On These Things the World Stands: Leading with Religious Vision
Avi Killip
Avi Killip is Executive Vice President of the Hadar Institute.
Credit: Kurt Hoffman
What is Jewish leadership?
The Hero Model
Fresh out of college, I admitted to a mentor that I might want to be a rabbi. He referred me to Jack Bloom’s book, The Rabbi as Symbolic Exemplar: By the Power Vested in Me (2002). The book examines “the symbolic role that serves as the source of the rabbi’s authority and power,” and discusses the complex impact of “being experienced and treated and expected to act as a stand-in for God.” This, I was meant to understand, is what it was to be a Jewish leader: To be a kind of local God, a central pillar around which the community is built.
In this model of leadership, the rabbi is the hero of the story. Or, in the most extreme cases, the rabbi becomes Judaism itself. The book described a kind of leadership that I recognized in many of the rabbis of my childhood, but also in other types of leaders in my Jewish community—Federation executives, day school principals, and lay board presidents. I have come to think of this not as rabbinic leadership, but as hero leadership. This sort of leader has the answers to the difficult questions. They make important decisions that impact other people’s lives. They speak on behalf of the entire Jewish people. When things get hard, the hero-leader puts on their cape and steps in to make things right again.
Contemplating the model of rabbinic leadership presented in Bloom’s book made two things clear to me: First, this kind of leadership is incredibly meaningful and very impactful. Second, this rabbinate was not for me. I wasn’t looking for “authority” or “power,” and I couldn’t imagine choosing the life of loneliness toward which this model of religious leadership inevitably seemed to lead. If this had been my only path forward as a Jewish leader, I would have opted out.
The Pastoral Model
In the end, I did go to rabbinical school, and by then I had found a drastically different model of leadership emphasizing the importance of pastoral presence. This model places the people you serve—the members of a community—at the center. As pastor, the rabbi’s job is to use Judaism as a tool to care for the spiritual, emotional, and personal needs of others. This leadership is a form of accompaniment, showing people they are not alone. Like the hero model before it, it is an important framework for Jewish leaders of all stripes, not just rabbis.
The pastoral model’s strong emphasis on inclusion, empathy, and the mandate to “meet people where they are” reminds us all to follow the lead of our students or constituents. The rabbi in this model behaves less like a “sage on the stage” and more like a “guide on the side.” In the pastoral model, the norms and values of a community are dictated by the people who make up that community, and then enacted by the leader. How often should the leader speak out about politics? Should the JCC be open on Shabbat? These are questions for the community to answer, not the leader.
This form of leadership is much more appealing to me in many ways—I am a lover of people, always attuned to the emotional needs of those around me. I want to sit with people in their struggles and joys, whatever they may be. I appreciate the pushback this model offers against the charismatic, authority-based model of the exemplar. There is so much in the pastor-rabbi model that I value.
But when taken to the extreme, when this is the sole model for Jewish leadership, it is often not enough. I believe that religion, and Judaism in particular, is richer and has more to offer than a purely pastoral, empathy-based leadership allows.
Leading with Jewish Religious Vision
In the decade since I was ordained, I have come to value a third model, one that I call “leading with religious vision.” This kind of leadership centers neither the leader nor the people, but it is instead deeply rooted in Torah, our inherited texts and tradition. Having a religious vision means living according to a set of core values and commitments drawn from something bigger than me, something outside of myself. Leading with religious vision means sharing these commitments with others by modeling, teaching, and inviting people into these practices and values.
Leading with a Jewish religious vision means my commitments and values are anchored in Torah. There are so many possible sources of values in our modern lives. We are told how to behave and what to value by government and by capitalism, by media, and by art. Jewish leaders must root our leadership in Judaism’s core teachings, texts, and practices. These are our most precious inheritance, and the greatest gift we have. We are mandated to mine Judaism for wisdom, and to continuously place this wisdom at the heart of our communities through our leadership.
Why Torah? Because Torah is nothing short of life-giving. I have experienced this myself, and I have seen it over and over again with others. Developing a relationship with Torah and with God through Judaism has the potential to give our lives meaning and purpose. This has been powerfully true for me. In my darkest moments—in facing a period of depression, after a miscarriage, while supporting my husband through shiva for his father—Jewish rituals and texts from our tradition have grounded me and offered genuine, palpable comfort and direction.
