Cyd Weissman, vice president for Engagement and Innovation, a recognized thought leader in Jewish education, believes that meaningful Jewish experiences can transform individuals, communities and the world. She’s dedicated to fostering new kinds of approaches that lower barriers to Jewish community and reach people where they are. Weissman serves as a mentor to rabbinical students and guides many of Reconstructing Judaism’s most public-facing and future-oriented projects.
Weissman is passionate about storytelling, possessing a keen understanding of how stories enable people to process information. She enables the organization to tell its story by overseeing its communication team, which encompasses social media, media relations, written content and audio and visual productions and more. Weissman manages Reconstructing Judaism’s web properties including ReconstructingJudaism.org, Rituawlwell.org, RRC.edu and Evolve.ReconstructingJudaism.org. She also oversees Reconstructing Judaism’s slate of online learning offerings.
At the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, she teaches a course on entrepreneurism. She also works closely with future and recently graduated rabbis to launch start-up endeavors and turn ideas into realities. Weissman directs the Auerbach Entrepreneurial Grant Program, which supports innovators in creating bold experiments that seek to reconstruct the Jewish experience for increased access and meaning. She serves as a mentor to grantees through the entire process, from applying for the grant to implementation. Auerbach grantees’ initiatives have made a difference in people’s lives and serve as models of innovation for the wider Jewish world.
Additionally, she drove the process that brought together seminaries across the Jewish ideological spectrum to create an inter-seminary course on entrepreneurism under the auspices of Clal. Throughout her years serving the Jewish community, Weissman has developed a wide network of relationships across the Jewish world, a value added for rabbinical students seeking to chart their own rabbinates.
Prior to joining Reconstructing Judaism, Weissman served as the director of Innovation in Congregational Learning for the Jewish Education Project, where she led the creation of the Coalition of Innovating Congregations. For a decade, she taught at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City. She is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Gratz College and Penn State University.
Entrepreneurship: This project-based course introduces students to the skills and knowledge necessary to successfully launch entrepreneurial projects, both within existing organizations and outside of them.
In 2011, Weissman co-produced the short film, The High Five.
In 2018, Weissman produced and appeared in the Reconstructing Judaism video, “The Story of Or Zarua.” The video highlights Weissman’s approach to social entrepreneurship and the Auerbach Entrepreneurial Grant Program.
In 2018, on her Edgeblog, Cyd Weissman published, “Rabbis as Entrepreneurs? It’s Not About the Money.”
In 2019, Weissman appeared as a guest on #TrendingJewish, the Reconstructing Judaism podcast. In the episode “Leave Your Solutions at the Door,” Weissman explains how design thinking can be applied to Jewish communal life.
In 2019, Weissman published “Collaboration Across Difference: An Innovation Power Tool” and “Champagne and Aspirin for Strengthening Jewish Community.”
In 2020, Weissman published “Principles for a Full Year of Love and Caring” in eJewish Philanthropy.
Members of RRC’s faculty are taking part in a study tour as an expression of the college’s commitment to Israel education as a core component of the rabbinical school curriculum.
Being a leader requires ongoing learning. You can’t learn to lead by attending a week-long conference or by doing it for a year or two. Rather, we want to impress the idea that learning to be a leader is a lifetime of study and practice.
Zoom Shabbat minyan has done little for me. I’ve tried it repeatedly. But I find praying or learning via Zoom more work-like than spirit-filled. So for pandemic Shabbat enrichment, I regularly access Reconstructing Judaism’s Virtual Shabbat Box (VSB). Every Thursday, with contactless delivery, the VSB arrives in my inbox. I click to find a variety of ways to engage while sitting on my sofa. Essays, videos, poetry, podcasts are weekly offered in the VSB and a welcomed part of my re-imagined Shabbat experience.
The calendar says the school year should end. However, many Jewish educators, witnessing the effects of the pandemic on their students, and now civic unrest, are challenging the calendar’s norms. Instead of closing down the year, they are asking, “How might we continue to engage our students through the summer?”
Crystal clear to me, now, is that all the coffees, the story sharing and listening, and the showing up, has resulted in the cultivation of a most rare commodity in our society. Trust.
This article was originally published in eJewish Philanthropy on Nov. 25, 2019.
More and faster describes my usual work habit. I’ve operated this way for decades. But daily, I’m learning to take a breath so my work is not solely about tasks; it is infused with soul.
Reflections on lessons learned in a network of network weavers
We train rabbis to be social entrepreneurs: applying a business-like discipline to creating solutions to social justice, cultural and environmental issues.
Serving as central organization of the Reconstructionist movement
Training the next generation of groundbreaking rabbis
Modeling respectful conversations on pressing Jewish issues
Curating original, Jewish rituals, and convening Jewish creatives
