Who's Better Me or Nobody?

Zero usually starts both an ordinate and an abscissa, the point of comparison.  Right upper quadrant is fully positive, left lower quadrant doubly negative and the other two a mixed message, one given to me by my synagogue this past week.

There is a Presidentially appointed nominating committee.  The recycling of officers has done great harm, being reaped for several years, accentuated by wandering around our new shared space where the landlord seems to have their people more engaged with new ideas and initiatives.  We have experience, as the trademark of our VP's either 10 years experience or one year experience repeated 10 times.  But turnover is low and desire to give up the comfortable niche to become President even lower.

More striking though, has been two slots of the Board assigned to NOBODY in the current and prior slate.   They will claim that they cannot get people to accept, and as I've not been asked, I will take a safe assumption that in the wisdom of the President's trusted advisors, NOBODY would have more discernment as a person to advance the future of our congregation than I would.  NOBODY must be pretty good; he or she has two seats times two years, or four seats.  It would be interesting to take a poll at the Annual Meeting where the official election occurs to see who else the Nominating Committee acting in good faith blackballed, or judged less capable or valuable than NOBODY.  Doubt if I am the only one or if the virtual blackballing might even be received as a personal slight.  But it was.

There are indeed times when I am better than NOBODY.  Torah has to be read by not only SOMEBODY, but an adult male past Bar Mitzvah.  Knowing how to do it helps but technically is not required.  I do not know if NOBODY is an adult male past Bar Mitzvah.  I do know that if he is, he doesn 't know how to do it.  That makes me definitely better than NOBODY as a Torah reader, and this year as a Megillat Ruth reader.

And as Woody Allen taught us, 80% of life is showing up.  NOBODY has a way of not showing up.  I guess the Nominating Committee opted for the special 20%.

While I do not particularly like entering the building of our landlord, where a lot of my down experiences with organized Judaism occurred, I still take Ben Zoma's advice, trying to learn from all people.  They've done better with Kehillah development than we have and defining their purpose.  They once had machers who swooped on peons.  Now it looks like they have more targeted leadership that asks the question of who can help with their initiatives.  We have fallen behind and don't seem to want to seek out talent or evaluate individuals for what strengths they might bring.  We default to NOBODY.  NOBODY ever gives you a hard time or tilts the vote.  He or she doesn't contribute a lot of skill or insight either.