Today, a new orga­ni­za­tion called B’nai Mitzvah Revolution announced itself to the world.

I’ve been priv­i­leged to serve as the web­mas­ter/tech-guru on the project. Working with the team behind BMR — notably the co-direc­tors and their col­leagues at HUC-JIR/RHSOE/ECE and the URJ — has been an amaz­ingly ful­fill­ing and insight­ful expe­ri­ence. I’m thank­ful to Isa for giv­ing me the opportunity.

Check the site out. I’m incred­i­bly proud of it (though, truth be told, a lot of the con­cep­tu­al­iza­tion and tweak­ing came from the entire team).

Viva la revolution!

Just thought I’d help get the mes­sage out there… (Taken with Instagram)

Seth Godin:

When peo­ple say, “The tip­ping point,” they often mis­un­der­stand the con­cept in Malcolm’s book. They’re actu­ally talk­ing about the flip­ping point.

The tip­ping point is the sum total of many indi­vid­u­als buzzing about some­thing. But for an indi­vid­ual to start buzzing, some­thing has to change in that person’s mind. Something flips from bore­dom or igno­rance to excite­ment or anger.

Sinbad on March 16. Who’s in?
(Taken with Instagram)

Remember when you used to read MAD Magazine?

Brilliance from Seth Godin:

When I played clar­inet in high school, I never prac­ticed. I blamed it on my dog, who howled, but basi­cally I was a lousy music student.

At my weekly les­son, though, the teacher would scold me, guess­ing that I’d only prac­ticed three or four hours the week before. I was so good at sight read­ing that while I was truly mediocre at the clar­inet, I was way bet­ter than any­one who had never prac­ticed had any right to be.

We often test sight read­ing skills, par­tic­u­larly in job inter­views. In that highly-charged encounter, we test the applicant’s abil­ity to think on her feet. That’s a great idea if the job involves a lot of feet think­ing, but oth­er­wise, you’re inspect­ing for the wrong thing, aren’t you? Same with a first date. Marketing your­self to a new per­son often involves being charis­matic, clever and quick—but most jobs and most rela­tion­ships are about being con­sis­tent, per­sis­tent and brave, no?

Beverly Hills Purim Ball
(Taken with Instagram at Beverly Wilshire Beverly Hills — A Four Seasons Hotel)

What one per­son has to offer another is their own being, noth­ing more and noth­ing less.

In this arti­cle, which ran in today’s Ha’aretz, my col­league Alex Sinclair sug­gests a par­a­digm for how we can take the next steps in Israel edu­ca­tion. As is typ­i­cally the case with Alex’s writ­ing, it’s very impres­sive and (more impor­tantly) thought-pro­vok­ing. So I’m shar­ing it here.

Read More

Pity the leader caught between unlov­ing crit­ics and uncrit­i­cal lovers.

For par­tic­i­pants in the iCenter pre­sen­ta­tion how-to that I taught today, I’ve uploaded two files:

• Extensive notes, as promised.
Presentation Primer — Notes & Sources.pdf

• My slides. (They’ll only make sense if you were there, naturally.)
Presentation Primer — Slides.pdf

Seth Godin:

Steve devoted his pro­fes­sional life to giv­ing us (you, me and a bil­lion other peo­ple) the most pow­er­ful device ever avail­able to an ordi­nary per­son. Everything in our world is dif­fer­ent because of the device you’re read­ing this on.

What are we going to do with it?

Steve Jobs (again):

Simple can be harder than com­plex: You have to work hard to get your think­ing clean to make it sim­ple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.