This year, watching our people face utter devastation, I have seen Torah and Jewish ritual be lifesaving, even when they could not save lives. Cleaving to God through Torah and Jewish ritual offers people hope and grounding. It has helped us survive. As we recite in each Torah service, just before chanting from the scroll: “You who cling to God, you are alive today!” (Deut. 4:4)
Jewish leadership based in Torah and religious vision is not just for rabbis. Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin have been among the most powerful examples of religious leadership we have seen this year. As Rabbi Mishael Zion describes them for the Times of Israel, “With their words of Torah, their prayers, the rich English of their speeches, and the Hebrew verses that spring from their lips, they have rekindled a flame of Jewish religiosity that so rarely gets the spotlight in the Israeli public sphere: An authentic, committed and generous ‘Yiddishkeit.’”
The Goldberg-Polins have modeled a direct and unshakable connection between having a strong relationship with God and Torah and living a life of purpose and hope. This kind of powerful religious leadership cannot be only the domain of rabbis. In many cases, it is leaders like them, the non-rabbis, who are even more impactful and effective.
So how do we lead with Jewish religious vision? I want to offer and then unpack three answers, each of which I think is a necessary component for effective religious leadership. (1) We need to stand for something. We need to take the time to discern which key values are most important to us, and then share those values in everything we say and do. (2) We need to offer something, by which I mean we cannot merely accompany people, but must help people see the fullness of what Judaism has to offer. It is the role of the leader to help people access parts of Torah and Judaism they couldn’t otherwise find or access. (3) We need to ask something of people. Religion is not passive, and it doesn’t exist just to make us feel better. A values-based life, a life rooted in Judaism, means striving to be better people and to make our broader world better. Judaism is a gift, but it is also a tafkid, a calling, a mandate, a charge.
I. Leaders should stand for something.
An important teacher of mine used to say, “the only real religious teaching is by example.” By this he meant that the best way to teach about building a relationship with God is through the way we behave in our day-to-day lives. I would say the same of leadership. Only by knowing what we stand for, articulating that commitment, and then living by it can we offer effective leadership. And in standing for something specifically as a religious leader, we model more than any one principle: we share a picture of what it looks like to live a life of intention and purpose.
Religion at its best offers us a framework that adds meaning and joy to our entire lives. This is what we mean when we say that “Torah is a tree of life to all who hold fast to her.” When we stand for something, and what we stand for is rooted in Torah, we are more alive. This is what is at stake in Jewish religious leadership.
Watching leaders who live and lead from a particular vision can impact people in two different ways. We learn so much from leaders whose values we share, but we learn also from those with whom we disagree, but who are very clear about where they stand.
There is no blessing quite as transformative as finding a leader who offers a religious vision that speaks to you. Throughout my life, I have found several religious leaders—rabbis and teachers—who offered me this gift. Some of these voices have been ancient and historical, while others were my living contemporaries, professors or congregational rabbis, poets, scholars, or organizational leaders with clear vision and purpose. Interacting with their ideas, whether reading their words or watching how they move through the world, has offered me models through which to shape my own spirituality, thinking, and behavior.
But I have also benefited a tremendous amount from leaders with whom I do not share thinking or loyalties, but who do stand for something. Even someone who chooses a different path can benefit greatly from learning from and interacting with a leader who has strong commitments. One person’s strongly held values and principles can serve as a jumping off point for someone else’s new thinking and creativity. Like pushing off a wall in a swimming pool, encountering the clarity of a leader with whom we disagree can be grounding in a way that propels productive change in surprising directions.
These religious commitments need not be singular or even simple, and they also don’t need to be static. Compelling religious leaders often stand for values that are complex and multifaceted, values that evolve and grow throughout a leader’s life and career in direct response to the world around them. Leading with religious vision does not require decentering the people in the room or the news on the radio, and it cannot be done successfully from inside an ivory tower or a closed-off beit midrash. Rather, religious vision requires applying religious commitments to an ever-changing world. This is what our ancestors have done for generations, and now it is our opportunity and our mandate. What does Judaism have to say to this moment? To these people? To this world? These are our questions to answer.
So, how do we each find our own religious vision? Judaism is incredibly rich. There is so much to choose from. Our texts are full of ancient wisdom waiting to be mined for religious teaching. How do we determine which parts are most central and important to us and our leadership?
