4 indispensible personalities you need on your team

There is an old business saying that who you have on the bus is more important than where the bus is headed. The lesson is that it is most important to have the right people in the right positions for your endeavor to reach its potential. In this article, Ronn Torossian, CEO of 5WPR, public relations specialists in NYC, reveals 4 personalities you need, to help your team achieve.

#1 - The Visionary

Just understanding the issue is not enough. You need a person on your team who can help people understand how your organization will change things for the better. The visionary will not only get peoples’ attention, he or she will make them care enough to want to belong.

#2 - The Public Face

This person may or may not be the visionary, however he or she can take the message and communicate it in the most compelling way. They are adept at taking a “book,” and turning it into a memorable soundbite, or an engaging story. The temptation here is to pick a celebrity, or someone who has conquered whatever your group is fighting. That can work IF the person is also an excellent communicator. It is better to have a good communicator who can tell a great story, than it is to have a great story that never quite gets told right.

#3 - The Organizer

Successful charities have a TON of moving parts. You need someone on your team whose sole purpose is to keep everything organized and running properly. The organizer will have people helping him or her with stories, volunteers, fundraising, events, and activities, but it will be their responsibility to make sure everything is operating at peak efficiency.

#4 - The Fund Raiser

 
This personality is about more than just crunching numbers. This is a person who knows how to get donors, big and small, to open their wallets. They specialize in bringing people together, and helping them understand the benefits of supporting the cause. While it may be tempting to put a number cruncher in this spot, you need to have someone who can make the numbers work, and make the people with the numbers eager to cut those checks.

50 Thousand Haredim March So Only Other Jews Die in War

Photo Credit: You Tube  - They flooded downtown Manhattan with the anti-draft for Haredim message: everybody else is welcome to get themselves killed. What was even more astonishing was their honesty regarding the bankruptcy of their entire school of faith and study.

By: Yori Yanover, The Jewish Press, March 10, 2014

For the record, I believe the new Shaked-Lapid-Bennett draft law is by far worse than the one it came to replace, the Tal Law. Most importantly, because the Tal Law was getting results, without the idiotic, needless, divisive rancor generated by the new legislation. Killing the Tal Law, or, rather, issuing an edict that it had to be replaced by something that worked faster, was the parting poisonous gift of Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, protégé of that beacon of light unto the nations, Chief Justice Aharon (evil genius) Barak.

Since then we’ve seen one demonstration of a few hundred thousand Haredim against the new law in Jerusalem (but not a single day’s work was lost!), and yesterday, in downtown Manhattan, another 50 thousand Haredim marched to condemn the evil decree.

I went on the vosizneias.com website to check out the rally, because I expected them to bring the authentic stuff. I wasn’t disappointed, even though they just lifted the AP story without attribution:

“We’re all united against military service for religious men in Israel because it doesn’t allow for religious learning,” said Peggy Blier, an interior designer from Brooklyn. “The Israeli government is looking to destroy religious society and make the country into a secular melting pot.”

Every single point made by Peggy Blier is a blatant lie. Of course the law allows for religious learning, it merely suggests that at some point—way past the age non-Haredim serve, and for half the time that normal Israelis give freely of their lives—”religious Jews in Israel” should participate in caring for the security of their country, or, if that’s too much, serve the equivalent time in vital organizations inside their own communities for their own neighbors.

That, according to Peggy Blier, is a conspiracy on the part of the Israeli government to destroy religious society.

Shmuel Gruis, 18, a rabbinical student from Phoenix studying at a Long Island yeshiva, said, “These kids, a lot of them don’t know how to hold a gun. They don’t know what physical warfare is.”

Are you kidding me? Have you ever been to a Shabbes demonstration? Those kids can throw a rock at police like born Palestinians.

“Their whole world and their whole lifestyle is peace and love and in doing mitzvahs,” he said.

OK, who can argue with that description of Haredi behavior? I’m sure non-Haredi women walking the streets of Beit Shemesh or boarding the bus in B’nei B’rak would attest to that pure goodness. Some of the Hebrew prayers were led by Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum, a spiritual head of the Satmars living in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood. If the IDF only enlisted the Satmar folks who ever participated in the clashes with the Satmar followers of the other spiritual head of Satmar, they could forge a most brutal and violent commando unit that would put to shame even the late Lee Marvin’s Dirty Dozen (and those included Telly Savalas and Trini Lopez).

