As I’ve been taking some professional strides, and thinking more about what my plans are for the coming years, I’ve been thinking a lot about mentorship. I recently read a book called “How ‘Bout That For a Crack Baby” by Shawn Blanchard, in which he outlines both his own story as a mentee, as well as his story as a mentor. One of the key take aways I got from his book was the importance of a strong mentor at a young age. I’m lucky, in that I have no shortage of positive role models or mentors in my life, dating all the way back to eighth grade (and who would I be if I didn’t credit some of those mentors at this perfectly opportune moment: Mark Honeyman, Katie Vieder, Jeremy Chamberlin, and many others). As I saw in Shawn’s book, not everyone is that lucky.

The ages of 13-18 are among some of the most formative, if not THE most formative years of someone’s life. The people who are there for you, encourage you, listen to you, believe in you, and bring out the best in you at those ages—there simply aren’t words to express how important those people are. There are people who go out of their way to be mentors, and there are people who have the opportunity to be a mentor due to the hand they’ve been dealt (or have made for themselves; the contrast here is simply mentorship by circumstance). These are the teachers, clergy members, camp counselors, advisors, and youth group staff members of the world. They are employed by some sort of organization, and given the task of teaching, or supervising. On paper, that is their responsibility. But those who are both passionate about, and good at their jobs know that the more important responsibility of their position is to inspire.

I was fairly involved in my youth group in high school. I chose to participate in Jewish leadership programs outside of school over virtually every other school sponsored activity I could have chosen to invest my time in. I spent the formative years of 14 to 17 completely immersed in an organization called bbyo. Their mission statement was “more Jewish teens, more meaningful Jewish experiences”, and man did I have some meaningful Jewish experiences. I met some of the greatest friends, many of whom I still talk to today, and I had some of the greatest times. Something that I didn’t notice then, however, that I have been noticing more and more since graduating high school, is the portion of the statement that says “more Jewish teens”. At the time, I never thought of this organization as a numbers game. And why would I? This organization provided me with my first trip to Israel, a developed personal connection to my Judaism, a trip to Bulgaria (and how many people can say they’ve been to Bulgaria?), and, again, some of the greatest friendships I’ve ever had. Now, however, I am beginning to realize that the root of this multi-national organization is deeply affected by numbers, and a misunderstanding of what makes a mentor.

One of my mentors that I mentioned above is Katie Vieder. Katie was the Michigan Regional Director all four years that I spent in bbyo, and she was the staff member with whom I worked the most closely my senior year when I served as the regional president. Katie did everything a mentor should do; she inspired me, she worked hard for me, she believed in me, and she pushed me. Katie is the true model of what one would think every staff member of an organization like this should, and would, be like. The summer before my junior year, I attended a program where I was able to meet the International version of Katie, we’ll call him Michael. When I met Michael, I expected him to be like Katie on steroids. A guy like that, with the opportunity to touch the lives of tens of thousands of Jewish high schoolers, I was beyond excited to meet him. I hadn’t heard all that much about him before meeting him, mainly because of this sort of unspoken rule that freshmen and sophomores don’t need to know about the politics of the organization (and believe me, this organization was filled to the brim with politics [and not always in a bad way! I owe a lot of my confidence to the political aspect of bbyo]). When I met Michael, I wasn’t as impressed as I expected to be, and when I actually got to know Michael, I was incredibly saddened and disappointed.

Michael had a sort of gang of kids who were more or less his gold star leaders. If you weren’t one of those, you were no more than a number to Michael. And worse, if you noticed this “gold star system”, you were deprived of financial resources and leadership resources by Michael. Unfortunately, the entire Michigan region made the mistake of noticing Michael’s system. After that summer, I decided I wanted to make a larger difference in whatever way that I could; I decided I wanted to run for the international executive board. Everyone in Michigan was supportive as can be. Katie and the other Michigan staff members did anything and everything to ensure that I was prepared when the election came, and that I was confident in myself. On the night before the election, Michael had a meeting with all of the candidates, both for the boy’s executive board, and the girl’s. I had never been in a room so filled with nerves before. Every single 16-year old kid in the room was anxious about the next day, and I’m pretty sure I can speak for all of us when I say we were in need of some words of encouragement. Instead, the first thing that Michael said to us was “A lot of you have absolutely no business being in this room right now”. When I’ve spoken to people who were in that meeting in the years before me, or after me, they have all been able to confirm that Michael told them the same thing.

I lost that election, and I was absolutely devastated. I wallowed for quite some time, and then when the time came, I ran for Michigan regional president, and won. Again, I was deeply inspired by my peers, by Katie, and by my new co-president Jacob, who is still one of my closest friends. By this time, going into my senior year, I was fully aware of the political drama encompassing frankly the entire international organization. The August before our term started, we gathered in DC with the international boards, and all of the other regional presidents from across the country. Jacob and I couldn’t have been more excited for our terms, and we were determined to make our region known, and taken seriously by the rest of the leaders in the room. One of the ways we wanted to do so was to sit down with Michael, and have an honest conversation about Michigan’s relationship with the international leadership and staff. When we asked Michael why our relationship had become so sour, he replied by saying “a lot of the kids from Michigan are weird. They need bbyo to survive - they wouldn’t have social lives without it. They’re just weird.” He then proceeded to name specific names of teens who weren’t weird by his standards, and told us that those are the kids that should be in charge. He also named specific names of past Michigan leaders who should not have been in charge, due to them being “weird”. I was a little uneasy at the time for sure, but now, I’m appalled. I just wanna take a second and digest here: this is a roughly 30-year-old man, sitting with two 17-year-old kids, telling them that their friends (and passively they themselves) are weird, and unfit to be leaders. And that is why he won’t grant them the resources they are asking for.

I didn’t really say anything to anyone then, partially because he was ultimately in charge of the entire organization. But now that I’m four years removed, and I really value the importance of a true mentor, I realize how horribly wrong this is. I think of the staff members at Michigan Hillel, and I know that none of them would ever dream of discouraging a student the way Michael did. He had the opportunity to help so many kids grow, personally, professionally, as leaders, and he squandered that opportunity. He decided to inspire a select few, at the incredibly vast expense of the majority.

My purpose in telling this story is not only to speak out, but to use Michael as an example. My younger cousin has been hosting socially distant cooking camps this summer to give kids something to do when they would have otherwise been at sleep away camp. I watch him, at just 16 years old, inspire the absolute sh*t out of these kids. He encourages them, even when they’re doing the opposite of the instructions he gave them. He’s only 16, but he gets it.

It doesn’t matter the capacity in which you’re mentoring someone, it could be a day long workshop, what you say to the people you’re mentoring matters. The way you treat them, the way you act around them, the way you act towards them, it all matters. People don’t remember everything, but they remember the bad stuff, and they remember the good stuff. I vividly remember those two instances in which Michael made me feel so crappy about myself, my ability to lead, my peers’ ability to lead, even the very character of so many people I loved. I also remember, just as vividly, the moment that Katie told me she believed in me, and she would be endorsing my candidacy for international board. When you’re in a position of mentorship, it’s crucial to take into account the impact you want to make, because it will be remembered.

Title quote in full: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelou

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