Dov Ben-Shimon looks back
As he prepares to leave, the Federation exec talks about the strength of the community
After 10 years as chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest, the largest Jewish organization and philanthropy in New Jersey, Dov Ben-Shimon recently announced his departure.
In an exclusive article for the New Jersey Jewish News, he shares what he’s learned in his role, and his thoughts about the community.
I’m deeply grateful for having served as the CEO, or as we call it, the exec, of our Jewish Federation.
When I started this position, I thought that 10 years would be an appropriate amount of time to do what I could, and then move on. The events of October 7th, and our incredible community response this past year, forced me to stay on a little longer. But I don’t believe that being a Federation exec should be a lifelong position, and I also never thought that this would be my last job.
So it feels appropriate, and timely, to move on. Looking back, I also think that this last year in many ways has been the hardest, most challenging — and ultimately, most meaningful — year of my entire professional career.
A sense of pride
I’ve focused intently on building a team of great people, and, where needed, getting out of their way: I expect each of them to know — and to come tell me — what they want me to do. Or in some cases, what not to do. And my job, in addition to hiring the best, most inspiring Jewish communal professionals, was to clear the obstacles from their path and to connect the dots for them.
I remember when I started, 10 years ago, and one of our major leaders, a past president of Federation, took me aside at an event and said, “Look, I don’t want to be the youngest person in the room at these things anymore. We owe it to the community to engage the next generations.” And the other day I reminded him of that, and how wonderful it is that he and I are now perhaps not the oldest folks in the room, but by no means are we the youngest.
The Greater MetroWest community study showed us that this is a growing community. I saw at Federation how people, especially the younger cohorts, the 30- to 50-year-olds, who are looking for meaning and substance, want to get involved. So do the empty nesters and 50- to 60-year-olds, who are redefining what community can look like for them and for us. It’s truly inspiring.
I’m also proud that there are issues and concerns that only a Jewish Federation can and should touch. It’s the irreplaceable role that only an effective Federation can play in a community, like creating leadership cohorts or security platforms that benefit all our agencies and synagogues. We created the Community Security Platform, for example, to connect Homeland Security, state police, dozens of local police departments, and county prosecutors to the institutions that constitute our community. Federation has the unique role of uniting all the individual institutions in our community to be able to form one interface with our state and federal agencies, creating the best ongoing security response possible.
We’ve built an incredible infrastructure for Jewish life here. I often quote Elie Wiesel when I think about our community and our next steps. He said that there are no coincidences in Jewish life. And what I think he meant is that all the things we love now, the programs and agencies and buildings, are here because those who came before us believed in them, invested in them, raised funds for them, and supported them. That’s not a coincidence. And if we want our children and grandchildren to love these things too, even though we may not get there with them, we have to continue that path.
Reflecting on past challenges
One key challenge that I noticed is that the role of the exec, at its heart, contains so many expectations and obligations, and community leaders and members create a definition of what they think you “should” be doing. That’s overall a good thing, because this is a role that belongs to, and in a very real way, is responsible to, the community. Is the exec spending enough time with clergy, with donors, with community leaders, with our own professionals, with agency leaders, with Israeli leaders, and so on? At the end of the day, all these expectations and needs are really in the eyes of the beholder, and there’s no way to add them all up and come to a balance. At least a healthy balance. So every one of us tries to find a way to meet as many people as possible, to share as much impact as possible, and to empower and inspire as many pathways as possible.
And second, any good Jewish Federation, at heart, reflects the contradictions and messiness (said with love) of its community. And we’re a very diverse and dispersed community, with lots of differing opinions about politics and religious observance and communal priorities. What’s most interesting about that, strangely, is the number of times in which we’ve been pulled into making statements or policies precisely because there was an expectation that our Federation should be reflecting this value, or that priority. “I need my Federation to speak up about this issue, because these are core to what our Jewish community represents, or should represent.”
So there have been moments when, looking back, I would’ve said maybe we shouldn’t have emphasized this, or said that. But I’ve also learned that if you come into community relations with an expectation of ideological purity, you’re going to get disappointed very fast. And when you have a community as diverse and varied as ours — with more than 80 synagogues, dozens of agencies and institutions, lots of different denominational self-definitions, and political disagreements — what strikes me most is how much common ground we’ve managed to create. I’ve hosted rabbis and cantors and agency leaders at my home dozens and dozens of times, and although we’ve kept the content of the meetings very confidential, so that participants could feel secure and comfortable sharing and participating, I will tell you that it’s astonishingly inspiring to see clergy from different denominations, for example, sitting together and learning, or discovering similarities, or discussing in a kind and respectful way how to share and debate and lead.
The state of our community
For so many of us it’s still October 8. And by that, I mean that for those of us who are deeply connected with Israel and the Jewish community, there is still a sense of collective trauma from October 7, from the massacres. And for so many of us, also, a sense of deep betrayal from people whom we thought would stand with us at our moment of crisis, as we had stood with them these last years. October 7 was a military and intelligence failure in Israel. But it was also a Diaspora intelligence failure, in how we were surprised at the level of hate here. So on the one hand, I would say, there are the oys of our life. The hardships, the reminders that we still live in Jewish history, and the necessity for communal infrastructure and federations and all the stuff that cynics may have thought would be increasingly less relevant just a year ago.
