Today was our first day in Tel Aviv and we learned from two different leaders who had two very different beginnings. Usumain Baraka was a refugee from Darfur. Hadas Kaldaron is the granddaughter of a very famous Yiddish poet. Baraka became a leader from first hand experience, as he survived a genocide and made his way to Israel. While Hadas displays leadership by bringing a voice to her grandfather’s work. He was a holocaust survivor, the only Jewish witness at the Nuremberg trials, and passionate about preserving Yiddish as a testament to those who lost their lives. Her grandfather was the internationally known and famous poet, Abraham Sutzkever.
To me, more than their interesting and inspiring stories, was the fact that I realized what a leader actually is. A leader doesn’t have to be a person who takes action only as the result of a personal story. A leader can also be a person who takes action on the work of another. Yes, this sounds like the obvious part of being a leader, however Baraka became a leader through his own story – he persevered by being forced to live through life’s biggest fears: war, abuse, genocide. These fears many of us learn about through textbook noted events, and will never have to face them head on like Baraka did. Kaldaron is a leader because she continued to help others understand one of those very genocides that we learn about in the textbooks, the Holocaust. She wasn’t the poet or the survivor but she is an advocate to make sure people know her grandfather’s story.
From today’s leaders, I learned some leaders are survivors and some are advocates, both are still having an impact on others, just in different ways.