Next Verena Dobnik, the AP reporter giving news content for free to Vosizneias, interviewed Yitz Farkas, a member of the Brooklyn-based True Torah Jews organization (step aside, all you False Torah Jews), who informed her that “The problem is, anyone who goes into the Israeli military becomes secular, and that would erase our whole tradition.”

I always enjoy that one. See, you and I are pretty sure the Haredi costume is just that – a costume, underneath which hides a regular Joe, with desires, even lusts, like you and me. The only thing that keeps Joe Haredi from going apecrackers is not the Torah he has learned and integrated into his personality as a shield against evil—it’s the long bekkesh, the velvet yarmulke and the shterimel. Take those away, and Joe Haredi will become a beast overnight.

That, essentially, is the main argument being advanced by the deans of Haredi yeshivas: We have no trust in the Torah we’ve taught our students. we know better. This is why the only means we have of keeping them in line are extreme social pressure and intimidation. You take those away and Joe will spring the trap and become a normal man, availing himself freely of the gifts of a modern society. We can’t afford that. If we do, as Yitz Farkas put it so eloquently, “that would erase our whole tradition.”

The word Haredim is based on Isaiah 66:5: “Hear the word of God, you that tremble at His word.” The “you that tremble” part in Hebrew is “Haharedim el dvaro.” Meaning that there’s urgency on your part to fulfill His word impeccably. It’s not about fear but about devotion.

But the post-Holocaust Haredi world is all about fear. Fear of new things. Fear of books. Fear of voices. And above all, fear that the education a young man receives during his 20 years in a Haredi yeshiva is worthless, because as soon as he encounters the outside world, those 20 years would vanish, melt away like Cholov Yisroel butter on a skillet.

What an astonishing degree of honesty regarding the bankruptcy of an entire school of faith and study.

You know, the Lubavitcher Rebbe was once asked how come he’s not afraid that his Shluchim, the emissaries he was sending out into the farthest and darkest corners of the Earth wouldn’t be tainted by the unholy stuff that surely awaits them there. He responded by citing the laws of kashering-cleansing a vessel in preparation for Passover: k’bol’o ken polto—the way the vessel absorbed the substance so it would let go of it. Meaning that, had the emissary remained clean in body and spirit during his training years, he has nothing to fear “out there.”

I miss him very much. This year marks the 20th anniversary of his passing, and his absence today is felt more than ever before. He would have devoted a segment of a Shabbat farbrengen to the draft bill, and it would have set the whole thing straight: these guys are right on this and wrong on that and vice versa. now go and behave like dignified yidden and stop attacking one another.

What a strange, low-key ending to a piece that began as an exhilarated attack on Haredi IDF bashing. I guess I got tired of it. We’re not going to change the Haredi leadership’s position, we just have to rejoice in a merciful God who made them, like the rest of us, biodegradable.

About the Author: Yori Yanover has been a working journalist since age 17, before he enlisted and worked for Ba'Machane Nachal. Since then he has worked for Israel Shelanu, the US supplement of Yedioth, JCN18.com, USAJewish.com, Lubavitch News Service, Arutz 7 (as DJ on the high seas), and the Grand Street News. He has published Dancing and Crying, a colorful and intimate portrait of the last two years in the life of the late Lubavitch Rebbe, (in Hebrew), and two fun books in English: The Cabalist's Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption, and How Would God REALLY Vote.

Henry Swieca To Michael Lichtenstein– Am Israel Chai

While American Secretary of State John Kerry threatened Israel this weekend, saying  “for Israel there is an increasing de-legitimization campaign that has been building up. People are very sensitive to it, there is talk of boycott and other kinds of things. Are we all going to be better with all of that?”  While Kerry talks about boycott, he should realize Israel will be just fine – with or without John Kerry.

