June Sh’ma Honors Martin Kaminer, Innovation

JFL Founding Chair Martin Kaminer has been the unsung hero of Jewish start-ups. This month’s issue of Sh’ma is dedicated to sustainable innovation in Jewish life, in honor of Martin. A Sh’ma Salon in NYC on the topic featured a panel discussion, which was recorded and an edited version appears in the new Sh’ma, just in time for the JFL June Board meeting, which was an extraordinary and positive meeting. Below are my closing remarks.

Closing Comments at the Sh’ma Forum on Sustainable Innovation and Jewish Life

Yosef I. Abramowitz: One of the things that I have seen in the work of Martin Kaminer and his family’s philanthropy is that they bet on individuals with good ideas and dreams. They provide the back-end infrastructure support and ongoing leadership even when it gets tough. In this forum, Sh’ma wanted to model a conversation between the funding community and the innovators.

As part of that, I want to suggest a new way to define and sustain innovation. First, gather a creative and diverse team with great values, who bring different skills, resources, and talents to the table — including infrastructure money. Second, we cannot continue to make the same mistakes that have been made in previous generations of innovation. In 1969, Hillel Levine keynoted a session at the GA that resulted in a new institute for Jewish life that the professionals in Jewish life later killed because they felt threatened. Third, we must recognize the evil inclination, the yetzar ha-ra of ego, the yetzar ha-ra of turf, the yetzar ha-ra of feeling a lack of authenticity. This yetzar ha-ra prevents our generosity, our ability to give our gifts. It’s the yetzar ha-ra of not wanting to collaborate. It’s the yetzar ha-ra of wanting to rule and rule alone in most cases. A way to overcome this evil inclination is not only to talk about it and to “out�? it, but to find something so compelling that we can transcend issues of turf and ego and our fears. What just might be that compelling is an open conversation about a vision of the future of Jewish life. If we had a conversation that was inspirational, of course the philanthropy would be there. But too often our institutions and foundations only focus on smaller conversations about our programmatic vision for the future of Jewish life. We are failing to be trustees of the Jewish mission and vision. Morlie touched on humility, and this is important: to remember we’re just dust who’ve been given such riches and such gifts. We need to rally those gifts to create new conversations and commitments to go toward a vision beyond our yetzar ha-ra.