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Leadership Selection
And Social Etiquette
LEONARD FEIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH TIMES
ere is a question with no
easy answer: What, if any-
thing, should be the Jew-
ish community's collective
response to one of its members
who engages in socially irre-
sponsible activities?
The issue arose a few years ago
in connection with Lester Pol-
lack's place on the board of Lor-
rilard, the cigarette
manufacturer. Mr. Pollack was
then the leading candidate to be
the chairman of the Jewish Wel-
fare Board, then coordinating
agency for Jewish community
centers around the country. Jew-
ish community centers ostensi-
bly are devoted, among other
things, to the physical health of
Jews. Should someone with an
investment in people's ill health
be accepted as leader of an
agency devoted to their good
health?
Mr. Pollack won the JWB po-
sition. He has since become chair-
man of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations. Whatev-
er the substantive arguments on
either side that were then raised,
there was plainly inadequate
precedent for taking the private
activities of people into account
in determining their qualifica-
tions for communal office, except,
one presumes, in the case of high-
ly visible and/or particularly egre-
gious miscreancy. (One imagines
that Bernard Bergman, the no-
torious owner of New York nurs-
ing homes, would have been
considered ineligible for a lead-
ership position in the main-
stream community.)
One can, nonetheless, imagine
a whole array of cases that would
challenge our standards (or lack
thereof). Where there has been a
finding of guilt in a court of law
— Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken
— the issue is easy to resolve.
(Well, relatively easy, since legal
guilt is at least sometimes mere-
ly technical guilt, and there are
also times — e.g., the McCarthy
era — when the courts run slight-
ly amok.)
But what shall we do if we
learn, for example, that a promi-
nent Jewish leader is a major
stockholder in a company that
willfully pollutes the environ-
ment? Is being a major stock-
holder of such a company
sufficient to disqualify the person
as a leader? Is the issue of pol-
lution one on which there is suf-
ficient consensus to allow for
argument on the matter?
This, so far as I know, is a hy-
pothetical case. But here's one
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12
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•
American Heart Association
WE'RE FIGHTING FOR YOUR LIFE
that isn't: There's a very promi-
nent Jewish leader, one with
widespread name recognition,
who is a major stockholder in a
company that is, in turn, a major
stockholder of one of America's
larger handgun manufacturing
companies. This raises a series of
questions, ranging from the nar-
row (Does the gun manufacturer
actively lobby against gun con-
trol?) to the broad (Is the issue
merely connection? Or is it con-
trol? Morally, what's the distinc-
tion? And if the distinction be
blurry, then what of the rest of us
What should the
community's
response be?
who directly or through our mu-
tual funds own stock in disrep-
utable corporations?)
The moment that becomes a
relevant question, are we not im-
mediately threatened with a
process of leadership selection so
politically correct as to be over-
bearing, theoretically obnoxious
and practically unworkable?
Still, one is troubled. Some-
where between studied inatten-
tion to the private lives of public
people and a zealously judgmen-
tal system of control, there must
be a reasonable filter, perhaps
less in order to assure that our
moral skirts are in order than to
bring appropriate pressure on our
leaders to clean up their private
acts.
And not because those private
acts reflect on us, although they
do. But because we claim to be
a community with a particular
ethical culture, and that claim is
vitiated when people in leader-
ship position violate that culture.
I don't want to seem (or, for
that matter, to be) priggish about
all this. As I said above, the ques-
tion has no easy answer. Perhaps
the best we can do is trust the
general good sense of the com-
munity — or, more accurately, of
that ever-so-thin slice of the com-
munity that is responsible for
naming our leaders — knowing
that there will be lapses now and
then. Or, perhaps, we should sim-
ply take comfort from the fact
that, by and large, Jewish lead-
ership isn't taken very seriously
by anyone, least of all by the
Jews. But, for a community with
our claimed ethical commitment,
the question niggles.
❑
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