedias take the world of scholarship and distill forth the key ideas providing lay and scholarly readers alike with the ability to easily access information and to move easily from topic to topic. In the era of the internet, on some level, this seems superfluous, after all if you want to explore a topic one need only enter a few words into a search engine and “entries” immediately appear. Indeed, fewer and fewer people these days are willing to wade into the library, find the right encyclopedia, look up the topic under consideration and follow cross references across articles or volumes. Yet in “googling” we often fall prey to the most popular rather than the most authoritative information and miss out on the organizational and editorial benefit of the traditional encyclopedia. The Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia works well to focus and direct our looking, creating a rich and enriching resource for Jewish learning.

By placing this work, which has been available previously as a CD-ROM, on the web, the Jewish Women’s Archive has made a critical contribution to our study of Jewish history. The search features make it easy to find material specific in any number of ways; one can look for Mary Antin or scroll through the list of writers to find her among other great and lesser known women of the pen. Browse features ensure that the serendipitous pleasures of the print format are preserved. A global search allows for one to look for the appearance of a term or name in any entry. Borrowing from the best practice of collaborative knowledge, readers are encouraged to add comments, insights or more information.

Jewish Girls at Summer Camp

In addition to providing a good place to check facts, such as those about midrashic representations of Batsheva, it is also the perfect source for inspiration for sermons or charges to the board. It is a great resource for our own learning; with references to rabbinic texts cited and bibliographies. The quality of the writing is high but accessible. B’nai mitzvah students would feel quite comfortable in these pages.

For the sake of full disclosure, I contributed to one of the entries. But my interest in this resource is far from personal. One of the great joys of this encyclopedia is the journey that it provides far beyond our own areas of knowledge and understanding. Looking around on the day it first appeared on the web, I learned about Lane Bryant Malsin the Jewish pioneer of maternity wear and niche marketing, gaining new insights and appreciation for this hard working innovative immigrant; I deepened my understanding of wife beating in Jewish tradition thanks to the scholarship of Naomi Graetz and I got some sense of the breadth and depth of those who might be called Jewish writers. The online Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia has the potential to take us all far beyond the obvious with ease.

Pioneer Women