And yet, alongside these oys are the joys of Jewish life. The surge of belonging, of looking for meaning. The realization that you can’t do community by yourself. I’ve lost count of the dozens and dozens of WhatsApp and Facebook groups that reached out to me after October 7 — people who spontaneously organized because they felt that something was missing for them. Moms against Antisemitism here; Westfielders for Israel there; Essex County Jews against hate here; Morristowners for Jewish Pride there, to name just a few among so many others. And as they grew, they looked for support, technical guidance, sometimes security, logistics, or content, and you saw more and more Jewish community members take ownership and pride. And that’s amazing.
I grew up as a Jewish communal professional, after serving in the IDF and as a diplomat, and I remember saying that there’s something missing, that precisely because there’s no memory of the existential nerve of the Jewish people being touched by 1967 or the Shoah, for example — then the work to bring people together is that much harder.
But that’s no longer true. Not this last year.
I’m uplifted by how many Jews, and allies, have shown up for us. The surge in Jewish engagement. Jewish pride seems unprecedentedly high. And on a personal note, I’m deeply proud that we’ve seen the Israeli expats mobilize significantly. Welcoming and including Israelis, and Russian-speaking Jews, and Orthodox Jews, and empty nesters, and interfaith families, and people with special needs, and LGBTQ families, and so many more — all this is part of the surge of Jewish life, and I’m very inspired to see that growth. And our law enforcement partners, our local legislators, our civic leaders, our faith-community neighbors, have been there, and they have stood with us, and that too has been deeply moving.
The key learnings
Running a Jewish Federation, and especially its UJA Annual Campaign and emergency campaigns, is truly a test of faith and belief. You have faith that although you start with zero every year, you’ll raise the dollars, because our People have the instinct that we will meet the task and the challenge. On an average year, the collective fundraising efforts of our Federation — with the United Jewish Appeal, all the emergency and supplemental campaigns, the donor advised funds and more — raise more than a hundred million dollars. So, with very quick back-of-the-envelope math, these last 10 years I’ve been the CEO of a Federation that, with its Foundation and campaigns, raised and granted over a billion dollars. And to my last breath I will say two contradictory but completely true things — first, that it’s not about the money, and second, that kind of money is humbling and what an amazing statement to be able to make this is. And what a tribute to the amazing work of our campaigners, lay and professional, and their sheer talent and commitment and dedication to the mission that we share.
On a personal level, I’m proud to have followed in Max Kleinman and Howard Charish’s footsteps as execs of our Federation. I’ve been grateful for their advice and counsel, and I’ve seen that they’ve been respectful and mindful of my need to find my own path. I know that my successor will find their own way, and I’ll also be available if needed.
As exec, I spend on average about an hour every day just writing for social media platforms and for my exec email updates, which go out to thousands of people. But I’m also mindful of the limitations of social media, emails, and the written word. At the end of the day, we live in a community, and the power of a face-to-face meeting, of a conversation, a call, a coffee, is stronger than the environment would sometimes have us believe. I appreciate that this all sounds a little countercultural; after all, we’re supposed to be living in the age of social media and all that it entails. But these platforms and apps — even though they can connect us, and inform us, and provide us with unprecedented opportunities — can also contribute significantly to our sense of loneliness and alienation. So we have to be mindful of their limitations as well as their powers.
For example: shortly after October 7, I went with several Israelis and military attaches and we watched the 43-minute Hamas GoPro video, the collection of the worst atrocities that were collected from the terrorists’ own videos and some Israeli handheld phone videos and the like. Since then, I’ve also hosted law enforcement partners and political leaders and others in my office several times to watch the video, but that first time was powerful and incredibly difficult and awful. And I’ve told many people — and I think it’s important to talk openly about these things — that I went to see a therapist after seeing these videos because I had to grapple with the nightmares and the absolute sense of seeing the depravity and the evil.
But after I saw the video for the first time, I wrote a short report about it and posted it on X (formerly Twitter). That post had seven million views. And when I looked through the thousands of responses, and thought about what that meant, what was very clear was that what I wrote had very little impact: not one person had their view challenged by what I wrote — even though I do think it reinforced the messages that we were trying to get out, and annoyed Israel-haters and Jew-haters, who attacked me online.
And this was a good reminder that most Americans support Israel, stand with Israel, reject the performative hate that we’ve seen in these awful campus demonstrations, and share the common values that we hold together. And yes, there’s a lot more to do online and in the PR war, and we can’t relax our guard. But at the same time, I’m generally optimistic that most Americans are good and decent and stand with us.
On November 14 in DC we had the four leaders of Congress standing together onstage, arm in arm, to show their support for Israel and American Jewry. Our Federation sent dozens and dozens of buses down for the rally, and we joined with hundreds of thousands to show our support. And we see huge bipartisan support for Israel and the American Jewish community; no state or major government has passed anything remotely antisemitic or anti-Zionist. And we will face down the Jew-hate and anti-Israel hate that we’ve seen on college campuses this year too.
Next steps
My priority right now is the transition of professional leadership. I want to be available to help my successor — and then to be able to step back and not be in the way of whatever they need to do to set their own distinctive path. I’m proud to have built a strong and effective team, and I’m also mindful of the need for new leaders to set their own new paths.
These last few weeks I’ve been overwhelmed and deeply moved by the offers and outreaches from friends and acquaintances, so I want to take a little time to think through my next steps. And to stop and be mindful of how fortunate I’ve been, of how many personal projects I want to take on, and to focus on the path ahead.
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