oints of view >> Send letters to: letters@thejewishnews.com Editorial Commentary Don't Diminish Role Of Our Communal Professionals T he professional heads of Detroit Jewry's agencies ideally serve as invaluable cata- lysts for driving our communal resources. They guide, manage, nurture, challenge and ele- vate — even inspire. As our emissaries, they help shape our fluid communal agenda and direction. Developing a pool of desirable candidates, from within but also from elsewhere, must be a stand- ing priority for each of our local agencies, which together help make ours one of America's great Jewish communities. In May, Rick Loewenstein will leave as CEO of Farmington Hills-based JARC after seven years to pursue an entrepreneurial dream. JARC, a $12-million organization with 300 employees, nobly serves people with developmental disabili- ties. From humble Jewish beginnings in 1969, it has grown to serve 400 people and families via a nonsectarian, community-based residential and support network. As Loewenstein passes the leadership reins to JARC chief development officer Rena Friedberg, who will serve as interim CEO, we're reminded as a Jewish community to always replenish and refresh — to always recruit, even if no vacancies exist, and to always reinvigorate, thus helping cur- rent leaders avoid complacency. A Changing Dimension In the same vein, we as a Jewish community must embrace communicating and collaborating to ensure our agencies commit to staying relevant through programming innovation, staff develop- ment and relationship building. Like all communals, JARC knows government is an unpredictable funding source. It knows creative funding is important to not only serve its base clientele, but also to look to serve people who are deaf or autistic. In recent years, JARC partnered with three local Jewish nonprofits — Kadima, Friendship Circle and Jewish Family Service — to run a suc- cessful super raffle. The joint fundraiser benefited a range of local residents with special needs. The relationships built under the raffle rubric, and since expanded, have worked to strengthen col- lective advocacy for mental health and special needs support. JARC has gone beyond Jewish borders to team with others that share an interest in serving people with development disabilities, includ- ing Angel's Place, a Christian agency, and the Birmingham-Bloomfield Art Center. Other exam- ples of such outreach include Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit initiatives in the city of Detroit and our synagogue alliances with reli- gious groups and humanitarian causes. The list is impressive, but could always be longer. 46 April 16 • 2015 Even the best Jewish professional leader can't stay focused on constituents when the agency's organizational timbers have begun to wither. Staying Vigilant Funding for JARC and so many agencies like it is at risk. For too many, funding is stagnant, declining or gone. Cost oversight has become a mandatory obsession as service demands mount. The Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit is seeking a new executive director while under interim leadership amid a financial crisis that underscores the necessity of scrupulous bud- get controls. Then there's the matter of adequately training, equipping, developing and paying front- line staffers, each agency's lifeblood. At the same time, each of our communals must be cognizant of its operating structure. Even the best Jewish professional leader can't stay focused on constituents when the agency's organizational timbers have begun to wither. What's more, the traditional communal leader- ship ladder isn't the only trajectory today for our Jewish professionals. The ranks of industry and beyond also are ripe for tapping. How do we as a Jewish community seek to educate newly arriv- ing pros from these ranks about the history and nuances of who we are and what we stand for? Jewish communal leadership often hinges on the dynamic between the professionals and the lay boards they serve. It's incumbent on our boards to have a vision for what modern profes- sional leadership means and how it fits into a 21st-century organizational structure. Other board musts include having an adaptive mission and set of objectives, a yen for adopting progres- sive new technologies and systems, and a willing- ness to retire waning business models. Our boards certainly must embrace reinvention and tweaking, as times dictate, to stay nimble and responsive. That's the only way top communal pros under their watch will continue to operate with purpose and urgency. The best pros grasp that "prime" on the bell curve of Jewish commu- nal service means acting as responsible change agents, not merely as guardians of process, how- ever tired it may be. ❑ Could U.S. Threats Ward Off Attacks By Iran? he heart of the opposition to a network of formal commitments the nuclear deal with Iran is guaranteeing that an attack by Iran the fear, even the assump- on any of those countries would be tion, that Iran will violate it, cheat- considered an attack on the United ing on inspections and using the States. accord's provisions to double-deal To some extent, American secu- and weaponize. rity guarantees to Israel and the Opponents often cite North Saudis are already implicit. But Korea's violation of its deal with new, firmer assurances, especially the West in 2003. if codified in a bilateral treaty But they fail to with Israel and a multilateral mention that, how- pact or series of arrange- f ever egregious an ments with several Arab Iranian "breakout" states, would be permanent would be, one dif- and unmistakable, no matter ference is clear: who was in the White House. North Korea did not • Such measures would become a regional sharply reduce the chance force, even after it of miscalculations by Iran. ra became a nuclear Its leaders could not delude power, because Steven L. Spiegel themselves into thinking that the United States there would be no conse- had major defense quences if they threatened treaties with South or attacked one of their Korea, Japan, Australia and the neighbors – the kind of delusion Philippines. An insurance system under which North Korea invaded was in place so that North Korea South Korea in 1950, after the could only move so far without United States left unclear its inter- precipitating a confrontation with est in defending the Korean pen- America. insula. If we don't trust the Iranians In fact, in early 2008, both – and why should we? – then we Democratic presidential candi- need similar arrangements with dates, Barack Obama and Hillary Israel and the concerned Arab Rodham Clinton, went on the states, Iran's adversaries in the record about extending the U.S. region who are close to the U.S. "security umbrella" to Israel if Iran Alongside the agreement with obtained nuclear weapons. Clinton Tehran, we can offer these states added that she would "provide a T Commentary Oversight Of Congress Is Required The Iranians can't be trusted to comply with President Obama's agreement. The following is a statement by the Jewish Policy Center, a conservative-oriented think tank based in Washington, D.C. e express grave res- ervations over the U.S.-Iran "parameters for a joint comprehensive plan of action" following the agreement reached between Secretary of State Kerry and Foreign Minister Zarif in Lausanne. The parameters published by the White House do not consti- tute an agreement, a treaty or a binding document, making it impossible to measure whether or how the agreement constrains Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weap- ons capability. Such weapons