Since returning to Hillel a year ago, I’ve rediscovered an organization that embraces innovation and creativity and strives for excellence. I’ve also been reintroduced to the Hillel culture of odd word usage and unusual acronyms. I therefore am engaged in CAT – the Campus Advancement Team. I hate cats and worked for days on an acronym that would spell out PUPPY. In the end, I had to settle for being passive aggressive and insisting on referring to our group as the Schusterman International Center Campus Advancement Team or, the SIC CATS.
This fascination with phrases, wizardry with words, or as my cousin Jonathan used to say, antics with semantics is not new in the International Center of Hillel. Close to ten years ago Richard Joel embraced the word “engagement” and would verbally assault anybody who had the temerity to use the word “outreach”. The term “verbal assault” was soon replaced by the word “supervision” in the Hillel lexicon.
Who can forget the term “interdependent self-sufficiency” used by the International Center to describe the intermeshing of national and local development efforts. Ultimately, the term came to mean that the International Center was soliciting your major donors without your approval for a greater good that was beyond your comprehension.
I now find myself cringing every time I am sitting in a meeting SIC folks who start harping about the BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal). I can’t quite get comfortable with it and have silently vowed never to use it in a public setting – much in the same way I would rather face water boarding than use the term “venti” when ordering a large coffee. By the way, is water boarding considered an immersive experience? It is fair to say that alternative spring break trips to New Orleans are clearly immersive experiences. One might, however consider that to be an unfortunate use of the term.
Rather than simply whining, which I am prone to do, I do have an alternative suggestion: Big Hairy Improbable Vision of Excellence = BHIVE. Think of hundreds of busy professionals, buzzing around, creating something profoundly sweet The term also lends itself to much better graphics. With our CAT and our BEE’s we are creating a virtual Noah’s Ark of innovation.
The most recent lamentable and laborious use of lexicon is the term “Thought Partner” coined by a recent task force group to describe lay committee chairs. The intent is good but the choice of words is questionable. The notion of a “Thought Partner”, is in my thinking, not a little bit frightening. Other than my wife Jo who knows what I’m thinking before I do, I’m not sure I want anybody sharing my thoughts. Nor, by the way, do I have any particular desire to peer into the thoughts of others. I spent two years as a clinical social worker – first at a National Public Health Service Hospital and then at a Mental Health Clinic. I’ve done some peering into people’s thoughts. Quite frankly, it is overrated and, more frequently than not, unsavory.
Thus, we continue to develop our own unique Hillel dialect. We ask our thought partners: “How do SIC professionals contemplate engaging students in immersion experiences in advancing the BHAG?” In the same way that Latino is a joining of Hebrew and Spanish and Yiddish is the coming together of Hebrew and German, some might say that “Hillelish” can be described as the marriage of English and pretense. Since my paycheck comes via SIC I, of course, would never utter such heresy.
Speaking of Yiddish, our “mama lashon” provides a wonderful parallel for us to draw on. Years after a generation of parents used Yiddish as a secret code to prevent their children from understanding what they were saying (e.g. ”Uncle Izzie liked to dress up like Carmine Miranda and dance around trays of pot roast” or “Aunt Fanny has a stomach tumor the size of a meatloaf”) Yiddish still provides a unrivaled richness and nuance of expression. One cannot truly translate “shlamele” without losing the rich texture. Compared to I’m “ferklempt”, “I’m tired” is so one dimensional. If you truly want to brush somebody off, forgo “buzz off” or “get lost”. Neither can match the rich visual imagery of: “Gey kaffen yam (go crap in the ocean). Thus, too, professionals who work at SIC are creating a rich an nuanced language with which to fully describe the complexity of our work (COW).
SIC’s efforts to expand the English language are nothing short of Shakespearian. Four hundred years ago Shakespeare refused to be bound by the limitations of existing language and created hundreds of new words to express his creative brilliance. Amazement, anchovy, barefaced, bloodstained, coldhearted, eyeball, lackluster, sanctimonious, watchdog and, eat your heart out Richard Joel….. engagement, are just a few. He also coined a broad array of phrases without which our capacity for verbal expression would be severely hampered. We can thank the Bard for: “in my heart of hearts”, the “naked truth “wild goose chase, ‘for goodness' sake”, “one fell swoop”, “play fast and loose”, “too much of a good thing” and many others. Thus, as SIC professionals, we are truly Shakespearian in our thinking (SIOT)
I quote from a recent e-mail: “Most of you know that in recent years, we have facilitated something called the Self-Assessment Survey, which has given us a great deal of data about Hillels. Because of our expanded Organizational Learning agenda, we are building on the SAS to create something called the Annual Hillel Assessment (AHA).”
But there is a serious concern here; has anybody checked to see if the acronym AHA is already taken. What if, just last week, the fiscal department created “Audited Hillel Accounting” statements, or if the development department put together a fundraising program for South America entitled “Advancing Hillel in Argentina” (Australia would work here as well – my guess is that Austria is less of an issue).
Thus, in keeping with my belief that “800” should not only be the address of the SIC but the target number of professionals, I would propose that we create the DOAE – the Department of Organizational Acronyms and Euphemism. I believe that this new department will serve the BHAG and prepare us for next year’s AHA. We will need to ensure that all new acronyms are shared with HPCs and that they are consistent with the CEI and EEE initiatives. We will also need to consult with our Thought Partners. Otherwise, we could be SOL and things would become FUBAR.
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