The Twilight Zones of Leadership

At the start of the Institute’s academic year in September, I mentioned a mishna in Masechet Avot (“Ethics of the Fathers”) that talks about ten things that were created during twilight.

One of them is the “mouth of the ass”, which appears in this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Balak. The ass in question belongs to Bilam, and when Bilam beats her she reprimands him, as it is written (Numbers 22: 27-28):

And Bilam was furious and beat the ass with his stick. Then the Lord opened the ass’s mouth, and she said to Bilam, “What have I done to you that you have beaten me these three times?”

We at the Mandel Leadership Institute are experts at creations such as the mouth of the ass.

Not because Mandel Foundation president, Professor Reinharz, is writing a book about the donkey in history, and not, heaven forbid, because the Institute is a production line for talking asses, but because the Institute is a place – just like twilight is a time – in which special things are created.

Just like twilight is neither day nor night, but a kind of threshold between them, so, too, the Mandel Leadership Institute is a sort of threshold – a liminal borderline, a twilight zone: between academia and the professional field; between vision and reality; between where you came from and where you’re going; between who you used to be, and who you will become. It’s a place where the obvious and evident are no longer taken for granted, a creative space in which exceptional, groundbreaking things are created.

It’s no coincidence that MLI is a threshold. Leadership and education are both activities that take place in thresholds: between the familiar and the unfamiliar, between present and future, between what people can do and what's beyond their capacity.

The role of leaders and educators is to bring people to the threshold and help them cross it, and reach a goal that is sometimes difficult even to imagine before one sets off on the journey.

MLI is a threshold, and thresholds are fragile places; that's why there are gatekeepers. Outside forces can easily break through and destroy the safe spaces created inside. And just as easily, those inside can shut themselves off into stifling seclusion, becoming deaf and blind to what's happening outside.

My wish for our alumni and graduates, is that they succeed in taking back with them, to the stormy vitality of the field, the threshold spirit that they experienced at the Institute, and that they will be “threshold people”: committed but not dogmatic; open, but also determined; courageous, but also modest; leaders who are not dragged along with the herd, but who also don’t cut themselves off from the community. It’s a difficult challenge, but one they can overcome. May they succeed and thrive!

Taken from Dr. Eli Gottlieb’s Speech at the Mandel Leadership Institute Graduation Ceremony on June 17, 2013 at the Israel Museum