Genesis Rabbah 24:7 records a debate between two sages, who each held different values to be primary:
Ben Azzai says: “‘This is the book of the descendants of Adam’ (Gen. 5:1), this verse represents the central tenet of the Torah." Rabbi Akiva says: “‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ (Lev. 19:18), that verse represents the central tenet of the Torah.”
Though Torah is filled with mitzvot and values, these rabbis are each willing to stake a claim on which ideas are most central, which ones they will live by and lift up above all else. Ben Azzai emphasizes that we are all descended from the same person, highlighting that we are all equally created in the image of God. For him, the greatest principle in the Torah is human universalism. Rabbi Akiva disagrees, asserting that the mandate to “love your neighbor as yourself” is of even greater importance. Rabbi Akiva, the better known of these two sages, holds a religious vision that prizes kindness to the person next to you, your neighbor. Loving your neighbor is what he stands for; it is his religious vision.
Other Jewish leaders throughout history have stood for different things. These sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory visions come together to create our multivocal tradition. Developing your vision is adding your voice.
Beyond Ben Azzai and Rabbi Akiva, there are many other sages, ancient and modern, on whose ideas you might build. I found mine at the Hadar Institute, where I now work and teach. When I first encountered Hadar as a student in 2010, I discovered teachers and a vision that moved me. I found rabbis who modeled deep learning and openness, piety and joy, commitment to drawing close to God through prayer and ritual while believing that the culmination of all religious life is hesed, love and kindness. And I found a beit midrash where my gender did not preclude me from full participation. This combination of values felt spiritually and intellectually exciting, and I have spent the 14 years since helping to shape Hadar’s vision as it develops and grows, while facilitating opportunities for others to both discover them and to experience them holistically.
This is the religious vision that resonates with me, and it animates my rabbinic career. It may or may not be your vision. But the point is this: you can find your vision in Torah. Keep studying until you discover the teachers and ideas that speak to you: build on their teachings, and then lead with those ideas at the center. This kind of leadership is more effective, and, in my own experience, more personally rewarding.
Leading with vision is less lonely than the hero model and more stable than the pastoral model alone. Religious vision serves as an anchor in the rapidly shifting winds that today’s leaders must navigate. Leaders today face impossible demands to say and do exactly the right thing, in exactly the right way, with exactly the right words, at exactly the right moment. Those who know what they stand for can respond to oncoming waves without getting swept away or blown off course. As popular thinking shifts, religious commitments keep us steady and dependable.
II. Leaders should offer something.
Religious leadership means standing between people and the tradition and drawing the two closer together by giving people access to the Torah they need in a given moment. The most effective and powerful leaders offer us tools and wisdom we couldn’t otherwise reach on our own or find elsewhere.
By the time I graduated college, I had sat with a roommate having a panic attack, been the address for a friend with an eating disorder, and comforted other friends as they grieved the loss of parents at too young an age. I strove to be a listening ear and a compassionate friend, and that role is incredibly important. But I can offer much more as a rabbi. As a religious leader, I can draw on centuries of wisdom, ritual, and stories, using prayer and customs designed to help people through any situation.
These tools, invaluable for helping individuals, are also at play when leading entire communities or even society as a whole. The problems of an institution or a city are different from the problems of an individual, but the task is the same: With your vision as the lens, mine the tradition for something you can offer that can transform the situation for the better.
In Sotah 21a, the Talmud tells a parable about a person who is lost in the dark, frozen in fear.
A parable: A person walking in the dark of night and thick darkness is afraid of the thorns, the pits, the thistles, wild beasts, and bandits, and doesn’t know on which road he is walking. If a torch of light comes his way, he is safe from the thorns, the pits, and the thistles, but he is still afraid of the wild animals and of the bandits, and still doesn’t know on which road he is walking. When the sun rises at dawn, he is safe from the wild animals and the bandits, but still doesn’t know on which road he is walking. When he comes to a crossroads, he is safe from all of them.
The person in this story is not only lost but paralyzed with fear. They are afraid to take a single step lest they step on a thorn or fall into a pit; they are afraid of wild animals and bandits that may lurk farther out; and they are fundamentally disoriented, unsure where they are or which direction to turn. The text tells us that a torch could help with the first problem: a candle or flashlight can keep you from falling into a ditch. The sun coming up at dawn can protect from animals or bandits. But only reaching a crossroads will help you find your way home.
