June 28, 2018

Over the next several weeks, we will transition from the Book of Bamidbar to the Book of Devarim. Bamidbar means “in the wilderness” and Devarim means “words.” In Bamidbar, the Torah takes us from Egypt to Canaan and describes life in the wilderness, which was full of trials, tribulations, conflict and complaining. Devarim, by contrast, is a book of calm where Moses speaks the words of what HaShem expects of the Israelites, and the Israelites actually listen.

What is the model that we want for our communities today? Bamidbar or Devarim, fighting and rebelling in the wilderness, or listening to what is expected of us, finding common ground and truly coming to understand the value system that the Torah provides us? The former is destroying us; the latter will guide us to being a community according to the values of the Torah.

Like many others, I am involved in our community through our Federation system because of my strong belief in Jewish values. To me, Jewish values are not one particular teaching or one particular passage, but the entire value system given to us through the Torah — the system that requires us to care for one another, not to engage in lashon harah (gossip) and to find common ground so we can truly repair the world and finish HaShem’s work. Only then can we truly be a community. A couple of weeks ago in Parashat Beha’alotcha, Moses’ sister, Miriam, engages Aaron in lashon harah about Moses and his wife, Zipporah. HaShem punishes Miriam by inflicting her with leprosy, demonstrating the seriousness of the sin of lashon harah.

I am very concerned that today, more than at any time I can remember, we are in deep trouble. We are being ripped apart — the young from the old, the right from the left and the secular from the more observant. We are attacking one another publicly as well as privately, joining the rest of society by engaging in lashon harah about anyone we disagree with.

Federations must stand for a belief in the unity of the Jewish people — our communities are calling out to us to teach one another how to listen and how to practice a standard of decency, or as Hillel describes the Torah: “What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor; that is the whole lesson of the Torah; the rest is all commentary; go study it.”

The community is more important than being right. Building community is sacred work. We must elevate the conversation.

Hillel did not just talk about Torah, he lived it. He did not just talk the talk, but he also walked the walk. We keep talking the talk of civil discourse and common tradition and Jewish values. It is time for the leadership of our community to lead the way of walking the walk of respect, learning and listening. 

When we hear a position we disagree with, can’t we find common ground? We can do that only if we stop waving our personal flags of self-righteousness. It has become more important in our communities to prove that we are right and that those who disagree with us are wrong than it is to work together to find solutions or at least a better understanding of complex problems. None of us possesses perfect knowledge nor all the answers. As writer Lincoln Steffens once said, “It is our knowledge — the things that we are sure of — that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning.”

We are in this together. The community is more important than being right. Building community is sacred work. We must elevate the conversation.

In doing so, we must welcome different points of view, and do more listening than talking.

It is our responsibility to move our communities from the wilderness to the Promised Land, and when I say communities, I mean our whole community, not just those we agree with, just as the greatest leader and teacher of our people, Moshe Rabbenu, took our ancestors from Bamidbar to Devarim, from the wilderness to the most important word in Devarim: Shema, which means listen.

Let’s work together to move our communities from conflict to consensus, from division to common purpose, from lashon horah to Shema. Without an ethic of listening, we are no longer a community. If we are going to repair the world, let’s start with ourselves and our communities — and let’s start now.

Richard Sandler is the chair of the board of trustees of the Jewish Federations of North America and past chair of the board of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

July 4 is awkward. I am an Englishman in Los Angeles. Everyone here — everyone — celebrates defeating, rejecting and ejecting the English. My friend Barak flew me over L.A. in his Cessna, from where we could see 500 Independence Day fireworks displays, each one of them representing the firepower used to successfully decimate the English Redcoats. Thanks a lot.

Maybe we had it coming. I get it. Your colonists were being ruled by our insane septuagenarian monarch George III, who was a certified lunatic. Why would the intelligent, democracy-loving people of North America tolerate being led by a crazy man in his 70s?

One thing I don’t understand is the simultaneous love and revulsion of the British. Four of the past eight lead actor Oscars went to Englishmen. The TV shows “Downton Abbey” and “The Crown” are massive hits over here, America’s chefs gladly accept verbal abuse from Gordon Ramsay, and James Corden has successfully stormed the entertainment barricades with “Carpool Karaoke.”

This American ambivalence is confusing. During eight years of living in L.A., I regularly have heard dodgy English accents upon meeting people, have been told how they love hearing my British accent, even though I helpfully explain that I am the one without the accent because the language is called “English,” and that there is no such thing as a “British accent” because the United Kingdom consists of four countries. One native Angeleno excitedly identified the U.K.’s four nations as “England, Ireland, London and Great Britain.” Well done, mate. I congratulated him on his geographical mastery, after which he resumed the complex task of consuming his frozen yogurt.

The frozen yogurt lover omitted Wales and the land of the treacherous Scots, who were worth leaving out because they recently tried to devolve from the union. Clearly, the Scots have not learned from Rabbi Mel Gibson’s “Reliable History of the World,” whose Braveheart was hung, drawn and quartered after proclaiming, “They can take our lives but they can never take our freedom!” In the spirit of Yom Kippur forgiveness, we can wholeheartedly forgive Gibson for his anti-Semitic tirades while under the influence of Scottish whisky.

