This past week I took my second trip to Windsor Castle as part of the Senior Faith Leadership Programme. The SFLP focuses on developing leadership, which is inter-disciplinary by nature, affecting people from all walks of life, and engaging with the diversity of human experience. The programme explores the forms of coexistence and friendship that are possible between faith traditions, while maintaining their difference and diversity.
The focus of this fellowship was to engage on the topic of conflict and difficult conversations. On a strike-disrupted train ride to Windsor, I recalled the warnings we had received prior to this session, yet I strongly believed that I had the skills to deal successfully with these difficult topics.
On day two we were placed in a conflict simulation, and I recall looking around the table of interfaith leaders wondering how I would navigate this space. I was reminded of the following Rabbi Sacks quote.
“The test of faith is whether I can make space for difference. Can I recognise God’s image in someone who is not my image, whose language, faith, ideal, are different from mine? If I cannot, then I have made God in my image instead of allowing him to remake me in his”.
Often when attending courses, I look to the main speakers, the experts in their chosen field for nuggets of successful leadership lessons that I can absorb and use in my work life. I look to the leaders to provide me this information while forgetting that often the people with the nuggets are not those at the lectern, but those seated next to me. We can forget that when attending seminars or fellowships that the greatest gifts of learning are through connections with those around us, and making space for difference is how it starts.
Last Thursday evening, Mitzvah Day hosted our Mitzvah Day Awards, where we honoured our most dedicated and passionate volunteers at a special awards ceremony. The focus for these awards was not only on how we made a difference on Mitzvah Day, but on the relationships, we strengthened and the new friends we made. We celebrated the immediate successes and the longer term, sustainable, nurtured achievements which are what ‘doing a Mitzvah’ is all about. I watched on with a great sense of achievement the new connections being made on the night – as well as those being rekindled post Covid. It reminded me that no man person is an island. Today, more than ever, the entire world is understanding the importance of human connection and people are actively connecting with the people they know while looking for channels of connection with those they want to get to know, in exciting and creative ways. If we as Jews in Britain and around the world are going to thrive, we need connection. Our actions and our ideas can affect the world around us in profound ways.
By leading the way in interfaith social action all around the world and creating opportunities to bring different people together, we can tackle discrimination and hatred. Mitzvah Day is often the first interaction many people have with Jews, and it provides the opportunity to meet us at our best!
Our day of social action demonstrates the essential impact that the Jewish community has on wider British society through the hundreds of communities that get involved and the thousands of volunteers that collect, plant, cook, sing, befriend, sort, and donate on the day, and in the weeks around it.
When we come together with a shared purpose of supporting local causes and improving our neighbourhoods, we see genuine long-standing friendships and relationships built. We bring together people of all ages, faiths, and backgrounds, to volunteer side-by-side, building longstanding, genuine relationships. This has proven to be a powerful antidote to prejudice.
As we move into Spring, Mitzvah Day will continue to encourage members of the community to be a part of micro social action projects as we lead up to Mitzvah Day on the 19th of November, by creating opportunities for touchpoints between our interfaith communities on different occasions.
Next in the calendar is the launch of this year’s Mitzvah Day theme in Brighton and Hove at the new BNJC centre and we look forward to seeing you there, or at other projects in the lead up to the biggest day of Jewish-led social action in your calendar – Mitzvah Day 2023.
This post first appeared in The Jewish Chronicle, February 2023
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Stuart Diamond Consulting 