#17 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Tuesday May 4)
Good morning!
Last week we lost one of the great men of his generation, a leader in the Los Angeles community. Eli Broad furthered art, music, culture, and the idea that Los Angeles is one of the world’s great cities. I did not know Eli Broad but I know of his legacy. The patron of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the museum of his own name, he helped see the Walt Disney Concert Hall to fruition and has been at the forefront of many of Los Angeles’s advancements on the world stage. He built multiple businesses in his life and many of the most successful business leaders of my generation got their start under his tutelage.
Beyond his personal accomplishments, Eli Broad represents a dying breed in America—the old guard elite that help guide the city’s fortunes. Not just someone who funds the latest State Assembly races but someone who thinks seriously about the future and acts upon it.
In the second half of the 20th century, Los Angeles looked to people like Broad for leadership. Ensconced in their gentlemen’s lunches at the California Club, playing dominoes or cribbage, this almost exclusively male and Christian elite controlled the boards of the local universities, charitable organizations, cultural institutions, and corporations. They wielded power in a surprisingly benevolent manner. Sure, they represented a patriarchy and an ethnically monolithic subset of society. But as Jack Hubbard, president of USC, remarked wistfully, if something needed to get done in the city, one knew the people to call who controlled or had access to the levers of power.
While we obviously shouldn’t go back to this predominantly male, white model cadre elites, the model, if more diverse and representative, represent the notion that this seemingly ungovernable city can be led through the concerted efforts of people who care. Today, we suffer from a week mayor system, 15 fiefdoms of City Council districts, five near-dictatorial Supervisors, a NIMBY attitude with a patchwork of “neighborhood councils,” and a plethora of special interests. The city seems paralyzed, devoid of imagination, risk taking, and leadership. Love him or hate him (I understand there was no shortage of either), Eli Broad wielded power not just for power’s sake (take note, U.S. Congressional leadership)—but for things he believed in and that ultimately benefited the City. We are less without his type.
MEETINGS—JEWISH STYLE
A few weeks ago, I commented on “Jewish Standard Time,” the habit of arriving a standard 10 minutes late to everything (with my observation that other ethnic groups claim this distinction for themselves).
There are two additional things that most meetings of Jewish organizations can’t seem to do without. The first is the “d’var torah,” which is a short homily, often on the Torah reading (bible portion) of the week. It can be delivered by clergy or laity (most often laity, showing their ability to do a little studying and analysis). It is uncanny how seemingly any bible portion can be weaved into the purpose of the agenda of that very meeting or the mission of the organization at hand!
The second is the “schmooze time” that takes place at the beginning of each meeting (even preceding the d’var torah). This is the necessary social period for people to “kibbitz” (engage in small talk; not to be confused with “kibbutz,” a socialist collective experiment in Israel’s early days). Organizations will typically build in this warm-up before the meeting (think of it as akin to batting practice before a game). The other day I received two Zoom invitations for a single event. One was for the meeting and the other was for “pre-meeting Schmooze time” a half hour earlier. Brilliant planning that acknowledged the need to schmooze—yet not detracting from the substantive meeting itself!
Have a good day,
Glenn