By Sydney Holt
Avraham Infeld was by far one of my favorite speakers that Nachshon has had all semester. With his thick South African accent and powerful voice, he was able to capture the full attention of every single person in the room for the entire ninety minutes. He provided an interesting and different approach to the idea of Jewish leadership that left me thinking about his speech for several days after. As a junior in college looking to become a better Jewish leader now as a camp counselor and in the future as a Jewish professional, I was blown away by Avraham Infield's various perspectives on Jewish leadership and guidance on how to be a great and successful Jewish leader.
He began with connecting leadership to the Bible and asking an interesting question: If God wanted to move the Jews to Egypt to Israel, why didn’t he create one single person to do it all? Infield pointed out that this was because God knew that the Jews needed a team of people to lead all of the Jews: Moses, Aaron, Miriam, and Joshua. Although I was aware that being a great leader means that you need others to help you, I had never thought about it in the context of the Bible. Avraham Infeld then told us that, “If you want to become a Jewish leader, don’t try to lead alone, if it was possible, God would have created one person- leave room for others to lead with you.” He explained how there are copious amounts of other examples in Jewish texts of how to become a great leader. Through this Infeld displayed how crucial it is to have a background on Jewish texts in order to become an impactful Jewish leader today.
Avraham Infeld continued by powerfully stating that “Judaism is not a religion.” He explained that the current mess among the Jewish people today is that they don’t know who they are anymore: a tribe? a nation? a religion? a people? With the growing separation between different sects of Judaism and the inability to realize there is more than one “right” idea, Infeld showed that Jews have forgotten that they are a people, and he believes it is the biggest problem facing them today. This powerful statement really made me think about Judaism as a whole and the troubles it’s facing today. By displaying issues like this that are happening today, Infield continued to inspire me to learn more on how to become great impactful Jewish leader.
At this point, I was completely amazed by everything I had just heard. After living in Israel for a few months now, I knew that the growing divide among Jews was a problem, but it hadn’t been clearly laid out to me in this way before. Infield proceeded by presenting what he thinks is the mission for all Jewish leaders: “To ensure the continued significant renaissance of the Jewish people.” Explaining each of the major words in this mission, Infield emphasized the concept of memory with his overall lesson being that we need to connect people’s memories to the memories of the Jewish people.
Although I have been on the path to becoming a stronger Jewish leader for a while now, I feel that I truly have the ability to be successful after hearing Avraham Infeld speak. I previously knew that I wanted to impact Jewish people, but I wasn’t exactly sure how. However, after hearing Infield’s mission statement for Jewish leaders and his views on the problems facing the Jewish people today, I feel like I have true intention and know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. Listening to Avraham Infeld truly taught me so much about Judaism that I thought I already knew, and completely changed my perspective on the Jewish people and Judaism as a whole. I am so grateful that Avraham Infeld was able to come speak to us, because he truly had an impact on me and my passion on becoming a great Jewish leader.