Why not just abandon the whole “democracy” malarkey and submit to the rule of Queen Elizabeth II?

Everything is forgiven in light of the recent royal wedding. My friend Rebecca, a social worker in Silver Lake, casually mentioned a few months ago during Shabbat lunch that her “co-worker’s kid is marrying Prince Harry.” She was working with Doria Ragland, the mother who healed 250 years of American-British enmity as her formerly besuited daughter, Meghan Markle, joined the royal family.

There is a great history of international alliances consummated by marriage, like when Prince Harry’s namesake King Henry V married Princess Catherine of France after we defeated those Euro-rascals (at least that’s the story according to Shakespeare, and who cares if it is creative license, this is Los Angeles).

Once again, our two star-crossed nations are officially united, once more unto the breach dear friends, “Cry God for Harry, England and St. George.”

Surely, it is time to shift the Independence Day fireworks to Nov. 5, the British “bonfire night,” when subjects of the crown light sparklers and set off fireworks to celebrate Guy Fawkes’ failed attempt to blow up the houses of Parliament.

I have no particular dislike of President Donald Trump, especially since he installed a Sabbath-observant shomer Shabbat family into the White House environs, but the level of civil division in the United States is particularly unsettling. Why not just abandon the whole “democracy” malarkey and submit to the rule of Queen Elizabeth II? Netflix already has devoted financial support to “The Crown,” and all it would take to complete the transition is a little presidential executive order.

My primary summer activity is sunbathing on the rooftop of my apartment complex and enjoying its 360-degree view of Los Angeles, which is the perfect viewing platform for the Independence Day fireworks. I look forward to the big night. Oh, how I love thee, America.

Marcus J Freed is a devastatingly handsome, incredibly humble and highly eligible Englishman. His website is marcusjfreed.com.

A notable thing happened in the U.S. workforce in April. For the first time since the Labor Department started to keep track in 2000, there were more job openings than unemployed people. The number of openings hit a record 6.7 million for the month, exceeding the number of jobless by 352,000. On paper, there’s a job for everyone who wants one, and more.

This comes as the marquee jobs number — the unemployment rate — sits at 3.8 percent nationwide, a rate last seen in 2000 and seen only twice in 50 years. The jobless rates for California and Los Angeles are slightly higher, but still near historic lows at 4.2 percent and 4.1 percent, respectively. The unemployment rate measures the percentage of out-of-work people who are actively looking for a job against the entire labor force. 

So, we have this unique situation: a low jobless rate, record job openings and more than enough people to fill them. Why aren’t employers hiring the 6.4 million people actively looking for work? I turned to Beth Ann Bovino, the chief U.S. economist for S&P Global in New York, for an answer. “I think a big factor is a skills mismatch.” You’ve probably heard this phrase before. Simply put, it’s the difference between the skills employers are looking for in their workers and the skills the job seekers have. 

Usually, when employment is high, job openings are down. Bovino is seeing something different right now. “What we’ve seen is it’s shifted out, and that to us says labor mismatch. Businesses cutting costs and not wanting to pay benefits, that could be part of it. But we think a big factor is skills. That’s really at play here.”

Clearly, we’re in the midst of a new phase of structural unemployment, or unemployment resulting from changing technology. “History has shown that we usually have a structural lag with new technological change,” Bovino said. “People need to catch up with the skills to compete. We’ve seen it before, but the question is, do these people need a little bit of a step-up to be able to work in this environment, or are they going to be left behind?” 

Seventy-seven percent of businesses worldwide have indicated they will retrain workers to fit their company needs.

Bovino suggested that “given that many businesses complain that they can’t find the workers they need with the skills that they need, it seems like they’d be very interested in helping with reskilling this workforce that’s fallen behind.” Seventy-seven percent of businesses worldwide have indicated they will retrain workers to fit their company needs, according to one Deloitte survey. 

“One of the worries that I think businesses have is that, ‘What if I invest in reskilling these workers, and then they go somewhere else?’ And that’s a tough question,” Bovino said. “An alternative way to look at it is that if a business does invest in that worker, and really give them the skills they need, that worker might be more loyal to the business in the end.

“I’m not an IT specialist, so I’m only speaking as an economist, but I would say that one thing that looks different is that the technological change happens so much faster today than it did 10, 15, 40 years ago.

“It seems like it is happening in seconds, in minutes, versus hours or days or months. And so that might also leave kind of a question for the business of reskilling that worker with the technology he or she needs right now, which might become obsolete in just a few months. That is one little worry that I would have.”

Here’s another thing that worries economists. The unemployment rate measures only the percentage of out-of-work people who actively are looking for work. It doesn’t count people who are employed part time, or those who’ve given up looking for work completely. That’s millions more people who need new training before employers will consider hiring them to fill one of those record 6.7 million openings. We have a very long way to go before our workforce is ready for all the current and future jobs new technology is creating.

Ramona Schindelheim is the senior business correspondent and executive producer for WorkingNation, reporting on jobs, the future of work, and innovative solutions to solving the skills gap. Follow her on Twitter at @RamonaWritesLA.