The Talmud brings this story to explain a verse from Proverbs: “For the mitzvah is a lamp and the Torah is light” (Prov. 6:23). The parable of the person walking at night is meant to help us understand the relationship between living strictly by the commandments (mitzvot) and the wisdom uncovered through learning (Torah):
But isn’t it taught in a baraita: Rabbi Menahem bar Yosei explained: “For the mitzvah is a lamp and the Torah is light” (Prov. 6:23). Scripture understands mitzvah as a lamp and Torah as sunlight. Scripture understands mitzvah as a lamp—to say to you: Just as the lamp only protects for a moment, so too the mitzvah only protects for a moment. The Torah as light—to say to you: Just as sunlight protects forever, so too Torah protects forever.
When we find ourselves in the darkness of life, Torah and mitzvot can together guide us out, enabling us to move confidently, helping us find our way. But they alone do not get us all the way home. We need something or someone to orient us. As leaders, we can play the part of the crossroads—drawing on the richness of Judaism to offer candlelight, sunlight, and orientation. Torah and mitzvot cannot make the pits and wild animals of life disappear, but they can help people be more prepared, offering perspective and grounding. It is the job of religious leaders to mine our tradition for the right ritual or text to help each person or group navigate their own particular darknesses.
This form of leadership starts by really seeing and understanding your people and their needs, and then always moving to ask: “What can I bring? What can I offer?”
And what we have to offer is, in the most expansive sense, Torah. People turn to religion to find something they cannot find elsewhere. If religious leaders offer only the same things that can be found in popular culture—wellness initiatives, pop songs, poetry—we aren't offering something unique. We aren’t offering the best of what we have.
The best of what we have is the ability to help people find holiness and be in relationship with God. That’s a lofty goal, and one I think all Jewish leaders should strive for. Through prayer or learning, through community or food or acts of hesed, offering people ways of reaching for the divine is the work of religious leadership. If we don't offer this, who will?
Helping people access a Judaism they cannot reach on their own requires knowing more about the tradition than the people you are leading do. In order to give others access to something they cannot find elsewhere, our religious leaders need to be steeped in learning and ritual themselves, and always growing in their knowledge and understanding of Jewish text and practice. There is no substitute for this. Religious leadership requires an ongoing commitment to learning.
This doesn’t mean that only rabbis or leaders should be deeply educated. Jews today are more empowered than perhaps at any other time in Jewish history. Jewish ritual has moved from the Temple to the synagogue and into our homes. More Jews can read the Talmud than ever before. We all have online access to the staggering breadth and depth of the Jewish bookshelf, and we can even find much of it in English translation. None of this empowerment, however, makes leaders obsolete. All the candles and sunlight in the world can never substitute for a map and a road sign. What religious leaders offer is needed now as much as ever.
Love Jewish Ideas?
Subscribe to the print edition of Sources today.
III. Leaders should ask something of people.
Religious leadership is stronger when we make clear not only what we stand for, but the implications these commitments have for the people we lead. Leaders should have expectations. Don’t be afraid to articulate and share them.
Having expectations is one of the most powerful ways to give attention. We see this in the second paragraph of the Shema, which is one the most central, clear, and unapologetic examples of God making a demand of the people: “And it will be—if you vigilantly obey My commandments which I command you this day, to love your God, and serve Him with your entire hearts and with your entire souls” (Deut. 11:13).
God requires us to obey commandments attentively, to love God, and to serve God with our entire hearts and souls. The demands are lofty, and the punishment of withholding rain is severe: “And Adonai’s fury will blaze among you, and He will close off the heavens and there will be no rain and the earth will not yield its produce; and you will perish swiftly” (Deut. 11:17) . This text tells us unequivocally that our actions matter. God cares what we do, and our behaviors directly impact our personal well-being and the state of the world around us.
In her book Why Rain Comes from Above: Explorations in Religious Imagination (2024), the Talmud scholar Devora Steimentz finds a connection between attention, demand, and care in the Hebrew word lidrosh:
Lidrosh—“to seek”—has a range of connotations.… The word can have a forensic meaning.… It can also mean to demand or require, as it does, for example, in the famous verse from Micah “what is good and what the Lord requires (doreish) of you” (6:8). And it can also suggest care, as in “no one cares (doreish) for my soul.” (Ps. 142:5)
God’s demands of us are an expression of God’s attention and care. The same can be true of religious leaders. When we ask something of people, we show that we care about them. This mode of caring attention is very different from the version of acting like God we saw in the hero model above. Here, we copy God’s love, not God’s power, through our willingness to ask something of people.
