Leadership in a Time of War: Creating Community for Russian-Speaking Jews

Tiny Windows Consulting has partnered with our friends at the Jewish Federations of North America on a number of projects, including designing the Jewish Changemakers Fellowship and the 2021 National Young Leadership Cabinet Retreat.

We’d never gotten a request quite like this before: to design and develop two programs aimed at the Russian-Speaking Jewish (RSJ) population. Both were online learning opportunities - one aimed at engaging emerging RSJ leaders, and one for Jewish professionals hoping to bring more RSJ representation and programming into their own communities.

We just had no idea we’d be doing it during a war.

RSJs represent about 10% of the Jewish population, and for many years the institutional Jewish community has approached them as a community in need of charity. It’s true that many RSJs immigrated in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union and these refugees needed support as they settled into their new homes. Many are older, veterans, Holocaust survivors… But there are also a growing number of RSJs who were either born in North America or came over very young and who are now ready to better understand their own complex identities - as Americans, as Russian-speakers, and perhaps most importantly as Jews - and the Jewish communal world needs to be ready to adapt accordingly.

To JFNA’s credit, these programs were planned long ago. They became all the more necessary on Thursday, February 24, when Russia invaded Ukraine. We’d already done a lot of work, running three sessions to introduce Jewish professionals to RSJ leaders, life, and culture. But when the bombs started falling, we spent less time talking about Cheburashka and more time on processing traumatic events, and finding solace in community.

The programs have since ended, and JFNA is working hard to keep these professionals and emerging leaders engaged, connected, and ready to act on behalf of the greater Jewish community, today and always. There’s so much more to be done. But it was deeply meaningful to be able to provide these powerful, conversational, educational, communal spaces for a group within the Jewish community who are ready to lead - it starts with pulling up more chairs to more tables.

We couldn’t have imagined a better partner than working with the brilliant and big-hearted Olga Markus on these projects. We recently caught up with Olga and asked her to share more about herself, her work, and the projects we created together.

Tell us about you and your work! How do you spend your day? What's the mission at the heart of everything you do?

Olga Markus, Program Director, Community & Jewish Life at JFNA

I am Program Director at the Jewish Federations of North America, Community and Jewish Life department, working with communities and institutions within the Federation system and beyond on strengthening and deepening Russian-speaking Jewish engagement. My work focuses on helping institutions, professionals, and lay leaders to envision, create, and implement meaningful and culturally sensitive and nuanced programmatic offerings for Russian-speaking Jewish engagement in North America. We are elevating and developing the field, generating and testing ideas for creating effective pipelines for future leaders, creating professional development opportunities, raising awareness among Jewish organizations about this specific community sub-group that has a lot to offer to our shared collective, and encouraging Jewish organizations to see this specific work in a broader context of building welcoming and inclusive communities for all.

My typical day is filled with phone calls and Zoom meetings, facilitating sessions and leading webinars, stretching across continents and time zones, endless emails and very little space to think, reflect, plan – I know I need to be much more intentional about that. Connecting the dots, listening to peoples’ stories, identifying the potential for collaborations, partnerships, innovation are at the forefront of my everyday workload.

Since the war in Ukraine started at the end of February 2022, it has been very challenging to focus on things in the category “business as usual” – most of my time since than has been dedicated to help building JFNA’s response to this humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions. For many of my colleagues, friends, fellow RSJs all over the world this is very personal and their pain is palpable; supporting people during this very painful time became my priority. JFNA’s Volunteer Hub became my latest project – placing skilled RSJ volunteers from North America in countries welcoming refugees from Ukraine - all my skills in project management and relationship building, my connections and extensive networks became very useful.

What prompted you to reach out to Tiny Windows, and what did you end up creating together?

As I was exploring the opportunity to create two pilot projects - series of webinars on RSJ Engagement for Jewish professionals and lay leaders and a Leadership program – I was looking for a thought partner to dream, plan, and make it happen with. A few of my JFNA colleagues recommended reaching out to Miriam as they had a recent experience of working with her on similar projects of curriculum/program design.

“Creative, responsive and responsible, easy to work with, truly talented, able to turn general ideas and draft outlines into real meaningful content” - those were their descriptions of Miriam.

We partnered with TWC for both projects and I found there all of the above and so much more! Working with TWC was a true pleasure and the results went above and beyond any of my expectations! Both the process and the product turned out a pleasure to be part of and a source of pride. Working with Miriam and Zoey was a great experience both on personal and professional level, and I could not wish for better partners!

Program design can be a challenging endeavor, even for a professional with many years of experience. If TWC is there to help, there is nothing to fear, we’ll make it happen and we’ll make it great!

What advice would you give to someone looking to partner with TWC on their project(s)?

Prepare to be blown away by the level of professionalism, creativity, attention to detail, positive attitude, and a talent to turn challenges into opportunities.

I look forward to having more opportunities to work with TWC!

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Even - especially - in the midst of difficult circumstances, we can create meaningful opportunities to connect.

The war is not over, and there is still enormous suffering. If you feel moved to contribute, you can learn more and do so here.

But we’re heartened to know that with leaders like Olga at the helm, the future of the Russian-Speaking Jewish community in North America is very, very bright. And the greater Jewish world will be better for their engagement.

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Interested in pulling up more chairs to more tables in your organization? TWC would love to talk about inclusive leadership programming and communications. Get in touch today; we can’t wait to hear your story.