The Israeli innovation economy is booming – and no John Kerry threats will change that. Some great quotes on the economy, and how the Israeli economy will continue regardless of John Kerry:

• “… 2013 was a good year for Israeli technology firms and 2014 appears to be shining just as bright.” Forbes.com

• “You have within this tiny country – you can drive from east to west in an hour, from north to south in five – every major sector and subsector of the technology industry. What is next? All technology.” Saul Klein

• “Try as you might, it is extremely hard not to be a bit star-struck by the Israeli technology scene.” WSJ

• “Israeli opportunity is amazing  -and the upswing is just starting.” Henry Swieca

• "From birth, your mother will tell you that you have to succeed, that you have to be better than your cousin, or her friend's son, or whoever." Yossi Vardi

• "I see you as the avant-garde force, the pioneer ahead of the crow. Don't be 'conditional' Israelis. The biggest struggle of Israeli society, of the Jewish people, needs people like you. You need to be the political, moral and educational elite. You must keep the moral guidelines that define our existence as a people and pass them forward." Haim Gouri

• "Reasons include the role of the Israeli Defense Forces, and in particular the high-tech Unit 8200; the unique cultural values of a country forged from centuries of oppression; and Jewish mothers." Ben Rooney

• “Innovation is not the product of logical thought, although the result is tied to logical structure.” Albert Einstein

• “Ultimately, this form of collaboration presents an opportunity to build on — indeed, to multiply — the successes of both the innovation economy and the Jewish establishment around the country in a manner that will surely enrich the quality of Jewish life for those already engaged, as well as for those who are yet to become so.” Darren Kleinberg

• “Israeli entrepreneurs move quick, think big and make it happen.” Michael Lichtenstein

• “I think that we see maturity among entrepreneurs on the venture capital side too. The market here has become more experienced, which brings better results, and the technology markets are picking up. We are now simply seeing companies that start here have bigger ambitions.” Ravi Mhatre

• “It’s not just about creating the first step or second steps of a company. We can also be good at building the company going forward. And maybe it’s time for us to think about ourselves as a country going from a startup nation to a high-tech nation, where startup is the first step, but companies are still built in Israel, maintained in Israel and grow from Israel.” Avishai Abrahami

• “We tell the kids about high-tech to make them part of the startup nation. We want to give them more opportunities, and the connection with JVP [Jerusalem Venture Partners] opens that world for them.” Yair Zaafrany

And the most important message is Am Israel Chai (The Jewish People Live.)

Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach Events, Ruth Lichtenstein & Mark Birnbaum Films..

A unique exhibit from Shanghai is one of the highlights of this year’s Holocaust Education Week program, presented by the Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach, a Committee of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. Taking place January 6-10, 2014, the series features a variety of perspectives on the Holocaust through eyewitness accounts, scholarly research and cultural productions, with events held at venues across Miami-Dade County.Holocaust Education Week is sponsored by Naomi Wilzig in memory of Siggi B. Wilzig. 

There are many worthwhile Holocaust materials, including those created by Project Witness & their founder Ruth Lichtenstein.  Harp Tree by Mark Birnbaum is another worthwhile movie on the Holocaust.

 “Sanctuary in Shanghai: Rescue During the Holocaust”
From 1933 to 1941, Shanghai became a modern-day Noah’s Ark, accepting more than 18,000 Jews fleeing the Holocaust in Europe. Jewish refugees lived harmoniously with local citizens, and by the end of World War II, most of the Jews living in Shanghai had survived. This lesser-known part of Holocaust history will be told through “Sanctuary in Shanghai: Rescue During the Holocaust,” on display January 6-15 at FIU Miami Beach Urban Studios, 420 Lincoln Road, Third Floor, Miami Beach. On loan from the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum, the exhibit includes the history of the rescued Jews of the Shanghai community, Jewish cultural life, video and eyewitness testimony, and artifacts. It is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

The exhibition will debut with Opening Night on Monday, January 6, beginning at 7 p.m. and featuring a performance of classical Jewish music by the Amernet Quartet. 

In conjunction with the exhibition, two evening lectures about the Shanghai Jewish community and the Holocaust will be presented at FIU Miami Beach Urban Studios: 

• “The Jews of Shanghai: 1890-1945” – On Tuesday, January 7, beginning at 7 p.m., Fred Ezekiel of Miami will discuss his childhood as a Jew in Shanghai and the community’s efforts to assist Jews fleeing Nazi Europe. 

• “Shelter Found in Shanghai” – On Wednesday, January 8, beginning at 7 p.m., Evelyn Pike Rubin will discuss the story of survival of more than 18,000 refugees escaping Nazi terror in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II.