Credit: Kurt Hoffman
Any coach or teacher can tell you that high expectations help people to achieve more, to learn more, to develop, and to thrive. This is true also in the realm of spiritual and ethical development. As Jewish leaders, we should both hold people to the commitments inherent in our tradition and help people to meet them. And the bar is high. Rabbi Yitz Greenberg teaches in his book, The Triumph of Life (2024), that Judaism offers us nothing short of the lofty goal of perfecting the world: “Judaism teaches that covenant—a partnership between God and humanity, and between the generations—is the central mechanism to achieve tikkun olam.”
This work is hard, maybe impossible, to do alone. Most of us need someone outside of ourselves to tell us that we could do better. Religion should play this role in our lives, giving us something to strive for. When leaders believe in us, it pushes us to be our best selves. If you care about my behavior, I will care more too. If you have faith in my ability to change, I might also.
Of course, these expectations do not land on us only as individuals, but also as a group. This experience of shared demands connects us as a people. As we’ve heard quoted so much this past year, kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, “all of Israel [the Jewish people] are guarantors for one another.” When one of us defaults on a commandment, the rest of us are on the hook. This shared commitment is the foundation that holds us together as a people. We are not alone. Asking something of a group brings people closer to each other and encourages them to lift each other up. Like any team, we achieve more when we know others are depending on us.
Having expectations does not necessitate judging people and is not at odds with loving or accepting everyone. In Judaism Is About Love (2024), Rabbi Shai Held teaches this lesson through the example of raising children: We love them unconditionally, and we offer clear requirements and expectations. These expectations are a form of showing our love. When we are available to people as they strive to meet expectations, when we care about their journey to this point and where they will go next, we move out of a place of judgment and into a place of support. Think about the role of the gabbaim who stand on either side of the person chanting from the scroll in a traditional Torah service. When they do their jobs poorly, the reader feels judged, like someone is watching over their shoulder to catch them in an error. When they do their jobs well, the reader feels how important and special their task is, while at the same time knowing that should they make a mistake, they are not alone, someone is there to guide them.
Religious leaders should expect something of people. I believe religious leaders should also expect something of God. In the book of Job, Job declares “But I seek/demand (edrosh) unto God” (5:8). For some, the idea of making a demand of God can feel almost sacrilegious. For me, crying out to the divine to care for us—to heal the sick, to keep us safe, to bring the hostages home—is a necessary and even primary form of spiritual connection.
Some of the most powerful religious leadership I have encountered this year has taken the form of leaders making demands directly of God. I have heard this in prayers, sermons, and speeches at rallies. I have also seen it more quietly, in leaders speaking frankly about the ways God has let us down. Religious leaders brave enough to address God directly draw our attention heavenward. They offer us a different, sometimes much more honest and powerful way of connecting with the divine.
It can be hard to ask something of people, and even harder to demand or expect it. We don’t want to seem controlling or too self-assured. But a refusal to set expectations and to help people be accountable to them is a luxury we cannot afford. Jewish leadership—rooted in our people and in Torah—demands this of us. And we must in turn make demands.
Conclusion
To lead with religious vision means having clear values that are rooted in Torah or Jewish tradition, and to share those values through everything we do. For a leader’s vision to make an impact on the lives of others, we have to offer something unique that can’t be found elsewhere. And if we want the world to change, we have to be willing to insist that people change their behaviors, that they always strive to make things better than they are now.
I believe that if leaders stand for something, offer something, and ask for something, these three stances will together be more than the sum of their parts. When held together, this kind of religious leadership can be transformative not only for the people in our current moment, but for our children’s children in generations to come.
We learn in Mishnah Avot: “Shimon the Righteous was one of the last of the men of the great assembly. He used to say: the world stands upon three things: the Torah, avodah [service], and acts of hesed [kindness].” Shimon the Righteous makes a bold claim. Where Rabbi Akiva was willing to name a central principle of Torah, Shimon the Righteous tells us that Torah, avodah, and hesed are all three the pillars of the entire world. But there is something else we learn from him too, if we focus on the grammar. This is not just something he once said. This is an idea that “he used to say.” He said it over and over, again and again, like a stump speech. From his example, we learn that leading with religious vision requires us to be bold, to set big ambitious goals, to think globally—and to be relentless. Let us follow the model of Shimon the Righteous and seek to uphold the world.
