I am the voice of Jewish communal workers past, the professionals who walked away. A recent study released by San Francisco’s Institute for Jewish & Community Research indicates that up to 50 percent of us leave Jewish community jobs within the first five years of employment. It’s time you heard from us.
I surveyed local community professionals, past and present, to give you an inside look and act as a mouthpiece. This is not an attempt to undermine the positive aspects or importance of Jewish communal work. Nor is it a reflection of everyone’s experiences. But it is a snapshot to illustrate some of the reasons we left, or plan to leave, our jobs in the community. All names of individuals and organizations will remain anonymous.
Across the board, we were drawn to this work because we believed in and wanted to serve the Jewish community. But along the way, the community failed to take care of us.
Working in the Jewish community is like working with your family. As pointed out by Gary Tobin, president of the institute that conducted the recent study, it’s “all that’s great about families and all that drives you crazy,” including the lack of boundaries.
Lay leaders threatened one professional’s career after they discovered she was dating a non-Jew. A single woman’s boss offered her up to donors and their sons. There are wakeup calls from board members, requests to baby-sit for children — as if our jobs, which often eat up evenings and weekends, aren’t work enough — and criticisms about the way we dress. When a director related a board member’s complaint about a worker’s wardrobe, the employee answered, “If you paid me more, maybe I’d have nicer clothes.”
None of us, especially those in entry-level positions, were motivated by money. But being poor gets old.
To qualify for low-income housing, a person’s salary must be less than half of the city’s median income. For San Francisco, in 2003, the qualifying income for a single person was $32,050. Eligible employees working in our Jewish community could fill a housing project.
Instead, we’re living beyond our means, with multiple roommates, or in parts of town that would scare you. Many of us struggle to pay off student loans, cannot afford High Holy Day tickets, forgo owning cars and don’t save for our futures.
Unless we have spouses or parents helping us out, we’re barely scraping by.
Our organizations pay executives six-figure salaries and shower lay leaders with gifts and accolades, which most deserve. We can’t help but resent when we’re not thanked or tossed an occasional bone.
Some of us are required to give financially to our agencies — and are even pressured to up our gifts — because apparently our time and sweat isn’t contribution enough.
Our positions challenge our ability to participate in the community for our own enjoyment. Leadership programs reject us because we’re not considered “leaders.” Community events that are meant to inspire are out of our price range, yet we’re guilt-tripped if we don’t go. Take, for instance, the “Power of One,” a gathering to celebrate and motivate women who make a difference. We should have a “Power of Poor Ones,” a pizza party outside the posh hotel ballroom, eavesdropping at the door for inspiration.
We are cornered to talk shop when we venture out. Imagine being at a small, Shabbat dinner, wanting to relax, and being attacked about a comment made by your national director.
We shudder at the community politics, the clashing of egos and the resistance to change. It isn’t the Jewish community or the values we anticipated when we decided to give of ourselves full time. Our expectations and morale dashed, we burn out. We feel wronged, dispensable, even forsaken by our own.
So we leave the jobs we once couldn’t wait to have.
“You can make a stink, but it’s your community,” one employee explained after leaving a job. Not wanting to be persona non grata in the Jewish community, we’ve kept our complaints to ourselves.
Sour grapes? Maybe. But more than anything we speak out anonymously in this column because we care. We stepped into these professions for altruistic reasons — to give back to our community and make a difference. If our experiences can help do that after we’ve walked away, we’ll feel better.
Jessica Ravitz recently completed her master’s in journalism at U.C. Berkeley. She can be reached at [email protected].