Other Presentations
Additional Holocaust Education Week programs will be presented throughout Miami-Dade County, including:

• “Running from the Nazis: Escape from the Holocaust” – On Tuesday, January 7, Dr. Miriam Klein Kassenoff will share her personal story of escape from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in a lecture beginning at 7 p.m., at Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center, 20400 Northeast 30th Avenue, Aventura.

• A screening of The Last Korczak Boy – On Wednesday, January 8, beginning at 7 p.m. – Presented in Spanish with English subtitles, the film tells the compelling story of Itzchak Belfer, one of the children who resided at the Korczak Orphanage in Warsaw during the Holocaust. Now 90 years old, Belfer also shares his memories of the orphanage and Dr. Janusz Korczak at Beth Torah Benny Rok Campus, 20350 Northeast 26th Avenue, North Miami Beach. 

“The Museum of History of Polish Jews, Warsaw” – Dr. Leon Weissberg discusses this new museum, opening in 2014 with an impressive display of 800 years of Jewish life in Poland.  This presentation will take place on Thursday, January 9, beginning at 2 p.m., at the Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach, 1933-45 Meridian Avenue, Miami Beach.

• “First Person: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors Alex Gross and Alan Hall” – Concluding Holocaust Education Week, two eyewitnesses to the Holocaust will discuss their harrowing experiences under the Nazis in a presentation for ninth- and 10th-grade students at Miami Beach Senior High School.

For more information and reservations, contact the Holocaust Memorial at info@holocaustmmb.org or call 305.538.1663.

Mr. Mayor, the Silence is Deafening

Hamodia is published by Ruth Lichtenstein

Nobody likes disturbing a mayor during the “sheva brachos” of his inauguration. But a dastardly deed has been committed in the city, and residents await the traditional reassurance that comes with a personal mayoral statement.
However, ever since the abduction and brutal murder of Reb Menachem Stark, Hy”d, Thursday night that shattered the Orthodox community — and all decent New Yorkers — Mayor Bill de Blasio’s voice has been missing from the uproar.
What is needed most at this time is a clear-minded condemnation of the tragedy by the mayor, a full court press conference to separate fact from myth, or even just to articulate a plain pledge that the administration is committed to pursuing the murderers until justice is done. (Read More)

Tuesday, January 7, 2014 |

Save a Life: Check the Backseat

According to Dr. Jan Null, a certified consulting meteorologist at San Francisco State University’s Department of Geosciences, in the first 6 months of 2013, children left unattended in hot cars have resulted in 15 reported incidents of child death. Seven of these deaths have been confirmed to have been caused by heatstroke with the remaining eight deaths believed to have been caused by heatstroke based on what was known of the circumstances surrounding those deaths. At the halfway point of 2013, the number of children who died unattended in hot cars is comparable to the rate of such deaths in the previous year in which a total of 32 children died in this manner.

The average annual number of child deaths due to heatstroke since the year 1998 is 37. This figure is, of course, much too high and the issue is beginning to gain momentum in the mainstream media and among grassroots awareness groups. Most people know about the dangers of drinking and driving, and nonprofits such as the car donation program Kars for Kids have campaigned against teens texting while driving, but leaving children unattended in hot cars is yet another car safety issue we need to address now that summer is officially here.

Mild Weather Too

Here is something you may not know: children can die of hyperthermia (medical term for heatstroke) as a result of being left alone in a vehicle even in mild 70 degree Fahrenheit weather. That’s because cars can heat to unbearable (and life-threatening) temperatures quite quickly.

Did you think this can’t happen to you? That you’d never leave your child alone in your car and just forget about him or her? That’s what most normal parents think. But think again: ever had a senior moment? Some experts believe that several critical events happening all at once and taking up the resources of the brain, can lead to a “perfect storm” memory failure in which a child might be left unattended in a car at length—even by the most responsible of parents.

Obsessive Compulsive?

The smartest thing any parent can do is to check the backseat of the car every time he or she parks. Does this sound a little obsessive compulsive? Like Lady Macbeth’s hand washing or checking 50 times to make sure the gas is off in the house before going to the movies?

The answer: who really cares what the neighbors think? The important things: it’s summer; there is a known phenomenon in which parents leave their children unattended in cars; and kids are dying. So take the extra minute to check your backseat, even if it makes you feel a little silly. It may just save your child’s life.