At the heart of the leadership programs conducted by the Mandel Center for Leadership in the North are the clarification of the question of leadership and its implications for the lives of the fellows, as well as critical examination of accepted concepts and paradigms relating to the concept of leadership. These questions and concepts are explored in a workshop taught by the Center’s director,
Professor David Dery. The course introduces the fellows to the idea of the “act of leadership” – a central paradigm in the rationale of the Center’s programs.
At the end of the course, each fellow selects an “act of leadership” that he or she finds particularly interesting, studies it using the concepts and theories studied, and presents it to the other fellows and the faculty of the Center.
The acts of leadership that the fellows of the Mandel Program for Regional Leadership in the North chose to present this year come from a diverse range of fields in Israeli society and around the world. They include:
- The establishment of the first center commemorating fallen Druze soldiers in Israel
- The founding of the Phelisanong project in Lesotho in Southern Africa
- “The Bridge Builder” – Rabbi Yehiel Eckstein’s establishment of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews
- Operation “Locked Garden 2”: The forced evacuation of Amona
- Regina Jonas – the first woman ordained as a rabbi
- The struggle for women’s right to education in Pakistan
- Karen Tal and the founding of the Bialik-Rogozin school in Tel Aviv as a multicultural school
- The struggle against the Highway 6 toll road as a collection of leadership acts
- The establishment of the independent living movement for people with disabilities, which marked the beginning of the revolution that led to disabilities being seen as a human rights issue.
