The Resource Every Jewish Organization Is Running Out Of
Over the past year, I’ve had the privilege of spending time with leaders from Jewish day schools, synagogues, foundations, nonprofits, and businesses. On the surface, they couldn’t be more different. They serve different communities, face different challenges, and measure success in different ways.
Yet I keep hearing the same thing.
“We just don’t have enough time.”
At first, It seems they were all talking about staffing or budgets.
They weren’t.
They were talking about leadership.
Teachers want more time with students.
Rabbis want more time with congregants.
Executive directors want more time to think strategically instead of constantly responding to the next urgent issue.
Board members want meetings that focus on the future rather than reviewing the past.
Parents want more time to simply be present with their families.
No one has ever told me they wish they had more emails to answer or more reports to prepare.
What they’re really asking for is more time to do the work that matters most.
That observation has changed the way I think about the future of work.
For years, we’ve measured progress by how much faster we could get things done. Every new technology promised greater efficiency. Today, artificial intelligence is making that promise again.
But I think we are asking too little of this moment.
Saving time isn’t the goal.
What matters is what we do with the time we save.
If technology gives a school administrator an extra five hours each week, does that simply become five more hours of administrative work?
Or does it become five more hours to support teachers?
If a synagogue can automate routine tasks, does that mean more meetings?
Or more meaningful conversations with congregants?
If a nonprofit leader spends less time creating reports, does that mean producing even more reports?
Or does it create space to strengthen relationships with donors, volunteers, and the people they serve?
Technology can’t answer those questions.
Leadership can.
One of the things I’ve always admired about Jewish communal life is that our strongest organizations have never been built solely on efficiency. They’ve been built on relationships.
A great teacher changes a student’s life because they took the time to notice.
A rabbi makes someone feel seen because they stopped to listen.
A volunteer inspires others because they invested in people, not just programs.
Those moments can’t be automated.
If anything, they become even more valuable as technology takes on more routine work.
Perhaps that’s the real opportunity in front of us.
Not simply to become faster.
But to become more present.
To create organizations where leaders have the capacity to mentor, to listen, to imagine, and to build stronger communities.
The conversation about AI will continue, and it should.
But I hope we spend just as much time talking about something else.
If technology gives us back one of our most precious resources, how will we choose to use it?
Because in the end, the future will be shaped by what we do with the time it gives us. Not by tech that we try to adopt.
