A Crisis or a Challenge?

Sometimes the only difference between a challenge and a crisis is a headline declaring it the latter.

So I wonder: Is there really a “leadership crisis,” or merely a serious challenge? Are we in fact facing an unprecedented shortage of capable leaders — of principals, rabbanim, and kiruv directors?

Were great leaders more commonplace in the past? On the one hand, it would seem so. Just think of the towering figures who rebuilt Yiddishkeit after World War II. Reb Moshe; Reb Aharon; the Rebbes of Lubavitch, Satmar, Bobov, and Klausenburg; and Rav Yoshe Ber, to name just a few. We certainly have not replaced them. But it’s hard to prove that there’s been a downward trend since that time. In the absence of real data, any “evidence” would seem to be anecdotal and unreliable.

As anecdotes go, I know of one local mosad that struggled mightily to find a new principal — perfect evidence of a dearth of capable leaders. But later I discovered that this was primarily a function of their very exacting criteria. They were looking for someone with experience as a principal of both boys’ and girls’ schools. That certainly limits the pool of possible candidates.