From the Desk of the President

I would like to share the involvement of Temple Beth El at the URJ General Assembly Meeting on Sunday, January 9, 2022. As a member of the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ), we were allowed to send two delegates. I, along with Board of Trustees Member Vivian Morrison, represented Temple Beth El at this virtual meeting.

The meeting was called in order to vote on one amendment to the URJ constitution and bylaws, and to extend the term of those currently on the board until the new structure is put in place. In attending, we were able to hear from two influential and inspirational speakers. The first was Rabbi Rick Jacobs, President of URJ. The second was Eboo Patel, author as well as founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs spoke about the challenging times that we have been dealing with over the last two years and how many of us have been burning the candle on both ends trying to keep our communities continuing and thriving. He touched on the idea that by taking the long way through the pandemic, we have been able to learn and transform. There are no shortcuts when transforming communities, institutions, or ourselves. Adaptation as communities is important as we look to the future, and we cannot simply look inward and live within our bubble—we must look outward to those who are unaffiliated but yearning for a place to belong.

Eboo Patel talked about his work with interfaith communities and touched on the historic and current work by these communities to create real change. He touched on how our faith communities have played a huge role in creating the institutions that now support the nation. One quote that I took away from his presentation was, “You must work the new system/government and not just protest hoping that a new system will fall from the sky when you succeed in destroying the existing system.”

Voting and Governance Change

We, in the General Assembly, voted on a major change to the governing model of the URJ. They proposed these changes after more than a year of assessing the current governing model with a consultant and a task force. The existing and previous governing model was made up of the North American Board of Trustees, the Oversight Committee, and the General Assembly.

We in the General Assembly voted on one amendment to change the governing structure of the URJ. The idea was to create a governing body that was more easily able to adapt through what was referred to as a 5-star governing body. The hope was to clarify roles and responsibilities. What was voted on, and ultimately created, was a more traditional Executive Board. The change was largely motivated by the desire to ensure that there is a leadership pipeline and a structure that allows governance. The URJ now operates with two separate boards. The first is the North American Board (NAB) made up of 150 members including lay leaders who belong to URJ congregations across the U.S. and Canada as well as representatives of the HUC-JIR, CCAR, and several affiliate organizations. The NAB will be relied upon for generative and strategic conversations on the direction of the movement, while playing leadership roles to forward the URJ’s mission, vision, and values. The second is a new Executive Board (EB) made up of 25–30 members. The Executive Board will be responsible for the governance and oversight of the URJ. They will operate at both fiduciary and strategic levels, including reviewing and approving budgets, capital decisions/approvals, and loan terms. The EB will work with the NAB in generative conversations about the URJ. EB responsibilities include compliance, ensuring the organization is well managed, financial guidance, and reviewing operational results achieved by staff. Another major change is that the General Assembly will no longer be involved in voting and will instead have the ability to comment.

I came away with the opinion that during the next Strategic Plan, Temple Beth El must also evaluate our existing governance model to determine if any changes need to be made. This can be part of the strategic planning process or operate on a separate track, but it is my belief that this must occur. I also feel that in order to clarify the role of the board and ensure a leadership pipeline, we must create a board that is more of a governing board. The board and board leadership are all too often operating as a managing board leaving little time and ability to look further into the future and to work on the important work of leadership and governing. I know that I have felt the heavy burden of managing operations and a level of disappointment that the board has not had the chance to work on visioning for the future.