EGOS GONE WILD

One guy believes he is omniscient, the other thinks he should succeed the current CEO of the Conference of Presidents and believes he doesn't need to understand organizational history, another believes that she should control all things in Jewish communal life and rejects all institutional memory, another believes that he alone can solve the failures of JFNA and JAFI and the GOI, and a group believe that nothing good can happen in Jewish communal life without their imprimatur...and then there's this guy who writes a Blog. We are a conglomeration of outsize egos unworthy of their aspirations...but none of us...them...get it.

The result is the mess we are in. Those who should be in charge...aren't. We have Chairs and Co-Chairs of an umbrella organization who fail to exercise the power they have to shape the organizations they lead. They are satisfied with naming Committee Chairs, smiling and speaking into microphones unachievable grand visions while nothing gets done. They apparently believe that to lead our organizations is to follow others, raise questions but either never wait for the answers or inquire into whether the answers they are getting are factually correct. The results: a mass of misinformation spewed out day-by-day, the Chair of the subsidiary with both limited purposes and limited abilities trying to step into the void, the Chair of a self-created chaotic process arrogating to herself/it the powers of the JFNA -- and the appearance of no one being in charge.

From the maws of those ego-driven, the entire purposes of Jewish organizational life have been truly lost. It's a circus and the clowns are in charge.

Rwexler